Returning to you, my silent eyes...



In this blog post, I'm gonna do what every blogging “guru” tells you that you should NEVER do when writing in your own blog: I'll talk about myself. Well, mostly. But there's a reason why I have to do so and I'll explain it a bit later. But firstly, let me tell you a story... A real story.

I would suggest you to grab a cup of something. Quite long text ahead.

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We all come to this world with all kinds of gifts that later on in life, as we grow-up they tend to fade out somehow. In my childhood, one of my gifts was to sing. In fact, this used to happen to me in a very natural and spontaneous way.

Because of that, my kindergarten teacher (God rest her soul as she has passed away two years ago) has asked me to sing on stage. Later, my primary school teacher did the same. All my "musical performances" were part of our artistic activities at kindergarten and school. We had several such artistic events every year and it was entertaining.

Then, the '89 Romanian Revolution happened and for some unexplained reasons, they kind of stopped. One of a sudden there was no money and no interest in organizing such shows. They were considered to be... Communist.

I never understood how celebrating the seasons, wearing a bee-like costume or dancing and reciting poems about the nature of the motherland can be considered Communist. Maybe the poets themselves were Communists. Or maybe suddenly patriotism was the new enemy (as we were now embarking towards the globalist Capitalism).

Or maybe the Romanian Revolution, just like the French one, was enthusiastically “guillotining” everything, good or bad alike. Or maybe all of the above is true... But anyway, I digress.

I remember those days even today. In most cases, I and my colleagues were usually wearing costumes. Some of us were singing, others reciting poems, others playing instruments or dancing. Two of the best pupils were the presenters and “hosts” for the show. And others were just staying there and having good fun.

I wasn't nervous about singing on stage. Not at all. Singing was in my nature, and being there, on the stage was for me nothing but another interesting and fun experience. Much more fun than the usual classes.

Then, one day, it happened. I was on the stage for a final rehearsal. I was singing my favourite song: “Motherland, my mother told me, is like the swallow bird...” and then I saw the eyes. The attentive eyes of the audience - the few parents that were sitting on the chairs assisting us.

At that moment for the first time in my life, I became self-aware. For the first time in my life, the stage became a frightening place to be, where singing was torture. And for the first time in my life I had to do great efforts not to lose my voice right in the middle of the song.

Up until that moment, it was all fun. Because it was about me doing what I was doing usually: singing. And, hey, if the song is listened to by other people than, say your neighbor or your classmate then it's more fun, right?

Well, when I have realized that those eyes could actually see any of my possible mistakes I simply got scared. From that moment on, I made all that's possible to turn down any invitation to sing for other people. I preferred to stop singing at all (or to sing only when being alone) than to risk making fool of myself. That high was the level of my fear!

As you can see, it was an irrational fear. Because I already had this musical talent quite well developed and I also had some experience. But these facts simply DID NOT MATTERED to me.

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Now, how is this story connected to our subject? Well, when I have checked the statistics of my blog I saw the eyes, YOUR eyes. The eyes of the silent readers of this blog. Despite my long lack of activity on this blog, you kept visiting this corner of the web. And this honors me and also scares me. So much so, that I shied away from writing for almost 4 years.

But not anymore! I guess that my internal drive to write has become stronger than the shiness. And I feel I have interesting things to share from now on.

During the four years that have passed since my last blog post here, a lot of things have happened. I've changed jobs, devices, operating systems, intellectual tastes and even, - partially, at least, - world views.

It's only natural that all these changes have to and will be present on this blog in the future. I'll share with you the things I've learned or those I'm still learning. Things that have marked my last 4 years of online absence.

Well, actually, overall, my absence lasted a lot longer than that, as I grew kind of reclusive for some reasons, and I didn't socialized much. The reasons are too many, but one of them is work. Especially during the spring of this year 2019, I was, at a certain moment, literally so busy that I couldn't afford to chat more than, let's say 5 minutes, much less engage in long conversations.

At that time, in spring, I had 3 (yeah, three) jobs at the same time and my schedule was so, so tight and clearly planned that I could barely breathe.

I feel guilty for all those people who turned to me for help during that time. I couldn't keep up with my promises and/or their expectations of me. I apologize to them with this occasion. And I apologize not only for that particular time in spring but I also for all the previous moments when I couldn't respond and help.

I also want to thank you all for having the patience to bearing with me until the end of this blog post.

And, as a very short note, I'll just count here several word that can describe my last 4 years of absence: Dell laptops, Ubuntu, narcissism, beauty and health...

Well, now that I have finished this text, I have to admit one thing: every time when I was tempted to just restart my blogging activity here without giving any kind of explanatory intro lines, I felt instantly kind of guilty. Because I think you deserve some explanations, excuses and also, my gratitude. You, my eyes...