How writing in a foreign language makes me less reluctant to speak about myself.

Matteo De Simone
Aug 28, 2017 · 3 min read

I spent a lot of time before deciding to open this blog. I evaluated all pros and cons, I tested several platforms, I read a massive amount of posts titled “How to write a blog”. I realized the truth only after several months: I was wasting my time because I was scared. I was frightened to “expose my self”, so I’ve begun to procrastinate.

Keep calm and procrastinate.

This blog is about me: it is the story of how and why I decided to be more focused on my everyday life, more thorough on how I spend my time, more watchful about where my major efforts are leading me. And it is about sharing techniques and stratagems that I found out to change. It’s truly personal.

Initially, it was a little bit odd to realize that I was frightened. I have experience in public-speaking (in international events too), I made lectures in front of many students at Univerity. I have my weekly radio show and I haven’t problems to express myself.

It was a dead end problem: I wasn’t able to quit procrastinating.

One day, while I was surfing, I saw that my last English teacher created a profile on Instagram. I have had no contact with him for a long time so my mind started going on memories about our English conversation sessions. I was divorcing at that time and he used to ask also personal stuff. Eric — this is his name — is American and, you know how are they? Direct. He wasn’t interfering or rude, he was definitely friendly but direct and this forced me to reply. Do you think I had problems answering to his questions about thoughts, ideas, and feelings? No!
So I realized which was the key to feel pleased with writing about myself: the language.

So I decided to write my contents in English. It works to me: I discovered that writing in English makes me more confident.
Yes, I know, it is not rational: the probability to blunder is higher than in my native language, explain my thoughts is more complex, blogging becomes an activity extremely time-consuming but… it works! It seems to me like I’m writing about someone else.

I’ll try to write a decent English. I promise.

Obviously, I’ll try to write a correct and clear English. I subscribed to a great tool to avoid common grammar errors and misspellings: Grammarly.
It works in the browser and on mobile so I can verify my posts easily everywhere. I’m confident that to write helps me to write better: practice makes perfects, indeed. In meanwhile, please be merciful!

To summarize, the first trick of this blog is: if you are not comfortable with speaking about your feelings and if you are afraid to be introspective, try to express yourself in a foreign language.

Don’t you speak another language than your mother tongue? It’s time to start studying a new one. Trust me: it will help you in your work and in your life also in unexpected ways.


PS. Eric, my English teacher, has changed his job and now he’s starting a career in coaching. Eric, you’ll be great in that.

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