A Year of Writing to Uncover the Authentic Self (2024)
Lesson 10: Places

Where is the last place you remember going that really made you feel alive? Is there any specific place you would really like to visit? Have you ever been to a place which immediately made you feel at home or extremely uncomfortable?

It’s quite amazing what a change of scenery can do for us, isn’t it?

Personally, I have had the pleasure of visiting hundreds, if not thousands of different places across my lifetime – not all of which I now remember.

However, the one thing I know I can always rely on is that seeking out a new destination always helps reframe my perspective.

Lesson Format

This lesson, I felt, was rather short. It had a total of 6 writing prompts included and yet those prompts transported me all over the place mentally.

There was the question on remembering somewhere new you visited, the one that transported you back to a special childhood location and the final question on what a great setting for a movie would be.

It’s quite interesting how your imagination can be tweaked just by really thinking about questions you aren’t usually asked.

However, I must say that in this particular case I was a little bit underwhelmed by the chapter.

Places being one of my favourite subjects, I had seen myself spending some quality time remembering places that had made me feel emotionally connected.

Or else thinking more about the kind of place I would like to visit and why. Instead, I felt that the questions in this chapter were quite flat and generic.

My Thoughts

Despite not being completely enamoured with this chapter of the course, one of the things it did do well was highlight just how dramatically my desires and priorities have shifted recently.

Where once a question on places would have had me raving about the next exotic destination, this time I found myself wondering about places closer to home.

One of the questions asked me to describe a new place I had visited to a friend. Describing how I felt at the time I visited.

When thinking about this, the place that immediately came to mind was a smaller city next to Barcelona that I had visited not long ago called Viladecans.

I really love the idea of living in Viladecans!

It’s large enough to still be called a city and yet still well connected to Barcelona. The housing prices are reasonable for the area and they have my favourite Eurofitness gym chain there too.

They have not one, but two shopping malls to keep you entertained (one being a US Style Designer Outlet – discounts ahoy!) and in general the city feels relatively safe, clean, focused on sustainability and growing. Can’t argue with the benefits of that!

From a personal perspective though, thinking about this made me realise that I am in a new process of change.

Instead of searching for a new place to call home, and moving every few years to do so, after 5 years in Barcelona I appear to have found my home.

Instead of searching for a new place to escape to my focus now is more on building my new home; creating new roots and a lifestyle that will keep richness in my life whilst rooting me more in a single place.

It’s a disconcerting feeling, which is quite beautiful at the same time…

What’s Next?

So, the big take-away from this lesson was… I’m changing, the world is changing, there are fears connected with that and that’s probably not something that will ever stop. You do know what they say about that though, don’t you? Don’t fight what you can’t change, baby… yeeeeaaahhh! 😉

That being said, I do also very much like to explore the little things in life that keep us grounded in all that change. That is also why I was happy to see that the next chapter is going to be all about rituals.

Although I don’t feel I have lots of rituals in life, the ones I do have feel pretty significant. Therefore, let’s see what the next chapter brings. Only good things, I hope!