Let me take the cat out of the bag at the start of this blog post. No one’s life is just ordinary! I repeat this every time I get this question, which I admittedly get a lot. There’s simply no such a thing. And I am ready to hear it all to convince me otherwise. Would love to know how anyone’s journey can be “ordinary” unless you were given a “How to live an ordinary life” guide when you were born and followed every single direction listed there. Even if that were the case, I can almost guarantee your life story would be a bestseller!
The trap many of us fall into is simple – we compare ourselves to others. When we think about writing a memoir, there is almost a knee-jerk reaction to dismiss our life story and call it ordinary, boring, unexciting, and routine as we compare our lives to celebrities or people we know who “achieved a lot” in their lives. Fair point. Maybe your life is anything but what these celebrities or friends have gone through, but why analyse your life through those lenses in the first place?
Take a step back and instead try to answer these two questions: “What experiences have I lived through in my life?” Or “Am I the same person I was twenty years ago?” You would need a pen and paper or get to your laptop and start writing while you are flooded with writing ideas.
The simple act of reflecting on your life over the past two decades can reveal a wealth of change and growth. Even if you feel you haven’t changed much, the detailed recall of your experiences could offer surprising insights into how you’ve evolved. Writing about your life is a profoundly personal and understandably subjective process, as it should be. Everyone has a story hidden in the haystack of memories as long as the person manages to break that invincible barrier between higher expectations and lived experiences.
We tend to be overly critical and diminish or play down our experiences. What we classify as “ordinary” can be extraordinary when viewed from a unique perspective. I am the first to admit that I often fall into that trap. I don’t speak much about the five-year-long PhD journey that turned my life 360 degrees and brought me from Macedonia to Northumberland. I didn’t even attend my graduation ceremony. The other day I was looking up someone on the internet and saw that they have got a PhD, and for a split second, I thought, “What an amazing achievement!” Three seconds later, a wake-up call: I also have a doctorate. The more I think about it, I bet my PhD story is anything than ordinary, but, at that moment, I admittedly forgot of myself as a PhD, which I guess can be a common thing – but for that, another time.
An exercise that helps when we are stuck in the vortex of thinking of our lives as ordinary is thinking about how relatable our experiences are to others. Granted, you may not have been a country’s Prime Minister during wartime, but you may have had an extraordinary battle with Covid that made you think you are never coming back from that hospital alive. And that is a story worthy of talking and writing about. Because guess what? Thousands of people who went through the Covid wards would be able to relate to your account, and many would find your battle with time as an inspiration for what they might be going through in life. Your memoir storyline doesn’t need to be extraordinary. Thinking about how relatable it can be to others is something that can free you up from thinking narrowly about your life.
This leads me to another extremely important topic which is intent. If your starting position was that you’ve lived an ordinary life, then the fact that you’ve come this far in the article would suggest that your inner voice doesn’t necessarily agree with you; otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. Memoir writing is an effective communication of our need to be heard and have our experiences shared. Everyone is different, so there is different reasoning for each person.
Some people write for personal growth or to preserve their legacy and some because they’ve found out that writing is their passion, and for others writing their memoir can be a way to address and heal their traumas. Whatever the intention, writing your memoir will help you get to know yourself better and understand your personal life through some unique perspectives. And then, as words come out, you will start to realise things about yourself which you probably never looked at from such a perspective. This is when you realise the potential in writing and telling your story. Not only that, but we then tend to connect the dots, and one story leads to another and another, and we see a pattern emerging that can signal what your memoir is about and its underlying theme.
Another helpful exercise you could employ if you feel stuck is to start small by writing short stories or vignettes about exciting periods in your life. After a while, you will see patterns and connections emerging that can serve as the basis of your memoir.
To recap, there’s no such thing as an ordinary life. Every single one of us on this planet has experienced life differently. When talking about writing a memoir, we have a slightly distorted image of what a memoir represents, thanks to the mass media and the big publishing houses. Start small and try to write what comes first to your mind about various aspects of your life. As you embark on a self-discovery journey, you will be surprised at what can come from it.
Need more help in unpacking your life story? I am happy to hear you out and help you understand your life story’s power.
Scribbling away with Emily Basset by my side,
Andreja
Loved reading Andreja’s piece? Why not buy him a coffee. It’s a great way to say cheers.
Photo by Aaron Burden (Unsplash)
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