10 Oct 2015

What do you do with a BA in English,

Or rather Philosophy, if you're not the leading character of Avenue Q. 

I'd apologise for the silence, but I would feel like some sort of reason must be given as to what I have been doing instead of blogging, but quite frankly there has been nothing much really. Or things which have been happening have been personal and I haven't really wanted to share. The problem has been that I have struggled to know quite which way is up due to a lot of different factors, and I haven't really been dealing with myself very well, which has made me strip everything back and not quite start again, but rethink a lot of things. 

Recently I found out that I do now in fact have a degree, and not before time, too. I have finally become a graduate, though my time to walk across the stage in cap and gown is a delight that December will bring, and I can't wait for it. As much as the last four years have presented me with many traumas, I feel glad for the fact that I have finally made it through and the whole thing can have a new level of worth to me. 

Even more recently I ended an argument I had been having with myself and decided that the anxiety I get from the idea of getting behind the wheel of a car doesn't constitute a good reason not to do it, so this morning, more than four years on from my last proper driving lesson, I was driving around London, and somehow managing to not crash the car. Whilst I freely admit I am still anxious about driving and the idea of parallel (why is that word so difficult to spell!?!) parking is still something that sounds monstrous and makes me feel sick, the idea of driving in general is not something which I think of as utterly horrifying and completely beyond me. Which is quite nice, because I used to really enjoy driving..

I know it's not over yet, but this year has been a difficult one. There have been times where I have wondered whether I would finish my degree, whether I would ever live in a place where I would be comfortable and settled, whether I would be able to stay in London after my degree, and even times where I have questioned whether I would be best off just giving up on my dream of writing altogether and submitting myself to something much more manageable, but then I look at the bookcase of notebooks in the corner of my bedroom and wonder if all those ideas and characters and things can really fit back inside my head, let alone in a small box to gather memory dust and become faded. Could I really ever take myself away from something which redefined solitude to a place which was not lonely, but full of whatever I wanted? Would it really be possible for me to put down the notebooks that I have carried with me for so long and pretend that they never mattered? Because that's what giving up on this dream equates to. 

Imaginations don't have an on/off switch. Were there a way to turn them off, I'm not sure that I would turn off mine. It's true that sometimes my mind goes off on such tangents that I wonder how to get it back and all important thoughts seem to believe that they are relieved of duty and disappear into the night, but it's worth being a bit of a dingbat in order to be able to create something... 

I guess, more than anything, I've felt in a bit of a crisis as to what to do next. The last thing I want is to remain stationary and I flatly refuse to do it. It's time for me to figure out what comes next and just jump for it, but there are so many roads to choose. 

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