Here it is, my first official guest blog post. Although I am credited as the writer, this post really was a collaborative effort with expat+Harem's creator, Anastasia Ashman. Without her guidance and encouragement (+ a top-notch editing) the post wouldn't have made it.

I am supposed to read through the finished article but still cannot; instead I want to crawl my skin and bury my head into dirt (with my butt showing up, obviously on purpose). Gosh, some of the episodes are still raw. Guest-blogging have been a bit hard but altogether exciting experience–until now. I never expected anxiety and doubt, even for a short period of time, to arrive after the posting. During drafting, I was only trying to put the stories out; the only doubt was what episode to delete or add. After drafting, I just waited for time to pass by.

Well, the anxiety comes from sharing my private stories with total strangers, even though I secretly wanted to do so for a long time. Sometimes we need to dig into our memories and share stories that we believe are "done." More often than not they aren't (that's the true reason why we wanted to label them as "done" in the first place). In addition, after they are out in the public area (the web), those stories do not belong to us any more.

If a story is deep and well told, it will start to have a life of its own and inspire people beyond the reach of its original author. Eventually through the audiences' reactions, the author will start to see different point of views and be able to reconstruct his past (and future) in a different way–hopefully in an exciting way.

I hope I will one day be able to reach that level. Right now, I did what I could do now, and all the judgment is up to the readers.

Today's lesson: write first, worry later. You'll be glad you did it.