The audacity to...

Fill in the blank. The audacity to…. what?

What usually comes to my mind is “the audacity of hope” which was the title of Barack Obama’s second book. I remember seeing the title and thinking that it was probably one of the best-coined titles for a book. According to the interwebs, the title came from the quote from the sermon “audacity to hope”. I swear, I wanted to buy and read the book only because of that title.

I did not. And this post is really not about Obama’s memoir, even though it is totally worth writing about, I am sure.

I haven’t blogged, not formally, in a very long time. I even started worrying that I had forgotten how. So, here is my audacity to try again; my audacity to think that there is still something worth talking about; my audacity to hope that someone might still be reading this blog.

I do not have my 2025 Goodreads challenge tracker here, but I can tell you that I am not doing that great. After my underwhelming goal of 35 books in 2024, which I doubled or even tripled by the end of the year, I set 100 as my goal for 2025. And I am failing it. Badly.

Being an adult is a hoax. As a kid, you are told to behave, study well, etc., because one day you become an adult and “can do whatever you want”. Well, that is a big fat lie. Chores, obligations, bills, and debts do not equate to “do whatever you want”. It is the opposite, in fact.

It is like being in school, but with heavier consequences. Like, if you miss a class and get a bad grade, it will not cost you money (well, usually, it will not, unless you have to pay for retaking the course - but it is not the point) or your whole career. It won’t leave you hungry.

But if you skip work, forget to send that report that nobody is going to read, or if you take your lover to a Coldplay concert, you might very well lose your income, and that is way worse than a bad grade for a subject that you won’t even remember in a year or two.

What I am trying to say here is that it is okay to fail at your own Goodreads goal, or have a stack of library books on your nightstand untouched for weeks, or anything else that is giving you anxiety and making you feel less of a reader/blogger/etc.

There, I said it. Now I can go and enjoy my coffee.

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