A Leap in the Dark

(If you don’t like long stories – skip to the bottom. I won’t mind)

———————————–

Once upon a time there was a little girl. She liked to dream and imagine things and read hundreds and hundreds of books and ask pretentious questions and be in charge. She loved to write stories and imagine adventures in her head and generally preferred being in her thinking place than outside, where things tended to get a bit scary and insist on changing all the time, usually just as she thought she’d got the hang of this being alive business.

And then one day, out of no-where, and even though she REALLY didn’t want to, she Grew Up.

She still dreamed and still imagined and asked even more pretentious questions but as a Grown-Up was told she needed to be ‘responsible’ and ‘realistic’ and ‘practical’ and all of a sudden all her dreams and imaginings seemed very small and insignificant and worthless and certainly not the kind of thing that had any value in the Real World. Instead of having adventures in her head she was told she needed to do things like go to work and make enough money to keep her and the very Handsome Prince she had met in crisps and ice-cream and chocolate digestives.

She was confused. Everyone kept asking her what she was going to do with her life but she didn’t know. All the other Grown-Ups seemed to have decided and were busy getting on with life and having Real Careers and being everything confident, secure, competent Grown-Ups should be. And since their Real Careers seemed to mean they got to do fun stuff like buying houses and cars and going on holiday, and since she also wanted to feel confident and secure and competent she decided she’d give this being a Grown-Up business a go. Even though she didn’t feel the slighest bit confident, she hoped if she ran fast enough in the right direction then eventually she’d end up where everyone else was.

But try as she might things kept getting in the way. First she got ill, which was a real pain in the ass, and although it meant she could sit around in PJ’s all day which had always been in her top 5 requirements for her dream job, it wasn’t quite what she had in mind given that it was accompanied by generally feeling like crap. So getting better became top of her priority list, along with filling her long days with learning about all kind of random stuff to pass the time and distract her from the disgruntled beavers nibbling at her joints.

But she still hadn’t decided. You know, on the ‘Real Career’.

One day she got better (eventually – man alive that took a long time. Cities rose and fell in the time it took her to teach her feet to work one in front of the other. Physiotherapy definitely not for her if she couldn’t even get her own body to work properly – at least that’s one to strike off the list). Well, better enough. She managed to get a job that just happened to involve reading stories all day and teaching other children how to dream and imagine stuff all for themselves. And it was pretty cool. For a while. Not quite a Real Career (given the lack of future prospects and, well, decent pay), but it made do while the girl continued to try and figure it all out.

Then something magical happened. Her and the Handsome Prince got married and grew a whole new person. A tiny, needy, beautiful little person. And just like that things got Very Real Indeed. All of a sudden the girl found herself doing probably the most Grown-Up job you can do that, despite all pre-conceptions, just left her feeling even less confident and secure and competent than she had before. And though she loved this little person more than she ever knew it was possible to love something and not have your heart pop out of your chest and make a big mess on the floor, she also found it very, very hard and scary and found she wanted to go back to that thinking place in her head and do some imagining to recover.

So she started a blog. And wrote, and thought, and dreamt, and told jokes which made her feel better. A LOT better. And what made her feel even better still was that the people that read her random ramblings seemed to quite enjoy them, and wanted her to write more. She got the opportunity to write for a brand new Toy Review Site, and then to help out as Deputy Editor, which she kind of loved, and made lots of lovely new friends.

And sneakily, without her even realising it, the old dreams and yearnings to write came creeping back. She was that little girl again, sat surrounded by books thinking that words and pictures in your head were just about the best thing about being alive (although, she now also thought that tiny people covered in porridge and giving her big kisses were equally brilliant which shows that change is sometimes a good thing).

Oh but wait! I missed a bit out! (which coincidently is JUST the kind of thing the girl would do, given her inability to do anything in a straight line, especially walking).

Amidst her year of changing nappies, and being puked on, and getting her boobs out and traipsing up and down the stairs ten zillion times every evening, the age-old question has reared it’s ugly head. All her fellow mummy friends had gone back to work and here it was haunting her once again. What on earth was she was going to do with her life? (apart from pop out babies, which apart from the poo and the no-sleep thing was kinda fun). In an effort to make a decision once and for all, and make some money and FINALLY get herself that Real Career and the house and the car and all the rest, she signed up to do a degree in Earth Sciences. She wasn’t really sure why. She liked nature and stuff and thought, although it would be hard, would also be nice and safe. She’d probably get her essays back with big gratifying red ticks. And eventually a nice, safe job that would pay reasonably well and make her feel like a Proper Grown-Up at last.

But.

It wasn’t writing. And writing was pretty much all she wanted to do these days. The more and more she thought about it, the less sure she felt about the whole caboodle and the day all her study materials arrived she cried.

So here she was. Two paths laid out before her. On one side was a lovely safe path, with interesting things to study and A+s within her grasp, and a nice job at the end of it all.

It looked kind of dull.

On the other side was a big yawning cliff. It was a very long way down and held lots of opportunities for failure and disappointment and generally making a fool of herself. But it made her heart do a little skip with excitement when she thought about. And somewhere in the distance, there was a beautiful, alluring, dream-fullfilling place with Writer written in big letters on the sign over the entrance, and people sitting around in the PJs making up stuff and being interesting and arty and neglecting their housework. They didn’t seem to have much money, but damn, were they having fun.

So guess what she did.

She jumped.

She cancelled her place on the Earth Science degree and signed up for this course, which starts in a month and, coupled with some other equally fun writing courses over the next few years, would give her both an Open BA (Hons) Degree AND a Diploma in Literature and Creative Writing . To learn about writing and give her an excuse to write all day under the guise of being a student, and generally give her the opportunity to see if she could make this writing thing stick.

She re-designed her blog as a way of increasing her audience and give her a place to showcase her writing efforts. And for the first time in a VERY long time, she felt truly happy and content. Yes she was scared. Very, very scared. Of failing, of everyone not taking her seriously, of rejection. But it was a good kind of scared. The kind of scared that might come before something really wonderful.

And in celebration of all of this she wrote a very long, convoluted story to tell you all about it.

THE END

———————————–

P.S. You got that the girl is me right? And that I’ve jacked in my Science Degree to follow my dreams of becoming a real life writer? Yes? Good, good. Just checking…

Related posts: