We learn a lot of things in life and some of the things we learn we can discard along the way—maybe we learnt the wrong lesson, maybe we adopted a technique or two we no longer need, either way, one of the things I’ve learnt along the way that has sticked, is that life is one complicated game. Take three steps forward one minute, three back the next. There are a million cards and you have to keep a watch on which of those you chose to play, at the same time as keeping a watch on some of the other players who just want to play you like a card. And it all boils down to one simple fact—everyone wants the dice in their hands. You can get swept up in moving around the board, so much so that you can lose things along the way, learn to mistrust when you’re cheated and make a few wrong terms because they seemed like the easy or ‘fun’ option at the time. One thing I have always had, is writing. It doesn’t matter if the dice is in my hands or somebody else’s, or if I’m taking four steps back or being dealt the right hand of cards. I’ve always been a writer. I think it’s really important to have an outlet and that’s what writing began as for me, my outlet, my escape, my comfort. Somewhere along the way I realised that I could help other people through writing, I could give a different perspective, or mirror a situation that made them not feel so alone in theirs that is similar. While reaching into myself, I could reach out to others. Between when I left high school and started the course I was acting like a gypsy, just wandering from job to job, I dabbled in a teacher’s aid course that I didn’t get round to completing and, believe it or not, I even tried to join up to the army reserves and I thank God that I didn’t go through with that one. Then someone said to me that I should do what makes me happy. Funny how I never really thought of it like that—it was all about paying the bills and the rent on time, savings accounts etc, etc. I guess I saw writing as some what of a pipe dream and I think I wasn’t exactly alone in that viewpoint. But I signed up to the course and I’ve never done anything that has given me such a deep sense of self satisfaction or been apart of anything that I feel I really belong in. The course has given me so much in terms of skills and getting a little of my stuff out there and it is really validating to be around other writers. On the other side of the coin I have met a brilliant group of friends who I am now very close with and who push me to achieve the best of my ability and take interest in my work. I want to do the BA next year and maybe pursue a career in journalism, but my key interest is in fiction writing and I hope to be able to publish the novel I’ve been working on for quite some time and maybe even the other ideas for novels that are spinning around my head constantly. Overall, I think it’s very important to have an understanding of yourself and of where you want to go and the thing about having a dream is that there’s always going to be someone who will jam the word ‘pipe’ in front ‘dream’. See I don’t see like a game anymore, well sometimes but they are my darker moments, I like to look at it more like a car. You can either take a back seat ride or you can jump up front and get behind the wheel.
