Sunday, August 30, 2015

Day 2 - Where I Realise I'm In Danger Of Forming A Habit

Yes, on day two, not to get over excited but still...

My sons were off at school music camp this weekend so I spent most of last night organising my Pinterest boards.  You heard that right.  And I loved every single minute of it.  All those lovely images, ideas, inspiration.

Write something someone once told you about yourself that you never forgot.

Now this is something I think on often even though, in the twenty plus years since, I've done nothing about it as such.  Without wishing to procrastinate brooding moodily over past events let's just say that ambition was not encouraged in my family, on my mum's side at least.  It is one of the things that when I start talking about it my sons roll their eyes as they hear it all the time - don't let anyone throw crap on your dreams.

Anywhatisshewafflingonabout: this ties in with a quote from my 4th Year English teacher my mother did tell me.  At a parents evening, she had told my mother and dad I had a talent for writing stories.  Now most parents, especially now, would perhaps spur their child on but it had already been decided on advice from the careers office that I would do nursing or become a secretary and that was that.  Despite being an avid reader my mother did not consider writing as a job for the likes of us.

This was not said to me directly though so doesn't count.

What does is what my dad's eldest sister said.  Now my dad's side of the family was very much "get on with it" and I wish I had taken that attitude on board more!  Yet during one of the many gatherings at her house my late aunt spoke as though it was already set that I would one day write books and it was a generally accepted idea amongst the others there that this would happen.

This was a few years after the teacher's comment, when I was languishing in jobs I hated and it took me aback.

But I remembered it.  Remembered so clearly I could tell you where she was standing in her living room when she said it and what she was wearing.

I never have written a book but, in that moment, someone whose opinion I valued, indicated that I might be worth something more.

Strangely enough, soon after that I quit nursing and went off to the US for a year - my first ever act of rebellion against what was expected of me!


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