Back to the old routine..!?

That’s what everyone was saying when we were en route to England from Belgium, back to work, back to school, back to the old routine, but for me there was no old routine. Prior to Belgium I had been doing supply work for Sure Start for three days, which started a mere two days after emerging from my last exam. Thus leaving behind the surreal revision routine, to irregular employment in various settings, there was no old routine, there was a total absence of routine all together! The few days I had after my exams went by with no clear structure, I did what I did. Ferrying of to Belgium did no favours at all, the simple act of going on holiday is conducted in order to escape the “mundanity” of everyday routine, but going on holiday to attend a wedding? Well, that just diminishes any last trace of routine left in your body.

However Belgium did give me the chance to stop and “take stock of things” so to speak. After the wedding I was able to pause everything and contemplate about the deeper things in life, specifically what I want to do now that I’m not a student. A couple of years ago the immediate answer would have been “I want to become an educational psychologist”, a couple of months ago it would have been “I want to start my own business selling handmade bags and purses”, however more recently I don’t know what I want to do at all. I don’t want to study anymore so you’re not going to see me with a succession of letters after my name, running around in schools, administering weird tests with even weirder acronyms in order to find out exactly what is “wrong” with a certain child. The idea of starting my own creative business has also lost its appeal, it just doesn’t seem like it’s worth anything. I mean a doctor saves lives, a policeman? A nurse? Ditto, I don’t even need to mention what a teacher does for you to remember fond memories of your school years. But what does making purses do?? It makes someone look better?? It just seems so shallow in comparison. After some thorough and continuous (and often confusing) soul searching I seem to be returning to my first love…writing. As far back as my memory takes me I’ve loved writing, I still have stories I wrote in primary school of faraway places with weird people and talking animals. At high school I was one of the best in English, However at college that love began to falter slightly and at uni it was extinguished, whilst Psychology took over. The attraction to writing is that it actually does affect people’s lives; one could write an article that has an astounding effect on even one reader’s life, isn’t that better than making someone looks good for a brief moment of time?

One of the magazines I’ve been thinking of submitting articles to is the revival (a magazine aimed at Muslim youth), I had been pondering over it for a while, thinking about how I could actually have a positive impact on someone’s life through writing for such a magazine, but I never really did anything about it. Then I went to the website again only to see there was an added jobs section, I slight hope flickered through me but I thought it’s probably local jobs to get the youths of the streets, I clicked and the first vacancy I see is for writers/journalists required for the magazine and corresponding blog. It was at that moment that I knew I wanted to write for a magazine, or dare I say become a journalist. I saw it as a kind of “sign” and although I haven’t replied to the vacancy yet I will definitely do so. I have a love hate relationship with youth work but for those " i so love this job" moments i'm going to stick with it for now. As for setting up my own business I think that’s going to be something on the side, the remotely far flung side…

(oh yeh Belgium blog is coming up asap, as well as some entertaining stories from my new job…)