About Me — Hora
A survivor of physical / emotional / cognitive trauma
If I were to write about who I was before the COVID era, I would probably ramble for pages and still not find a term to summarize it.
Last year helped me define it: I became a long-term COVID survivor.
Because going through long COVID or through any other chronic disease feels like being a survivor every day!
I wrote a very tiny introduction here, but there is much more left to say.
Long covid meant daily cognitive impairments, brain fog, burning head, extreme fatigue, depression, mental burnout, and developing other chronic conditions as a response to the infection.
It was a turning point in my life as it challenged everything I knew about myself. It changed my fears, my perceptions, my priorities, and my plans for the future. Better said, it opened the door for building a new philosophy of life (did I even have one before?), which I plan to structure here on medium.
Life is after all just a collection of short stories with unexpected twists. We might as well start writing our own.
During my periods of grief, I had the greatest moments of reflection.
Grief always pushed me to answer difficult questions:
Why it happened, why it made me feel in a particular way, why it bothered me,
if I could avoid it in the future or prepare in advance to deal with the consequences.
I started to believe that if we do not struggle to learn something from our sufferings, then it just means that all the pain was in vain.
If it happens once, it is by chance. But if it happens again and the consequences feel the same, it might as well mean that we did not learn anything from the previous experience.
I have joined medium hoping that writing will help me clear my mind and put my insights/thoughts into a more clear perspective.
What to expect on this writing journey
I do not have a formal education as a writer, so I plan to document my writing journey/progress. I am here not only to share my own insights, but also to learn and grow.
I will write about:
- my new philosophy of life (& the healing journey)
- the search for meaning/purpose in any aspect of life
- works of fiction/non-fiction (definitely, with a twist)
If any of these topics pique your interest, please join me on this journey.
I am happy to make new friends, discover different perspectives, and improve my own.
Technicalities
Profile picture:
“Peasant from Muscel” — my favorite painting (by Nicolae Grigorescu)
I love how this girl expresses humbleness through her eyes but at the same time shows confidence through her posture. A mixture I would like to master.
Name:
Hora is a pen name.
I was fighting all alone with those horrible pains for what felt like an eternity, and it feels so intimate now to share bits of the experience.
I feel so naked when I describe my deepest vulnerabilities, mostly because I have not finished dealing with those emotions yet. There will be a time when I will leave this behind and probably find the confidence to write under my real name.
Profession:
I am a Business Analyst with an Economics and Engineering background.
I am working in a big corporation now, a fact that I plan to change in the near future.
Interests:
Contemporary history, philosophy, analytics (data)
Favorite Book of all times:
“God Was Born in Exile” (by Horia Vintila) — the book was granted the Prix Goncourt
Hobbies:
I am fond of extreme sports, and extreme hiking routes, and I am dreaming to run my first half marathon one day.
Location:
Romania: mother of Dracula & home of the heaviest building in the world, that shrinks each year because of its own weight :))
