Dream Deferred

The first month of 2017 is already coming to an end but (no surprises here) I haven’t blogged yet. I’m hoping January isn’t a precursor to the rest of the year as it’s been somewhat turbulent, and well laid out plans have been sidelined. Yet at the same time this eventful month still seems to have passed me by.

I turned thirty and spent the early part of January in Iceland. Seeing the northern lights was a dream come true though the trip itself had more ups and downs than an elevator. I came back after a very long break, which had extended from Christmas, to work my last 7 days in a job I’d resigned from in December. At 8am last Monday I was preparing to work my last 5 days and walk into a life of part-time work – leaving me with more time to focus on making a career of my creative endeavours. But sometimes the universe has other plans and at 8am the next day I had decided to take a surprise job offer from a former employer.

Let’s take the story back to November. I was seeing successes with my music and feeling greatly inspired by the strides I’d been making with my writing. What I wasn’t feeling at all inspired by was my 9-5. Things came to a head as Winter snuck in, and early one Saturday morning in December I lay awake thinking about how to rectify the unhappiness in my life. I came to the decision that I was going to leave my job. Not only that, I was going to leave my industry altogether. Yes earning and saving money for personal security is important but so is waking up in the morning and looking forward to challenges ahead, gearing up to put the work in and feeling that what you’re doing every day means something. I realised that the things I felt that way about came outside of my working life so I needed to be doing more on a regular basis.

I handed in my notice that very next week and begun putting plans in place to secure an income part-time while I would be working on my craft. I was fully prepared for it all, right up until that final week of my notice period. But, suddenly, here was this beautiful wrecking ball coming to ruin my plans offering, instead, familiarity, a steady income and benefits. I asked for time to process this and was thankfully allowed 48 hours. In that time I did an awful lot of thinking.

I always make decisions in the morning when my mind is clearest, and when I woke up the next day it seemed clear to me that I should take the job. As well as being a place I’d always felt was home (rare for any job) I considered that I’d been offered a fixed term contract doing a job I knew. It gave me another 12 months to save and better plan and prepare for living the artist’s life I ultimately want to live.

So, in this next 12 months I can continue to develop my writing; I can compete in writing competitions to build my name; I can work on my projects as I have been doing but this time I know that I will be making that giant leap to making it my life rather than my hobby. The dream has not been dismissed rather it’s been deferred.