I am staring at a blank page, wondering what to write about.  I feel like a drying well. I should be publishing a piece for Day 29 of my writing challenge but I am empty. In fact, I feel like a stranger has been writing all those other days, and I am envious of them. I cannot believe that stranger had the inspiration to write for 28 days. I could borrow some of that inspiration for today. On days like today, I just rumble. I go on and on in my journal rumbling about my lack of inspiration and wondering where the hell I can find it. I do this until something comes up. Knock on the doors of creative heaven, incessantly until the creative gods open out of irritation so that I can leave them alone. I don’t know if the door opened today. Sometimes it is difficult to tell. Sometimes I just go on and on and realize somewhere down the line that a piece grew legs and is ready to be shipped to school.

As I waited in line for my ticket number for my prayer item to be called out at heaven’s door, I decided to pause and reflect. First of all, I made it through July. July is the immediate month after my birthday, but it is not always my best. I do not enjoy the cold. The gloomy grey skies make me depressed. I do not know how I would survive in countries that experience winter. So I have to put in extra effort in July to kick off the seasonal depression. I keep myself busy with a million and one things. A hiking list, a reading list, a hobby list, an everything list. I disappear to a warmer place! I keep a busy to do list because depression cannot hit a moving target. So making it through July, is a big deal for me. I am proud of myself. I am grateful to my body for carrying me through!

I started the writing challenge on a whim. It was not a grand plan. A though popped up in my mind, 31 days for 31 years. I thought it sounded cool. Symbolic. Sophisticated. Like something a responsible adult would do. So I just started it. I have no theme. Nothing. I just woke up and wrote about whatever came up each day. I woke up with inspirations sometimes but on other days, I would be staring at a blank page at 10pm, anxious about what to write. Now days have turned into weeks. It will be 4 weeks and some days when I finish the challenge in 2 days and I am so proud of how far I have come.

This year I have lived on a whim. I start things. No overthinking. I do things for the plot. I listen to the tiniest thoughts. Things that come up in my intuition and just go with it without questioning much. I just do things and figure out the details huko mbele. That is how I ended up summiting Mt. Kenya. Earlier in the year, I went to a Kijabe hike and someone said to me, probably as a joke because hikers cannot be trusted, that I should go for a hike at Mackinders camp in Mt. Kenya. I had seen the hike but was discouraged by the amount of gear listed. Then I thought to myself, why not? So I bought the gear and went. At Mackinders, someone mentioned that I could probably to a Day Dash to Mt. Kenya. And so I did, three weeks later. I did not summit then, but I stopped seeing it as an unattainable thing. It stopped being a big deal. I discovered what I was capable of and I went back and summited Mt. Kenya last Saturday.

My biggest lesson this year; just start. I have learnt to start when I am not ready. To start when I am doubting myself. I am learning that I cannot get good at things without doing them. I am learning that I can show up imperfectly. A child learns walking by falling, getting up, falling, trying again until they get it: ‘I am child’. I am getting comfortable with being an amateur, being wrong about things, and allowing myself to learn on the go. I am not waiting to be perfect to show up in spaces. The learning is in the doing. The confidence comes from doing. So I wake up and act. Every single day. I act on the thoughts and dreams I hold. I act on them, with hesitation sometimes, but I act!