About Me — Robert Averies
Channelling my inner ikigai.
“Our ikigai is different for all of us, but one thing we have in common is that we are all searching for meaning.”
That is an extract from Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, written by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles. I listened to the audiobook version of this several times last year, when the pandemic first hit.
It taught me a lot of things about Japanese culture, mindfulness and wellbeing. But the overarching takeaway was this:
I must find my ikigai — the activity where I reach a creative flow. The activity that motivates me to get out of bed on a bad day.
It didn’t take long to work out what my ikigai was.
Since I was a young boy, I have loved writing stuff down — from football magazines to Harry Potter spinoffs. I used to read bits of new chapters out at the end of English class some Fridays. This was during infant/primary school, by the way.
More recently, my writing journey has taken me to new and exciting spaces. Over the last few years, I have developed my own short story series for adults that are learning English. This has been inspired by six years of teaching abroad. From 2013 to 2019 I lived and worked in Girona (Spain), Zhongshan (China), Yakutsk (Sakha Republic, Russia), and Rome (Italy).
And that is the second reason why I started writing on Medium. My goal is to transfer some of the lessons I have learned, from the people I have met, to other readers on this platform. The understanding that comes from living in new places—interacting, listening, observing — this is how I developed an appreciation for how, and why, people live their lives in the ways that they do.
But I hope to broaden my horizons, too. My interests are many, and while I have plenty of ideas, it is exciting to not know some of the things I will be writing about just yet.
Let’s call this part of my writing journey. I am looking forward to the ride.
Before I go, feel free to check out my first couple of pieces. If you are new to Medium too, let me know what you have started writing about. It would be great to hear from you.
