I Almost Gave Up
Well, my blog now has its own website after almost 5 years of writing on Blogger, I want to share with you the value of determination and hopefully you can learn from my experience of perseverance and the value of keeping a good mindset. A great Korean film called Oldboy has a quote written on the wall in a scene: “Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone”
The reason why I included that quote is that no matter who bad things can get, I can assure you that you can do things to improve your situation and over time, things can get better.
Anyway, this story starts in February 2020, when I was writing every so often on my blog and spent my reading week in Lisbon, a place I had wanted to visit for a very long time. A few weeks later, I had to leave my university accommodation as the COVID19 pandemic had started and the world had changed completely. I was able to keep myself busy during this time writing on the blog and even did an online TEFL course.
However, I eventually ran out of things to do that kept me entertained, I got bored of playing on my Switch and watching random stuff on Netflix in my room. I remember watching Midnight Express and I felt like the experience of Billy Hayes was very similar to my own.
Eventually I was able to travel again for a month, however the feeling that things were going to go back to normal was short-lived, as autumn came, so did a stricter lockdown, which ensured that 2020 would be a dreadful year. Eventually I lost time to write on my blog to studying and ran out of ideas to write about. As 2021 came I didn’t think I’d be able to travel for a very long time but, after a few months of monotony I was able to go on another backpacking trip. Once I came back from Scotland I felt like didn’t want to travel again due to how inconvenient it became to travel abroad. Because of this I really felt uninspired to write on my blog and couldn’t bring myself to write about my experiences again.
However, as part of my degree, I was required to do an exchange on my next semester and honestly no part of me wanted to. The stress from the pandemic made me feel 20 years older and I came up with every excuse in my head about why it would not be a great experience. Every single day, I was feeling like my life was heading towards impending doom as come January, I would be living in a country I had always wanted to visit and never been to and deep down I just wanted to stay in Scotland. I wasted so much of my energy not wanting to go, yet I had wanted to go to Mexico for years. This put me in a miserable mindset and I had trouble sleeping, there was no backing out as it was something I was required to do.
Within 2 weeks before my flight, I was feeling very stressed as my accommodation hadn’t been sorted until literally 3 days before. This feeling of stress gave me strange dreams and I tried to escape this by playing Minecraft on my Switch. However, once my accommodation was sorted out, I felt much more relieved and decided to write about my time in Macedonia on my blog.
In the last 2 days before my flight, I was trying to change my mindset to positivity and I had attended my friend’s birthday party as one last goodbye to my friends. The next day I was feeling hungover and consumed by anxiety and I visited my grandparents with my dad and step-mum. That night I barely slept, in the morning I just had a mentality of screw it and headed off to the airport.
The first few days in Mexico City were overwhelming, I struggled with speaking Spanish the whole time, however thanks to some new friends I had made, I had a great time over the past few months. During evenings after classes, I decided to go back to my blog and write about my travels. It was then I knew that Blogger wasn’t a good platform, Now I’ve decided to make my own website as it’s a much better way to grow a blog.
Thank you for reading the introductory post for my blog, I hope this new beginning will be a great new chapter for World of Wilson. Expect to find many more posts about my travels and language learning here.