This might be the worst thing I've ever written

This might very well be the worst thing I will ever publish. I’ve looked at that first line over and over again. Day in and day out. I guess we should go back a bit first.

Four years ago, I decided to take a massive leap and move to the other side of the world. More on that later. What’s important now is what that meant. 

I’d spent my entire adult life in Philadelphia on the east coast of the United States. I went to university there, twice. I got married there. I got divorced there. I lived 15 years with the love of my life there. Who was not, just to be clear, my ex-husband, but in fact, a beagle. I did all the things that we do in life there. And after all those years of a life lived, I wanted out. 

I often tell the story of how I came to Lithuania, before Christmas 2021, to explore my options. See how you like it when it’s cold and dark, I thought. If you like it then, all will be good. And I did. Life felt easy in Vilnius. I walked the streets with an air of freedom I hadn’t felt in a long time. Making friends was easy, foreign ones of course, and as my six-week trial came to an end a new friend casually asked, “When will you be back?” 

“In six weeks,” I replied, “Won’t be too long.” I went back to the States and in that time I sold 90% of my things, including my house, and moved to Lithuania – the day Putin invaded Ukraine. 

I was in a new world, or more commonly known to everyone else that can actually find it on a map, Vilnius. I went out and found a job – the first job I’d ever had that I was proud to tell people about. I was working in tech, I was traveling, bouncing around Europe on quick weekend holidays and I was curating a new life exactly how I wanted it to be. No one knew me, I could be whoever I wanted. Sadly, or maybe satisfyingly, I was still basically the same. But, I’d like to think, with a bit more humility and open-mindedness. The jury is still out on that one.  

And life moved along… It’s been over four years now. I bought a flat, I worked on my language skills, I even welcomed a new dog into my life, a black lab whose entire vibe is just happy to be here. I even started running again and after two and a half years of consistent running, ran my second marathon on a dream vacation to South Africa. 

Which leads to why I’m publishing the worst thing I have ever written. 

I planned to spend another week traveling in Southern Africa after the marathon. Going on safari and seeing as much of the beauty of a part of the world that had always been so far in my mind. 

Just four days after the race, as I hiked down from God’s Window, a vista looking out from South Africa to Mozambique, I received a call that I, like 1,000 other people at my company, had lost their jobs. My entire team, in fact, run out by AI. 

As is my nature, I couldn’t keep the news in, and shared it with a small troupe of travelers that I had befriended over the last few days. A 60-something runner and his wife from Vancouver, Canada. A young finance guy visiting from his latest post in New Albany, Ohio. The commiserated with me as we viewed Blyde River Canyon and the falls at Bourke's Luck Potholes. I decided that it was ok – things would work out. I booked a last minute sunrise safari for the following morning and as the sun rose over the bush I watched hippos swim in a nearby pool while I sipped my morning cup of tea.

My travels continued, heading north to Zimbabwe. I got soaked at Victoria Falls and later took an impromptu bike ride across the border to Zambia where I watched a man bungee jump from Victoria Falls Bridge. After feigning off a man trying to sell me defunct Zambian currency, my brother called to let me know that my mom had died. A heart attack. 

I sat on a worn, wooden beach lounger on my hotel room balcony, watching warthogs and vervet monkeys dash across the well-kept lawn below as I told the previous week’s entire story to my best friend, a million miles away. Surreal was the only word I could use to describe how I felt. No job, no mother. Alone at a luxury African lodge meets-conference center, watching the sun set across the golf course as helicopters whirred over the Zambezi. 

There’s an old trope that in times of stress or trauma, you have the opportunity to make real, life-changing decisions. I’d always wanted to move to Europe, but maybe with the death of my deranged, wonderful dog, I felt the final push to go. I’d always wanted to be a writer. And professionally, I have been for quite some time. But always writing for others. Perhaps these traumatic events were also pushing to do something I knew in my heart that I had always wanted to do.

Yet, there’s the fear. The fear of cringe. How many tone-deaf songs, dreadful poems, and terrible paintings have I paid witness to? Gen Z is frozen by the fear of being cringe – as am I . While my internal monologue tells me confidently that I have something of merit to say, the entire rest of my being is pretty sure it’s shit. So what to do now? 

Put it out there anyway. So what if it’s shit. There’s more to come. I’m pathetically an open book. Let’s see what comes out.