About
"Here you'll see me succeed or fail, I stated here five years ago:
I document my fight for a more focused, more fulfilling life - what I imagine more reading and writing would do to destiny - in order to overcome my fear of failure and success. Apparently I struggle with both. I don't have a therapist, don't trust them, cannot change this, so I stick to challenges instead of their sofa. It's pretty clever, you see, because whatever happens until the deadline, success or failure, one of my fears will be overcome either way."
I was a 30-something mother with two little ones under six, based in Brasilia. My challenge was to:
- recommend 50 of the best books ever written in human history
and - finish my book called The Living Ghosts
Then...
You saw me fail.
Not the first of my public failings, and so I also need to report that failure is just like horseriding* (insert any verb here YOU are afraid of doing): having it done for a hundred times will not diminish your fear of it.
It does take away its edge, though.
I also have a therapist now. (Ok, ok, it might have happened only because I write these lines in the Rocky Mountains, in Colorado. There are certain things that can only happen in the US.)
So much about the past - feel free to read all about it, I'm too old to delete anything I ever thought myself to be.
Today I am here to document my journey out of financial, emotional AND mental stuckness to help someone in similar shoes get out of hell quicker than I will.
No, this time there is no possibility of failure.
Born and raised in Budapest (with an influential stint as a preschooler in Miskolc), I'm deeply rooted in Hungary -- yet, for the last 25 years, I've kept leaving it, for months, for years, and once nearly for a decade. Only a Hungarian can enjoy Hungary as home sweet home. And they don't.
In Budapest I earned an M.A. in English and Communication and worked as a radio reporter before moving to New York. I graduated from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism with the support of the Fulbright grant among other amazing scholarships. I also graduated from New York University -- this time with a certificate in Business and Economic Reporting -- and joined Reuters, the news agency in New York City, for six years.
I've loved being a journalist.
It is not true that journalism finishes off a writer, as has so often been said — rather, just the opposite, so long as one leaves it behind soon enough,
Hemingway said. I tend to agree with the man on matters regarding writing. He also thought that war is the one single experience that a writer needs.
Today I fight the Battle of Stuckness. During the past five years while my babies learned to sleep through the night, I forgot how to. I lost a home, a true love, an identity. Here you see a middle-aged, broken human finding her superpowers, in other words: changing her destiny. And once that's done, you'll be the first to learn HOW TO DO JUST THAT.
My hope is that one day my grandchildren will read this report. Since my children have a Brazilian father who is an American citizen, there is no way for me to predict my grandchildren's mother tongue, so I decided to document my progress in English. Yet, for the first time in my life, I don't have the invaluable support of editors. My scribbling might be challenging to read. You have nothing more here than an honest journal.
Love,
