Life part one.

Two years ago, I was asked the question, “why are you on this earth?” Without skipping a beat, my response was, “to write.”
If you asked me that question today, I would stare at you blankly, then make some quip about becoming a trophy wife. The truth is, I have no idea what I’m doing, and I don’t know how to make my life start happening. There’s a quote in the Bell Jar which goes as follows: “Only I wasn’t steering anything, not even myself. I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties to my hotel and back to work like a numb trolleybus.” Suffice to say, this is how I feel right now. I’m literally bumping from place to place to fill my days; otherwise I have time to think, and that’s not good.
All things considered, I have good prospects. I’m educated, relatively hardworking, and can string a sentence together with eloquent enthusiasm. I’ve lived abroad, travelled, and had many opportunities to experience life with vigor that most people wouldn’t have had.
The one thing that has always stood out about me, and I consider it my main redeeming quality, is my ability with language. All through Primary School, I sat the year above’s exams for language and literature (if you can call Biff, Chip and Kipper literature that is). I have been in the Advanced classes for French for as long as I’ve studied it, including my sixth year when I was allowed to continue studying it for Advanced Higher even when the school had stopped teaching it. In all three Academies I went to, I was in the top set for English. Don’t get me wrong here, I may have been good at language, but I was miserable at the “smart” subjects. I failed chemistry, physics and maths, was mediocre at biology, and the only other subject in which I excelled was administration. In essence, I was bred to write.
As a child, I was never without a book. I used to have at least four books on the go at once; usually I would leave them in different rooms and as my day went on and I moved around the house for various reasons, I would pick up a different book and continue. Mealtime scoldings were for reading at the table. While most parents brag about their childs amazing handling of the lego brick, my parents seemed chuffed to bits with my skill; if they turned to any page of my book, told me the page number and one word from the page, I was able to finish the sentence. Crazy, huh?
Before I was ten years old, I had attempted to write numerous novels. At high school, I discovered my passion for poetry and started writing and reading as much as possible to learn more.
With this in tow, when the teachers started piling on the pressure to select our University courses, I didn’t spend long looking at the prospectus. I knew there were only two subjects for me; English Literature, and French. By this point, I had decided that I wanted to be an interpreter, and to write as a hobby. This didn’t last long - I disliked University, in particular the way that French was taught. It didn’t appeal to me, and I quickly dropped the subject in lieu of Film and Visual Culture. At this point, I didn’t have a longterm plan for how I would utilize that degree, but I wanted to study something fun. I still wasn’t enjoying University and needed something lightweight to keep me there. I started writing for the University newspaper, gaining a good response from topical, opinion based articles. Some resulted in me being skulked on Facebook to receive praise from randoms who enjoyed my writing. Bolstered by the fact that people seemed to enjoy what I loved to do made me seriously consider journalism as a career path. This, in turn, didn’t last long. Meeting and becoming friends with a journalist opened my eyes to the fact that it wasn’t what I wanted. I just wanted to write topical columns, a la Sex in the City.

What have I done with my Masters degree? Well, I framed it, obviously, but no, I’m not using it. I still work at the same place, doing the same job. I’ve been through a couple of really bad years, so my writing has suffered. There’s something similar to writers block where you have so many emotions going around that you can be genuinely afraid of writing as you don’t know what will come out. I didn’t write anything for about two years; not even a poem. I want to get that passion back, the drive to do something with what I’ve been given. I don’t want to bump from home to work and back numbly...