Thinking Out Loud (FIRST BLOG POST IN ENGLISH)

For the last few years, I´ve been waiting for the moment when I "get better" to be able to write in English. But recently, I was thinking, where exactly is "the better enough" point? What if getting better means, first of all, giving myself permission to attempt it, even though my English is not that great? Maybe it never will be.

This is definitely the case.

As much as I´d love to say that learning languages is easy for me, it´s actually totally opposite. It´s very hard work. I make mistakes. I am not perfect in grammar. I translate from Czech, therefore sometimes my writing in English might not sound very clear.

But I decided to stop being ashamed of these things and I am putting my writing on the internet.

All your likes, comments, criticism which can help me to learn a language that is not my mother language, will be appreciated.

Thank you.

Thinking out loud (Myslím nahlas - Czech translation is available here)

Usually I write about possitive things, but today´s topic is a little different. There has been a thought occupying my mind for quite a while. My head can´t get rid of it, so I decided to give this thought a closer look.

The first time the thought came to my mind was in January, when David Bowie passed away. Lately it related to the death of the famous architect Zaha Hadid. I can´t even remember when exactly I first heard about these two people, but I believe it was in my late teens. I respected them, but never really looked closely into their personalities or their works.

What I mean is that a few months ago, I would not have been able to tell you much about David Bowie. I never listened to his music, I never bought any of his records and never attended any of his concerts. I was able to recognize some of his music, but frankly, most of his songs came to me unconciously, while I was listening to a radio in my car, for example. Many times I did not even realized it was David Bowie singing and what is even more, I never really thought about what exactly he was singing about. What I find really strange is the fact that even though I did not know Bowie and did not show any particular interest in him, at the very same moment, I somehow knew that he was a very special figure. He helped to shape this world in many admirable ways. He influenced not just music, but fashion and politics as well. Without paying much attention, I respected him and I admired what he was trying to accomplish.

When I heard about Zaha Hadid a few days before, I had the same feelings. I did not know much about her except for the cable car in Innsbruck that she created.  I had visited it a couple of years ago, but besides that, I never really paid much attention to her work.  I did not go to her exhibitions and I have no books on her architecture. Yet, as with David Bowie, she somehow was important to me and I respected all that she had accomplished.

I have been thinking about my  feelings lately, because everytime someone important passes away, whom I knew and respected, I always tell myself something like "hmmm" and then there is a lot of chaos on my mind. It´s not just chaos, I also feel certain kind of regret like I missed something very important and now, I can´t get it back. As soon as all the news about the death of specific person starts coming up to the media, I feel an urge to dig really deep into their lives and find out everything what I missed before. So I play their songs on YouTube, I watch all the possible interviews I can find, I download the music, I go to the library to borrow books about them, I read everything what is possible to find on them till it´s 1.30 am, I am extremely exhausted and my eyes are bloody red. I don´t know why, but in that moment, I try to catch up with everything I missed before and I find my eyes open in shock about how many things I did not have a clue about.

I know that writing this post, I seem like an ignorant. But believe me, it´s not like that. I am well aware that there are so many interesting things in our lives that one simply can´t absorb everything. What I want to say is, I am just sad about the fact that certain people I am able to appreciate well later than I should. But as I look around, I can see I am not the only one with this feeling. So many people are given awards and memorials after they are gone.

I am not proud of this characteristics in myself and I am not sure there is anything I can do about it.  I wish there was.