Getting Real

The Beach in Dundrum

I’ve long considered myself an ‘ideas person.’ I make lists and hatch plans at least every other day, but it’s not always big things. Sometimes it’s small. A lot of the time it’s maybe silly stuff. I once made a list of super long walks to go on, for example. Like Bangor to Belfast, and Belfast to Lisburn, and who even knows where from there? The world? Maybe.

Or, uh… maybe not.

I’m coming to terms with the fact that a lot of my ideas won’t pan out. Even the ones I embark on rarely go to plan, but that can be okay. Crazy misadventures are how memories are made. But also… being real? There’s honestly a lot to be said for staying wrapped in a blanket and drinking a cuppa tea. I know, I know. I sound so old and boring, but fuck it, let’s go for full honesty: life is hard, often exhausting, and so very expensive. You have to find joy in the little things. I know I’m not alone in learning that during our collective two years spent inside.

You know who didn’t really learn that, and I love her for it? My cousin.

In a lot of ways, my cousin is like me but turned up to eleven. She has more wacky ideas, more adventures, and by extension, more mishaps. Sometimes she invites me on her wild road trips and unplanned hikes. (Get in loser, we’re getting LOST!) Sometimes it’s not remotely practical to say yes to driving all the way to Galway at a moment’s notice, but sometimes… sometimes I do say yes.

“Let’s go to Dundrum,” she said to me recently. And I went, thinking all the while, “What the fuck is in Dundrum?”

Turns out, sand dunes. Lots and lots of sand dunes, in which we’d get lost and I’d get injured and, at several points, legitimately fear for my life as my dyspraxic ass tried to scale almost vertical slope after almost vertical slope as the ground shifted under my feet. It probably would have made an excellent, if ridiculous, YouTube video, if capturing the event wasn’t an extra level of stress on top of experiencing it first-hand––which it so would have been.

I love watching such videos. Sometimes I daydream about making them. Yes, they’d look great… assuming I did them right. But doing them right is actual legit hard work, and here we are back at my point about things being exhausting.

I’m not fifteen anymore. I’m not even twenty-five anymore. I can quite happily sit at home and listen to my cousin tell me of her latest near-death experience, or live vicariously through other people’s stunning videography.

So many things I’ve romanticised over the years: people and places and objects and experiences. But how much of it actually matters? That maybe sounds depressing, or defeatist. I’m not saying I’ve stopped wanting to do things. Not at all. But some things? Yes. I actually think that letting go of some dreams is freeing me up for other, better things.

Coming to peace with something isn’t about resignation, it’s about actual peace. Contentment.

Maybe at almost thirty-three, I’m finally learning to chill out.

I guess at this point in the post I should say what I’m actually saying and stop talking around the issue.

So.

I have let go of a dream. Not given up, as such, just realised that I was holding tight to this idea that I’d go back to college. To university. That I’d complete a bachelors degree, and a masters degree, and that I’d finally feel validated in my skills and education and life choices. Lord knows I’ve spoken of this deep desire to return to formal education several times on this blog over several years, but every time I read through syllabuses or yet another online prospectus I’m left with this sense of frustration. Restlessness. Dissatisfaction. This is almost what I want, I would think, but not quite. Over time, that ‘not quite’ mutated into ‘I don’t want this at all.’ Until I’ve finally landed in this place of knowing that I was in love with the idea of studying. Of sitting in visually impressive, grand old buildings, and graduating without a sense of impostor syndrome. Of feeling like I’d finally “fixed” the three years of my life that I so royally fucked up a decade ago.

And people have pointed out to me for almost as long that life doesn’t quite work like that. And I knew that, intellectually, but it didn’t make the feeling go away. Maybe it just had to happen naturally. Gradually. Whatever it was, I’m there now––the other side of the ridge, wondering why the hell I spent so long fantasising about something that was, at the end of the day, exactly that. A fantasy. Life isn’t a movie. Going back to uni wouldn’t be funny montages of goofing around the library at 3am, and drinking so much coffee my eyes pop out of my head, and coming out of all of it with straight A’s, or whatever. I don’t even like coffee.

And when it comes down to it, I don’t really want any of that stuff. Not the reality of it.

My current reality is that I have a husband, and a housemate, and a tiny dog, a job I love, a lot of dear friends, and many opportunities still ahead of me.

So, I’m leaving the sense of regret behind. It was kinda cramping my style, anyway.

What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do

Today I bring you a piece of advice I wish I’d had when I was nineteen. And twenty. And every age for about the next four years after that.

Here it is: find something to do, while you’re figuring stuff out.

And here’s what I mean by that: Experiment. Give things a go. Try. Fail. Try something else.

When you’re young, you feel so much pressure to have a plan. To know what to do with your life. But lives are a lot longer than they used to be. There are way more opportunities. You could get a job in a field that didn’t exist twenty, ten, or even five years ago.

The key to taking all that pressure off is knowing that you don’t need to figure everything out, right at the start. You don’t just have to pick one path. You can, and likely will, do many things.

But it’s not just your path and opportunities that will change, you will change too. Your interests will shift with time. Passions will wax and wane. So don’t hang around waiting for a lightbulb moment in which it becomes clear which one specific thing you must do, because it probably won’t happen. I know if I’d heard that last part ten years ago I’d get very stressed, but it’s actually a good thing.

I worry for people, particularly kids, who are single-minded in the vision they have for their future. Because if you base all of your hopes and dreams on one thing, and put all your energy into it, what happens if that thing doesn’t work out? Or what happens if you reach your dream and you look up for the first time in four years and realise you’re alone and unhappy? That you were so focused on what you were doing, you didn’t even notice that you’d fallen out of love with it in the meantime?

Don’t worry. It happens. More often than you might think, in fact.

Here’s what you don’t do: don’t feel embarrassed. Don’t dig your heels in and stick with it even now, because you’ve come all this way.

It’s not a weakness to quit. It’s not foolish to change your mind. To set new goals. To take a damn break and let yourself breathe.

When you’re ready––and you’ll likely be ready before you even realise it––dust yourself off and try something else.

I know it doesn’t feel like it, but when things don’t work out, it’s not the end of the world. Literally. The earth will still spin. The night will become day will become night will become day etc.

While waiting for inspiration to strike on what to do next, play. Explore. Do that thing you’ve always wanted to do but never had time for, or that you thought was too silly.

Let yourself be silly sometimes. Not everything is life and death.

I say again: experiment.

What I Wrote and Had Published in 2021

Some stats for the calendar year that’s just ended:

Starting with the biggest things first, my debut novel came out, followed by two poetry pamphlets!

Books Read = 28 (Goal was 20)

Blog Posts Published = 19 (Goal was 24)

I met my goal of getting three newsletters out.

Total Words Written = 158,000 (Less than 2020 and 2019, but more than all the years before that.)

Poems Written = 13

Poetry Submissions Sent (some including multiple pieces) = 16

Poems Published = 4 (in three different places)

Short Stories/Pieces of Flash Fiction Written = 3

Short Story/Flash Fiction Submissions Sent = 14

Short Stories Published = 3

And I appeared in one anthology.

If you’re a writer, feel free to comment below to let me know what you achieved these past twelve months! It doesn’t matter if it’s more or less than what anybody else did, all wins are awesome!