Life by the Lake has taught me more than I ever expected. When WordPress showed me that I had written for 100 days in a row, I started reading old blog posts and discovered something unexpected. I wasn’t only reading about a lake. I was reading about my own life.
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When WordPress showed me that I had published blog posts for 100 days in a row, I started looking through some of my older entries.
At first, I thought I would find stories about swimming, cold-water bathing, and mornings by the lake.
Instead, I found traces of my own journey through life.
Two posts a day.
One in Swedish and one in English.
Roughly 200 posts in total.
As I clicked through old statistics and archives, something unexpected happened.
I found an old post from 2022.
Then another.
And another.
Suddenly I was travelling through several years of my own life.
How Many Posts Can You Write About the Same Lake?
What struck me was how many of those posts were about the same place.
The same lake.
The same shoreline.
The same water.
Yet none of them were really the same.
Sometimes I wrote about winter swimming.
Sometimes about longer swims.
Sometimes about washing my hair in the lake.
Sometimes about life itself.
And then it hit me:
How many blog posts can one person write about the same lake?
Apparently, as many as they want.
Because the lake changes.
The light changes.
The seasons change.
And perhaps most importantly of all, the person standing by the water changes too.
Four Things the Lake Taught Me About Life
1. Life by the Lake – Courage in Small Steps
When I read my old posts, I don’t primarily see the swims.
I see mornings when I didn’t want to go.
Days when the sofa looked more inviting than the water.
Moments when I hesitated.
And yet, I went anyway.
Again and again.
Courage rarely appeared as some grand heroic act.
It appeared as one more swim.
One more morning.
One more attempt.
2. Life by the Lake – The Journey Matters More Than the Goal
For a long time, I focused on achieving things.
Becoming a winter swimmer.
Swimming farther.
Reaching goals.
Today I see that those goals were really just signposts.
The thing that changed me wasn’t arriving.
It was continuing.
3. Life by the Lake – Presence Over Performance
I still care about swimming.
But I care less about the number of metres.
I care more about the feeling when I step out of the water.
The calm.
The silence.
The feeling of being fully present.
These days, I long for presence more than achievement.
4. The Lake and Life – An Ordinary Morning Is Not Ordinary
My old posts remind me of something important.
Life is not guaranteed.
That is why I am grateful for mornings.
For the lake.
For the people around me.
For a body that still carries me where I want to go.
For writing.
For all those things that seem ordinary until you realise they are not.
The Lake That Became a Friend
The lake and I have lived through a lot together.
Covid.
War headlines.
Working years.
Time away from work.
Motorhome adventures.
Family life.
Sorrow.
Joy.
Ordinary Tuesdays.
Looking back, I realise I was never really writing about the lake.
I was writing about life.
And perhaps that is why I keep writing.
Not to document the lake.
But to document the life unfolding around it.
Reflections on Life by the Lake
Perhaps that is what writing is really about.
Stopping long enough to notice change while it is happening.
Not only in the world.
But within ourselves.
A Question for You
Is there a place that has followed you through life?
A place that holds more memories than you first realise?
Perhaps a forest.
A road.
A kitchen table.
Or a lake.
Feel free to share in the comments.
Between the Lines
When I read my old posts, I first think they are about swimming.
But between the lines, I find something else.
I find a person trying to understand herself.
A person who returns to the same lake again and again, yet comes home slightly different each time.
I see how I practiced courage without fully realizing it. How I kept going even when life felt heavy. How I searched for stillness when the world became too loud.
The remarkable thing is that the lake never gave me any answers.
It simply gave me the space to find them myself.
Perhaps that is why I keep returning.
Not only to the lake.
But also to writing.
Because both the lake and the written word help me slow down and notice the things that might otherwise disappear in the noise of everyday life.
And when I look back through years of posts, I see something that warms my heart.
I see that I have not become someone else.
I have simply become a little more myself.
AHA – Between the Lines
This post is not really about a lake.
It is about discovering that change is rarely visible while it is happening.
Only when we look back do we realize how far we have come.
The lake did not become just a place to swim.
It became a mirror.
And in that mirror, I now see someone who is less concerned with achievement and more interested in presence.
Someone who still dreams, still doubts from time to time, but who has also learned that life does not need to be perfect to be beautiful.
Perhaps that is why the same lake can inspire hundreds of stories.
Because the water never tells the same story twice.
And neither does life.
Looking back, I realize that what the lake taught me about life was never really about swimming.
Looking back, I realize that Life by the Lake was never really about swimming. It was about courage, gratitude, presence, and learning how to keep showing up for my own life.
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Yesterday has already settled into history. Tomorrow waits somewhere ahead. But right now – this is where life happens.
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