The sad road diner.

In the 70ties and early 80ties it might have been a heaving busy stop and road diner on what could then have been the main road south towards Brindisi and Bari, before the new parallel autostrada was built to suit the new times and big fast cars to cruise faster from Northern Europe and down to the sun in southern Italy and Greece.

Now it was just a sad road diner at a marginalised road.

A road used mainly by the locals and perhaps sometimes people like us. Holiday drivers, who used the peripheral roads to get to obscure destinations. No stress and no pressure to be anywhere at a certain time. You see more that way, on the secondary roads, I think. And you can easily stop when you see anything interesting. Not to mention all the money you save on autostrada tolls. Instead you can spend that on spaghetti, pizzas and refreshments of any kind.

That was exactly what we intended to do now. We'd been on the road for some time and needed a little rest and spend some of the saved coins to buy a nice cup of hot coffee.

We'd seen a sign for gas and fork, spoon and cup on the side of the road. 500 meters. The indicated to the right, a look in the rear mirrors, a light adjustment of the stirring wheel to the right, reduce speed. A filling station straight ahead. Orientation, localise parking spot, stirring wheel, break, stop.

No car was at the marginalised filling station. Looked quite abandoned actually. Next to that marginalised filling station, this peripheral little “sad” cafe.

One car was parked outside. It was a small wooden shed. Not to bad to look at, a bit similar to a road workers lunch-shed in Denmark.

On the inside, the door and windows were reinforced by a metal grid. We walked to the door and pushed it open.

3 pairs of eyes stalked us from the moment the door opened and for about 3 or 4 seconds. One man was sitting pushing coins into a slot machine, he froze into a halt while staring at us. He was the first to withdraw the gloom and return his attention to the machine.

Across from the entrance, behind the desk stood the owner or manager. He was probably my own age. A tall man with semi long hair starting to grow very thin at the front and top. He was wearing jeans and a yellowish faded polo shirt that was a bit out of shape and, like myself, his tommy was sticking out a bit. He probably had been one of the more hansom and popular guys around, in his younger days.

“Buon giorno”. It was me in my retarded Italian, trying to gain enough self-confidence to also order a coffee. Tai tai had vanished to visit the toilet.

There was some sort of greeting back and also another sentence which I didn't comprehend. I just acted like I did and walked up to the desk and ordered “dua caffee latte, prego”.

Not really sure if he rolled his eyes or not, but he started to work the Italian coffee magic they do at those huge steaming metal machines they have installed behind counters in every bar and cafe.

Side track.

In Italy, the coffee is absolutely great everywhere. It isn't like in Northern Europe or the US, where you get good coffee at “real café's”, but at road stops and diners you get the worst evaporated solid tar from an old coffeemaker.

Back on track. 

At the back of the cafe, behind another desk, a tall woman. In the glass enclosure at that desk some different sandwiches, hotdogs and burgers. After convincingly ordering coffee, I leisurely strode to the back to take a look at the food on offer. I wasn't really hungry, however, being on holiday, you never know what might tempt you?

The woman's face changed slightly, from disengaged to hopeful and her eyes caught a tiny light and over her lips a tense shivering, a hopeful smile arose as I came to take a look at her food?

She was tall and slender, shoulder long dark hair and wearing jeans and a nice feminine top. It was obvious that she tried to maintain and express some sort of class, even life wasn't as good as it once could have been, in the late 80ties at a then busy and well frequented road diner. 

I decided not to be hungry. The displayed food didn't tempt me at all and as I walked back to the coffee desk I could sense a huge disappointment in the woman's face.

Our coffees was finished and put on the desk for us. She walked up towards the coffee desk and had a short word exchange with her husband. Of corse I didn't understand what it was about. He said some short sentence back at her, threw the tea towel over the coffee machine and walked off in direction of the corner, where a television was playing some old black and white Italian heimat movie.

Now she took position at the coffee machine and secretly stalking us having our coffee.

She was also about my age, however, she had managed to keep better in shape than me, and the man, who must be her husband. She was quite attractive and had definitely been a stunner in her younger days. He had probably won her heart by promising her the world and moon by the prospects of a life running a busy and prosperous road side cafe, back then when that road was the road that led to everyones dreams.

I can't tell if we were the first completely strangers in that road diner for a long, long time. Not only strangers, but foreign strangers as well. It was like that thought of being a foreign stranger entering a road cafe in a foreign country was playing on her mind.

The other customer was still pulling the handle of the slot machine, we were drinking our coffee and talking silently about the next stage of our trip. The probably husband was watching TV in the corner, but she was still standing there in her own thoughts, secretly observing us like she was trying to imagine where we'd come from and where we were heading, and like she in a way wanted to try to be us. Two strangers in a diner in a foreign country, who eventually would just walk out of there, out of that sad road diner and head somewhere else. Or was her thoughts maybe even worse, maybe she thought to her self that we had somewhere else to go, somewhere that was not frozen in time, with her stuck in it.

As we finished our coffee's and left the diner, I could feel her eyes following us until we closed the door.

It was a sad feeling that followed me all the way to the car.

One second.

"A sunbeam strikes a dark haired woman in a ultra tight white dress just as she strips herself naked next to one of the pillars supporting the bridge as you drive through it."

You can get an app for your smart phone called "One Second a Day". That app will allow you to capture one second video snippet and assemble these snippets into a longer video. 

What if you want to do a "one second a day" as a writing exercise or short story?

It will take a lot longer, and it wouldn't be realtime playing it back or reading it as with the video option.

In the video option one month will at the most be 31 seconds. How long would it take explaining one second in words?

Anyway and back and forth with words. I'm going to try to explain some of my one second revelations, thoughts or wonderings that has occurred during this summer trip to Italy.

The first one second blink that is etched into my memory -and will be for a very long time- was cinematic surreal. It was one of those moments you maybe dream in one of your most secret fantasies or that you could come up with if you are a real good writer. For sure, this one thing isn't what you think will ever happen to you, but suddenly it is playing out in front of your very own eyes like it was in slow-motion.

This first one second happened on our trip from the mountains in the Abruzzi region of Italy, to the town of Vieste at the Adriatic Sea in the Puglia region.

However, the second I remember goes like this:

"A sunbeam strikes a dark haired woman in a ultra tight white dress just as she strips herself naked by the side of one of the pillars supporting the bridge as we pass under it."

Fortunately, no accident happened. There could have, I guess, if I'd decided to glance some more and take my eyes of the road for longer than that second. My tai tai (wife) didn't see it, however she saw all that followed, which in it self would have been some other worthy seconds as well.

To explain the real circumstances, I need to rewind the tape a couple of minutes.

We were on this road going south along the east coast of Italy.

Nothing much had been happening, the road was quiet and only one truck in front of us and our car. Further ahead, a bridge crossing over the road and I am looking for an opportunity to overtake the truck. The road ahead is free so I got out r to start driving past that truck. Ahead the bridge in the shimmering sun. A silhouette of a truck parked at the right side under it and two silhouettes of humans crossing the road to the other side, under that bridge. Distorted and blurred by the immense heat from the road like a superior mirage in the dessert.

In my mind I saw a man and a woman. Then the male stopped to turn back to the truck on the side. The female figure continued across and started raising her arms above her head.

Our car was now so close that I could see the figure clearly. And I could see her pulling her dress up above her head. First I didn't believe my eyes. Thought I were daydreaming. I blinked a couple of times and opened my eyes again, still she was dragging the dress further and further above her head and I could now see her underpants and naked lower back. Soon her thick dark hair got free from the tight dress above her head and as her arms came down with the white dress in one hand, her hair fell back down on her suntanned back which was beaming in the sun beam. 

I got my eyes back on the road. Couldn't really believe what I've just seen. Wasn't sure I'd actually seen it, however I wasn't particularly tired and couldn't have had some sort of hallucination. Shortly after on the left side of the road, I saw a big sun umbrella with two ladies sitting looking out, and then I knew what it was all about. I asked Catriona if she'd seen anything, she hadn't and as I described what I'd seen she didn't believe it. Then suddenly, on the right side of the road, in a parking spot, stood this woman and made very clear copulating gestures towards the oncoming traffic and us.

Silence for a bit in our car, then laughter. 

As we turned off the road and toward our new destination, one last lady was offering "happy endings" at the road side.

Pre holiday post. "Der Himmel über the Czech Republic".

Looking out of the window from my seat onboard Lufthansa 0731, it had been a blood red sky to the east for the most of the 11 hour flight from Hong Kong as we were mostly flying a bit ahead the rising sun.

We are now over the Czech Republic and will arrive in the Bavarian Capitol Munich in less than 30 minutes. A cramped trip is has been. We've been at the far back end of the plane where the plane is narrower, means not much space for huge Northern Europeans like me, less my tai tai.

Some sleep, some music and a German movie about "Seitensprunge", some sport and news and now at the end a film about how to be bears in different environments.

A big cotton like layer of clouds are spread out beyond the plane as we are closing in on the Munich airport. I can't wait to get of this plane. And on to another one that will bring us to the Italian Capitol.

Once broken through the clouds, the fine ordered and cultivated land of Bavaria covers the entire ground. Dotted around in the landscape the perfect clean villages and hamlets of southern Germany. 

From above it all looks like the fake model landscape of a toy railway construction. 

Time past now and we are on the last leg of the journey to Rome. Like the old Italian proverb: all roads leads to Rome, so does ours this summer.

Rome. Just the sound of it. Rome. Sounds like exotic and erotic and sophisticated. Cultural. 

Why have I never been to Rome or Italy before?

I studied history of art and have done Roman baroque and all that important Italian stuff, but never got to go there and then I fell in love in Spain (in two ways literally) and have always returned there, to Spain.

However, now I'm ready for the Italian adventure.

TGITF

Today was a good day because it was Sunday.

Sorry to say it, but the last three days has been pretty awesome altogether. 

Not only was it weekend, which's pretty cool in it self. No, it has been really cracking because the past Friday was the TGITF!

What that means? 

Well, that's a better variation of the well known TGIF. Not only a better, it is "THE BEST" of variations and is the "Thank God It's THAT Friday", and "THAT Friday" means the last Friday before we go on a 7 week break and summer vacation. 

And so it also means that yesterday, Saturday, was that day where I could sit at a cafe on the wee town square with my coffee and a freaky smile on my face for hours on end, just watching people go about their chores and daily life, while I'm just mentally cruising and adjusting the switch onto holiday mode, and doing absolute nothing, except drinking coffee

Everything is in some-kind of slow motion. Certainly my brainwaves are Just...

winding...

down...

trying...

not...

to...

be...

thinking...

too...

much...

too...

fast.

And definitely nothing related to work. 

Tomorrow is yet another Monday. BUT I'M NOT GOING TO WORK. 

Not tomorrow, not the following Monday either.  In fact not for the next 7 bloody Monday's at all. Or is it 8?

But what am I going to do then?

Travelling, and you can follow some of it here and some on www.traktorinhongkong.blogspot.com.

Being invisible for one day?

If I could be invisible for a day, nobody would see me and I could probably get away with a whole bunch of different things.

But what would I do?

Let me reflect on it for a short time, and while I am doing that, I want you to do likewise. Think what would YOU do if you were invisible for one day?

Yes, I would probably at some stage go into the female changing room at a swimming pool and has a seat for a little time. On the other hand, on what grounds would I do so?

Strictly speaking, it is not as easy let alone as obvious to get the head around what I would do. I thought of the idea that I could attempt to get onto a plane and goes off somewhere exotic and interesting. However, what will I gain from that, I mean, for one day only?

One day is nothing. If for example, I had an urge to fly to Europe or to the United States from where I live, even more than half of a day or night would have past by the time I get there. Then I'll need to return again before the day I was invisible would have past, not to suddenly turn visible in some embarrassing situation. 

Anyway, I will need to head back without even having the time to get a burger in a greasy diner joint - if it were to be the US - or a freshly baked homemade pizza in some little trattoria in a wee side street to the Trevi fountain in the eternal of Rome. 

So what would I gain from that invisible experiment?

Just say I was an Italian and invisible, I could get that pizza because I wouldn't need to travel and even so have enough time to visit the swimming pool and changing room. However, would I want to get that pizza. No, if I am an Italian, why on earth should I preferred to get pizza even if I was invisible and imaginable could get anything I might want? 

I guess rather not.

Next question of corse. Would an invisible person even be capable of ordering any pizza or any food in that regard? 

Just imagine you being the pizza baker or the waiter at that trattoria. You are there on your job. A couple of tables are full with locals and at other tables, some random tourists found their way inside and are enjoying the pizzas, paste a and wine.

The invisible person steps in - do I have the need to say 'unseen'?- and sits at an empty table. How could an invisible person call for the waiter to order? There would probably be some confusion in the room if suddenly a voice out of nowhere would burst through all the sociable chitty chat. 

Nothing I would guess. The locals would think it's just the visitors and the visitors..? You get it.

Then imagine the invisible having enough of it all and steps up to the desk and the waiter to inquire about getting served? 

"Please could I have a prosciutto and Parma ham pizza with extra garlic and Gorgonzola, please?"

Yes, imagine that. What would you do? You are at work. Everything is normal. Folk in your trattoria chatting, eating pizza and pasta, maybe having some wine and the atmosphere is not bad at all and you are standing there in your own thoughts, waiting for the next sign and order from the guests you can see at the tables around the room. Suddenly you start hearing a voice. A voice out of nowhere apparently, except close. A voice demanding prosciutto and Parma ham pizza with extra garlic and Gorgonzola, please? 

Maybe you did have some wine last evening? Maybe -just as it is Italy- you'd had quite some wine yesterday, and some already today just the same -it is Italy isn't it- and maybe you have been thinking for quite a long time, that maybe you need to cut back on all that booze a bit, and then you experience this voice from nowhere, pondering in your head "prosciutto and Parma ham pizza with extra garlic and Gorgonzola, please?"

We'll leave this imaginary story for the moment and moves back to the main story again. We were on this flight, this long haul flight from  where I live and to Europe or the U.S. and I am, as you recall, invisible.

Should it be a full flight, that many of them is now, I would be bound to stand up through and through the flight, outbound as inbound. Standing and always beware not to be in someone's way, which, as frequent travelers would recognise, is pretty dammed difficult not to be on a flight, when standing around in the aisles.

 Should there be any empty seats, well, I could sit there I suppose, but I wouldn't be able to use the onboard entertainment system, as that would be too spooky if that suddenly would blast out light and sound without anyone sitting tinkering with it.

So, no. I would not slip into any plane to go anyplace if I was invisible for one day.

In fact, I still do not really know what I would do.

What about you?

This is the future because:

I know this is the future because I am older as I used to be.

No seriously. I mean yes, seriously, I am older and I have lived in the past. But I do not do that anymore. Now, I live in the opposite of the past, and that is the future. 

I know it is the future because:

In the past there were many conflicts and wars and people were suffering and being mistreated and misplaced because they were different and didn't fit in.

I know we are in the future, because we have fought the war to end all wars and from now there is just going to be peace and harmony and all cultures will respects and tolerate each other and live peacefully side by side. Humanity has united us all as mindful human beings, dedicated to solve the problems we have caused to our selves and all other creatures with whom we share our planet.

I know we are in the future because -at least - our soldiers doesn't even need to go fight for real anymore. Our weapons has become so extremely modern and efficient that they can fly, sail or drive all on their own but still find their way directly into the bedroom or toilet of the enemy leader, we do not like.

In the past there were diseases in our rich part of the world we couldn't cure and many people died. But there were many many more diseases in the poor countries we couldn't deal with either, but at least we had some ground to test out some medications to see if they worked or not, and if they did, they were suddenly way to expensive to use in those countries.

I know that we are in the future because all them old viruses or bacterial diseases from the past has been eradicated and instead we have got a bunch of new and unknown futuristic diseases called "lifestyle" diseases to die from. These are not so cheap to get as the old ones, and as the government doesn't mean it is so necessary to spend too much money on health care anymore, it must mean the general health is fine.

The poor countries? In the past there were poor countries and under developed countries and they kept being that way because rich countries were exploiting them and oppressing them for various reasons, mostly something with gold, diamonds and oil. If they stood up against the oppression and made demands, the rich countries used their overwhelming power - military power - to fight the uprising back for then to oppress a bit more. Maybe not directly, but then by putting some kind of puppet government in place that would do just as they were told and payed to do.

I know we are in the future because the gap between rich and poor has... Ehm, I mean in the past there was a gab between the haves and the have nots, and that gap has been... Ehm, how to put it?

Well, I know we are in the future because now there is much less people who own so much more then the rest 99 percent of us all together. In fact that makes it only 1 percent that is so very rich.

That must mean progress.

I know we are in the future because not many are forced to walk for miles to get to school or work anymore. Now we all can have a car and instead of walking for hours, we can now sit in traffic jams, in our cars and relax and enjoy that we finally could afford to get that car so we could uphold  the standard of how it should be to be a future human being. 

I know we are in the future because we do not need spend time collecting and preparing what we have to eat. We don't even need to know what it is we eat. We just to to the supermarket and pick some of the nice - and cheap - coloured packages from the shelves and popping them into this machine, and one minute later comes out a steaming hot dish, that taste exactly the same as the one from yesterday from the green package. 

I know we are in the future because: Everything is just so much better...

Message to the future.

Dear future me: 

Please stay true to what I believe in and what I have followed as an example almost all of my life and looks after my loved ones, humans and animals alike.

Keep on challenging me. Get the most out of the time I have got to spend everyday. Make some, if not all, of all those ideas I've kept putting out for the future. Now I've got the time so let them become true. Paint those pictures, write those stories and keep doing those push ups and sit ups as long as I'm able to do it. Stay fit and happy.

Take long runs, bicycle trips and walks in the surroundings of the place I live live with my loved ones and promise me to keep using the many nice cookery books I bought for you.

Please do not say enough is enough and continue to adapt what's new and what makes sense or changes life for good. Go along with new ideas provided that I am still true to myself. I understand that circumstances can change and what I think and sustains now, can naturally change, so can I and just I am still true to my future self, even in a changed environment.

From here I promise to do what I can to make life lovable for me and the one and only I love and will share my future life with.

As long as I can keep getting ideas I will commit enough to writing, so if I somehow start having trouble keeping those small grey ones running wild, there could be a good archive of ideas to continue developing.

Please try not to get me bored.

Story of my life.

When they tell my story it will always start with: 

"Wasn't that the guy who spoke German with an American accent and with a German dialect in English. In Spanish he didn't understand a thing anyway, and in Danish? Nobody out side of that little country would be capable of pinpointing the origin of his own dialect". 

Ohh boy, that is in some respects a long and random beginning, isn't it, Amy- eh?  

Sort of. If you ask me, it depends, who'll be telling my story though, doesn't it?

.

Thinking about it like that, it both excites and repulses me and I feel it is upsetting to reflect on it and make an effort to imagine how all the various people I have interacted with through every aspect of my life, might start their version of my story. 

I could turn it around and think how I would start their story? Maybe that could give me some hints of these mutual relationships.

Somehow I like that idea more. It will be more authentic and not just based on pure speculations.

Maybe, to put it in another way, that is what I am going to do here, to write these beginnings as a series, with different seasons.

In the first place, the easiest one and the one closest by, which is the story of me and my wife and that would go a little like this: 

"This is probably one of the largest cliche's under the sun, however, I would say that the first time I saw the woman who was meant to become my wife, it was one of those moments where you felt that it was love at first sight!"

Now I could add that this is how I hope my story will always start, when told by all my ex girlfriends... 

Be a fish.

If I could breathe underwater, I'd be a fish.

Or maybe a mermaid. Also it could be as banal as this: I'm a scuba diver. 

As a matter of fact, that is something I've never really tried, even I really would enjoy that. At least that is something I think I would.

One of my favourite tv programs from my childhood was the French marine biologist Jacques Cousteau and his exploration of the seven seas and their secrets. My brother and I sat there on the floor glued to the television and imagined we were those courageous folks in their tight wetsuits, jumping backwards into the big blue to explore the life under the ocean surface. We licked it up like a cat does fresh cream. 

Sometimes we also licked up cream. That's was when the program was on, on a Saturday afternoon and our parents wanted to watch with us. Then they sometimes had bought some nice cream cakes called "Napoleons Cakes" and there was one for each one of us. Yummy.

Wait, maybe this could have gone in another direction. I'll just rewind the whole thing and try again.

If I could breathe under water I'd would never swim close to any big city and I would turn around and swim in the other direction when the water starts to be kind of brown and starts to taste like ....

If I could breathe under water I'd hope not to be a shark and end up in pain lying at the bottom of the sea with my fins cut off, waiting for death to release me from the pain and disappointment.

Or, what about being a majestic blue marlin and find myself on the wrong end of Robson Greens fishing line, while he is pulling me closer and closer to the boat, screaming and yelling " yes, yes, this is why I've come here to catch this monster fish", and then gain my 15 minutes of fame while I'm slowly dying for running cameras while this television celebrity is bragging to the cameras about how great an experience it was pulling me up from the sea. For what? Entertainment?  I can't see the fun in that.

A hairy tale.

My hair is long now. 

At Easter 2011, I went on holiday to Yunnan province in China with two friends. That was the beginning to a lot of change.

It was the last year of my below fifties and a part of the change had already happened. My wife and I had agreed to be host parents for a young German boy, who had chosen to come to Hong Kong to finish his MYP education at the school where we work. 

For many years we had been used to be our self as we'd long chosen not to get any children, suddenly we had a 16 year young man living with us.

That was a good experience. Our little family worked well. Therefore I decided to travel with him and another friend and colleague to China for the Easter break, so he could acquire experience of the real China before returning to Europe and Germany. Hong Kong is China, however it is China light.

The choice fell on Yunnan province in the south-eastern corner of that huge country. 

We flew into the main city of the province called Kunming. The city isn't that well known, although it was crucial for allied pilots in World War II, to the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains over which they flew military transport aircraft from India to China to resupply the Chinese war effort of Chiang Kai-shek and the units of the United States Army Air Forces based in China. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hump)

Of that heritage, there is very little evidence in the city and if it wasn't for a famous hostel called "The Hump, in the old city centre, I wouldn't have had any idea. Now it is like many other Chinese cities. Bustling, dynamic and with a rich cultural life. 

From there we travelled by rail to the ancient city of Dali, to spend some days enjoying fresh air, hiking and biking. Later we headed further northeast wards to the even more famous city of Lijiang and the tiger leaping gorge canyon. But that is not what this post is about.

In several ways that trip became that young fellows gate to manhood, and maybe also my own gate to the the fifties and maybe the beginning of a crisis of the middle age.

I don't really know about that yet. I don't think that was omnipresent and not sure if it is now, even I'm in the so called midlife.

So what was it that changed at that trip that made me make a point of growing my hair long?

Probably this will be the most disappointing ending to a story that anyone  have ever experienced. However this is just how it happened.

It was on the plane back from Kunming to Hong Kong. After the light meal they served on the plane, we all got one of them famous Chinese fortune cookies. A wee sweet crispy thing, like a wafer or so, and inside it a little paper slip with a sentence or statement that could mean the world to you.

In my little cookie the paper slip said: " Maybe you should try another hairstyle".

With the kind of hair I have, I'm afraid there isn't that many options. I can either go without any hair, have short hair or carry long hair. Once I've tried having no hair by shaving my head. That made me look rather spooky, like one of them neo not mentionable.

At that moment I didn't really think about my hair and had it plain normal conservative short. Professional short. Or what ever. It was just so normal. Reading that little slip from the fortune cookie in that plane did something to me. I made the decision to grow my hair long to see what would happen.

Immediately there wasn't any change. Before that trip I started running and exercising a lot and lost a lot of all the pounds I had to much of anyway. That worked and I carried on doing that. In the summer my wife and I visited Japan for the first time, that was something new and had been a lifelong dream . 

My hair kept growing. Some colleagues started mentioning it. I did nothing. Except sometimes when some one asked my why I let my hair grow, I answered: "because I can". Shame on me, as some of those who asked was men younger than myself, who had to shave what they had left of hair.

When my wife went to the hairdresser in town -normally I came to pick her up and we could have a date at some of the fancy restaurants in the neighbourhood- I came a bit earlier and the hairdresser offered to tidy it just a little bit, so it could keep growing and look maintained.

Changes began to happen, at the start of 2012, I got offered a nice promotion and also offered a chance to visit the United States the very first time. Maybe the fortune cookie in some way spark something. At least I can choose to believe that.

Now we are here in 2016, my hair still long but now pulled back in a nice ponytail and it has in some way become my trademark and I still like it. 

More important though, I think it is valuable and important that we can demonstrate to a true diversity to our students and make the statement that it is fine to be and look different yet still be integrated, accepted and respected, even in a professional school environment.

The world need more diversity and tolerance. We cannot all be the same.

No doubt about that.

 

When I doubt it has always something to do with myself and my abilities to get something done or to accomplish an idea. Maybe that is the pure function of doubt, to hold people back and not to achieve all of of their ideas. And maybe that isn't just me who feel that way.

I doubted that I could find motivation and inspiration to keep this writing challenge going. Maybe I still do. 

There is always something that gets in the way. And then again I doubt that I am persistent enough to follow through with it. 

Doubt is a dream killer. 

I have always dreamt about writing a children's book, but I've not done anything about it because I doubt that I can do it. 

Writing has always interested me, yet I feel it very difficult. I doubt I can concentrate that long. I doubt I have the patience and maybe the ideas. And I really doubt that I have the talent for it, so I doubt I ever get started as I am afraid to get that lack of talent confirmed and to fail. And then I fail because I am afraid of failing.

Doubt is riding along with me sitting on one of the shoulders, whispering into my ear: "you can't do that. Not got the talent. No one will be interested in your thoughts, better leave it be".

Thinking about it now, I doubt that I ever doubted that someone else would be able to do or achieve things. That's the odd thing about us humans. We never know what to do ourselves, but always know what other people should or should not do. No doubt about that.

Who taught us to doubt on our own abilities? If we were taught at all? Can the answer be found in what Freud called the "superego"?

"The superego consists of two systems: The conscience and the ideal self. The conscience can punish the ego through causing feelings of guilt. For example, if the ego gives in to the id's demands, the superego may make the person feel bad through guilt.

The ideal self (or ego-ideal) is an imaginary picture of how you ought to be, and represents career aspirations, how to treat other people, and how to behave as a member of society."

Or is it rather the normal "ego" battle with the "ID".

"If the ego fails in its attempt to use the reality principle, and anxiety is experienced, unconscious defence mechanisms are employed, to help ward off unpleasant feelings (i.e. anxiety) or make good things feel better for the individual.

The ego engages in secondary process thinking, which is rational, realistic, and orientated towards problem solving. If a plan of action does not work, then it is thought through again until a solution is found. This is know as reality testing, and enables the person to control their impulses and demonstrate self-control, via mastery of the ego."

One or another, I feel the answer lies somehow in between these two definitions. 

Doubt is an unconscious defence mechanism, it is reality testing and self control and it is the conscience and the ideal self.

Can be that it sometimes protect us, but for sure And it lead to a lot of failing or not at all trying, no doubt about that.

Source:

McLeod, S. A. (2016). Id, Ego and Superego. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/psyche.html