Friday 28 November 2008

Ever since I can remember, I've created scenarios in my head to pass the time, rather than to act on my instincts and do. A few days ago, I came to the conclusion that I, although I never set out to be one, am a writer.

When I was 14 years old, I sat on a hard-backed chair across from a woman in her mid-40s who was there to talk to me about what I would become, once school ended.

"A singer," I replied, believing that my saying that was one of several steps to becoming a pop star.

I read interviews in teen magazines, religiously. I had my own group of friends who would take it in turns to be the interviewer to the others in a band. They always said it's what they'd always wanted to be, and through that sheer destiny-stroke-determination (and drugs) it happened for them. Other foreshadowing included singing in front of mirrors with a hairbrush and their parents being quoted as saying they could sing before they could talk.

I personally think they just went ahead and ripped off ABBA with the last part.

"A-ha," she scribbled something down. "Yes, but what do you want to do when you leave?"

I thought she was out of her mind. If All Saints had heard the very same things - whether they went to a performing arts school, or not - then I, too, would someday be at number 1.

I laughed and repeated myself, I wanted to run from the illuminous yellow bookshelves coated in dust because no one used the library. I wanted to go back to History. I fucking hated History. "Easy, I'm going to go to college for performing arts." Naive, though I was, I miss the blind confidence of youth.

"And what if you don't get accepted?" she told me, "you have to think about this long and hard."

As far as I was concerned, I had. And, from what I now know about the career phase that followed this one, I might've been right.

So I'm standing at the other end of this, nine years later; unemployed and overweight. A recovered depressive with no idea what she wants to do with her life, and without any kind of impossible dream. Over the last eight years, I've written.

I realized today at the event of a faulty keyboard, I don't know what to do with myself that isn't this.