It has to be! I don’t want to jinx it, but it really feels like most of my excuses are no longer valid. And I have had many excuses over the years, believe me. A recent one was that the reason I was stuck was that I was writing in English. Well, 15 years in the US, how valid can that be? I mean, I work in English, I speak English at home, I even dream in English. So that is that.

Still, I convinced myself and others that I needed to do that. It should have been obvious that writing in Spanish was a waste of time. For one, I had to translate it to English along the way, to make sure I had something to send my advisor, who doesn’t speak Spanish…

To be honest, I was really stuck and confused about what I was doing, so taking a break from English for few days was refreshing. I could to express my ideas clearly and it felt good to use something I was fairly good at doing (writing in Spanish).

The risk with excuses is that you may find out that they hide something bigger. I mean, what if writing in Spanish was still a struggle? What you don’t use tends to get rusty. That is a fact of life. Well, after so many years, my Spanish was very pompous, full of extra words and expressions that, as you can imagine, do not work well when translated to English. English is straight forward. Full stop.

What I learned in the process is that it was an excuse, and a bad one, as most of them are. It was self-doubt cornering me. After a year working hard I thought I should know what I wanted to say… There comes shame again, my dear friend.

Writing is a roller coaster. Last week I was in despair. This week I am happy, but I cannot help but wonder if this blog is just another excuse to avoid writing…