Sharon About seven years ago I crafted a new section for the previous version of this website, a section called Sharon’s Seedlings.
It was to be the home of a huge collection of articles I had been creating and publishing on my website over the span of many years – ever since I first started writing articles for this website, back in 2008. (Yes, I have been doing this work for a looooong time 🙂 )
Prior to the appearance of the Sharon’s Seedlings section my writings were collected under the common section name Blog. But as time passed it had become more and more clear to me that I am always ‘sowing seeds’ with my words (both written and spoken), seeds that have the potential to turn into seedlings if they are welcomed into fertile ground.
Thus, Sharon’s Seedlings was born: a new name for the collection of ‘seeds’ that I sow with passion, trusting they will find fertile ground whenever, wherever and in whomever they are needed most.
Today, as I am crafting a brand new version of this website, I had a ’tough’ decision to make. I had to decide what to do with all the Seedlings that I have written and published in the past 17 years. You see, the thing is: all the Seedlings I have written prior to this post you are reading now, have been written in Dutch, my native language. But Dutch will no longer be the language of the Seedlings section of this website.
I have always offered my services in three languages: Dutch, English and Italian. Dutch is my native language, I am fluent in Italian (near native level) and English is the language I oftentimes hear and speak more hours a day than I hear and speak Dutch. The people who resonate with my work and work with me are located literally all over the world and switching between Dutch, English and Italian is simply part of my daily existence. If I have to, I can even switch language mid sentence, no problem whatsoever. But that’s me, that’s how my system works. That’s not how most people’s systems work. And using different languages in different sections of the website (which I have done for many years) is no longer a practice I wish to continue.
So… what to do with the Dutch Seedlings?
Being the one-woman-show that I am, I do not have time to translate all my former Seedlings into English. I’d need multiple months off if I wanted to do that, for they are many and quite a number of them are really long articles. Could translation software help me out? Absolutely not. I am a sworn and experienced translator myself and know for a fact that there simply is no software that is able to correctly translate the Seedlings – with their multiple layers of meaning and particular use of language – without doing a lot of damage and basically ‘destroying’ the Seedlings.
Today, I have decided that I will soon be migrating all the Seedlings written in Dutch to a safe place elsewhere, where they can rest for a while until I decide what their next cycle of life will look like. I may rewrite some of them in English, chances are (parts of) some of them will be used as ‘ingredients’ or building blocks for new writings yet to come, in English, and I am dabbling with the idea of curating a collection of Dutch Seedlings for publication, perhaps as a book, for my Dutch clients and readers. But all of that has to wait, for now. First, this website has to become what I have envisioned – which wil surely keep me busy for weeks to come.
Once this website has the look, feel and content I have envisioned, I’ll commune with my Dutch Seedlings and will figure out how, when and where to repurpose them. Until then, I’ll let them enjoy some rest and peaceful quiet, which I feel is well deserved after many years of doing their important work and fulfilling their meaningful mission by reaching many readers. May they rest and just quietly be what they are, for now – until their new life begins. 🙂
