Is it courageous to simply be?

Ah, Carl Rogers, a man I am completely sick of hearing about over the last seven years of my life. As a former counselling student, I can’t imagine a life before I knew about Carl Rogers, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or bad thing.

Carl Rogers is a man that pioneered the humanistic approach to counselling, which is actually amazing, and is my preferred way of counselling. But Carl Rogers in general, is a name I’m tired of, and yet I’ve said it four times already.

When I loaded up my Facebook memories today, I was greeted with a quote from, said fellow, that I shared from three years ago.

“This process of the good life is not, I’m convinced, a life for the feint-hearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one’s potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life.”

Along with the quote I wrote, “My life feels more like white water rapids than a stream.” And in true former counselling student style, I couldn’t help but reflect on that.

When I think of white water rapids, it brings me the feeling of chaos, smashing into the odd rock and being thrown off course, and generally being somewhere unsafe and not somewhere I want to be. (This may be due to my fear of water, but we’ll go with it.) Feeling that sense on uncertainty again brought back how I felt in 2017 and I compared it to my 2020.

2020 was horrific. It has been for everyone and my 2020 didn’t end as it was meant to. I was supposed to be a fully qualified counsellor and have my baby girl in my arms, but I guess the dingy I was being flung around rapids in hit a really big rock, and I fell out.

Soaked and frightened, I imagine myself clung to the rocks at the side of the rapids, almost being drowned or swept away. But I found the strength to pull myself out, only to stand up and realise there was a peaceful stream running right alongside the rapids. A stream that I’d never seen before.

The peaceful stream has smooth water, and has gorgeous greenery running along each side of it, big trees and pink flowers. It’s quiet and a world away from the rapids, and better still, instead of a dingy, there’s a safe, white boat waiting for me.

The more I’ve thought about the quote, the more I’ve come to think that maybe it’s not so much just being in the stream of life that’s courageous? The stream is a given, we’re all in a stream! It might be a boring stream, it might be rapids, it could be a stream that leads out to a great sea, or maybe some pesky ducks live near it. Is it courageous to simply be?

I suppose good old Carl is right in that it is courageous to get in our boat and sail or roll up our trousers and paddle in our stream, but I guess what I’m saying is, what felt more courageous to me was getting out of my stream and finding a new one.

To stay on my very unsafe dingy and continue hanging on for dear life doesn’t feel courageous to me, the imagery of dragging myself up what feels like a cliff face feels courageous, don’t you think?

Maybe I’m focusing on the stream part of this metaphor too harshly, but it just stood out to me.
What kind of a stream do you see yourself in?

My impromptu new year resolution.

I’ve written a book. It isn’t published yet, but it’s there okay, it’s a thing. An escape with two main characters that make you squirm with happiness. Two secondary characters that you fall in love with, no matter how problematic they may be at times. And a story line that will make you cry both happy and sad tears. I know my story inside out – but now must compare my book to another in order to, I assume, gauge the market for it, and I have no idea where to begin.

The truth is, I love books, I have many taking up space on my bookcase. (And the floor because they won’t fit on the bookcase, but we won’t talk about that.) But am I a person that buys a book and reads it right away? No.
Am I a person that reads a blurb, gets excited, buys it and assumes I will one day read that book? Yes!

I write because I love to write. Because I get scenes playing in my mind like I’m watching a film and I just have to write them down. Once I’ve written one part, another five begin to play out and then I sew them together to make a compete story. I don’t write because I’ve read a thousand books and I feel like I want my own, and I’m not sure if that’s wrong or right.

Maybe it’s more, “well, how can you expect people to read your book if you don’t read a lot?” and honestly, I only want people to read mine if they want to. If one person read it because they wanted to and enjoyed it, that would mean far more to me than one million people reading it just for the sake it.

Either way, to answer the question I’ve been handed, I’m going to have to become a person that reads for the sake of it.

While scanning my bookshelves I’ve come to realise that a lot of my books are outdated. A lot of them no longer reflect my age, and the ones that do, offer me no excitement at all.

I have an entire shelf dedicated to books I loved as a teenager, by Louise Rennison and Karen McCombie, I have a chunk of books of spirituality and mediumship by Sally Morgan and Tony Stockwell, I have the Harry Potter books, and then I have what I’m going to call ‘the rest’.

Reading the blurbs, I’ve come to realise I have (Or used to have.) a very specific taste in stories, and to put it bluntly; someone has to die. ‘… after the catastrophic accident.’ ‘…when she is left widowed…’ ‘her mother died when she was a child…’ I’m not sure I knew just how morbid I was until I looked at my book collection.

One of my favourite books is The Hollow by Jessica Verday. A story where a girl meets a man at her best friend’s funeral and ends up having feelings for him. Another is If I Stay by Gayle Foreman. A story where everyone dies apart from one character, who then has to decide whether she wants to die or ‘stay’. And that’s without mentioning my ultimate favourite book, I Was Here by Gayle Foreman again, a story in which a girl’s best friend dies, and she falls in love with a guitarist her friend knew when she was alive.

… are you seeing the theme here?

My problem is, no one dies in my book, not a single soul. So how can I compare the world I’ve created to another, when I’ve never read a book like mine. (I mean, if I had, then I would question why I even wrote it in the first place, right?)

So now, naturally, I feel out of my depth. I raided my mother’s book collection today while at her house, just to have some ‘grown up’ books to read, hoping that maybe one of them I can use as a comparison to my own.

Over the last few days, I’ve created this image in my mind of the ‘perfect author’. I imagine they spend all their time either writing their own books or reading others. They probably listen to pleasant music, and drink fruit teas and walk their dog in the woods to get inspiration for their beautiful new book.

…and I’m just a twenty eight year old woman, who eats too much chocolate, listens to Fall Out Boy and wants to write stories about badass women and men with tattoos.

But for the rest of 2021, I’m going to add ‘nose-always-in-a-romance-novel’ to that list thanks to my impromptu new year resolution; to read everything I possible can.

What do you think?
Do writers need to read avidly to be good story tellers themselves?

2020 – The year I survived, and thank God I did.

It’s that time of the year when we look back and become reflective about the year we’ve just lived. In some ways this year feels like it has been about ten years rolled into one, and in other ways it feels like the quickest year known to mankind!

For decades to come, 2020 will be remembered by all of us as ‘that terrible year’, and I totally agree with that sentiment; however, for me it’s been a very bittersweet year.

On paper, 2020 is the worst year I’ve lived. And although that’s true, I can actually say that this year has changed my life and I think it might have changed me for the better.

Everything I had was taken away from me at one point or another this year. I feel like my life was stripped back to beyond the basics and I told my therapist multiple times, “I’m not living, I’m just surviving.” and she always reminded me that “That’s enough”.

I would have been happy had life went as it was scripted this year: had the simple wedding we thought we might quickly plan, have our baby, graduate my degree and hopefully be able to slip into my dream job; that would have been amazing. But you know what, even without all that I’m okay, and that feels really weird to say.

The main thing I’m taking from 2020 is how resilient I am. I’ve always been emotionally strong, but that has been put to the test this year. I often describe how I’ve felt this year as a line from a Post Malone song, where he sings, “I’ve had a thousand bad times, so what’s another time to me?”. I’m getting used to picking myself up, dusting myself off and starting again, but this year I fell further than I ever had before, and yet here I am dusting myself off, ready to start again.

I could never really see my path in front of me before this year, but I can see it now. And although it’s still a little foggy and while I still see some obstacles a head, I don’t think they’re a problem. I’m really excited for the future which is something I can honestly say I haven’t felt for a long time.

I can still have that simple wedding we wanted, and I can become a mother again, and I can pursue my next adventure and close the door on the last one; and I’m so excited to experience it all.

2020 has been the year that’s knocked me completely off track and into a different dimension. But I don’t feel like I was knocked somewhere I shouldn’t have been, I feel like I’ve been knocked in the direction I was always meant to be going in.

The Ultimate Rebellion

When I was still studying counselling, our teachers urged us to change our names on Facebook and basically cease to have any online presence whilst working at our placements. “You don’t want your clients to have access to that stuff.” I understand, I really do, but that doesn’t mean I was happy about it.

The thing is, I used to be a shy girl, who suffered with social anxiety, and loved My Chemical Romance; so naturally I found my home online. Over the years I managed to build up a space and an online name I was happy with.

Being online I could be who I wanted to be. I wanted to be confident, liked, comfortable with myself, and not feel as if I needed to hide anything; and online was the only place I could ever do that.

At school I was only ever asked out as a joke, and I’d get Sellotape tangled in my long blonde hair, but online I was this confident girl, who the boys liked, and where my hair would receive compliments; it was wonderful!

My online presence went with me to college and beyond. I’ve had every social media under the sun: MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Piczo, Myyearbook, VampireFreaks (Which was emo catfish city.) and most importantly: Tumblr.

I was unapologetically myself on Tumblr and I gained over 1000 followers this way. I was an active member of my favourite band’s Tumblr community, and a well-known name within that. I used that website as my personal journal; if you followed me, you knew everything, and I loved it.

My Tumblr is still there, and I have often visited my own page over the years. I liked that it was there, a token from the past; then all of a sudden, I was faced with the idea of erasing it along with everything else.

Erasing your online presence to do the job you’ve wanted since you were fourteen; it seems like a no-brainer right? Delete the stuff and continue? And that’s what I did, despite my own happiness.

I painstakingly went through my Tumblr, deleting every incriminating detail.
Any selfie, or photo with friends – deleted.
Email with my name in – disconnected.
My well-known username – changed.
That cheeky GIF I reblogged of someone having sex – deleted, just in case.

Something I poured my teenage years, and early twenty’s life into, had become something that wasn’t me anymore after having to delete a lot of it. It was sentimental to me, but I had no choice at the time.

After years of feeling like a square peg, trying to squeeze into the round hole of being a counsellor, I decided I didn’t want to keep trying to squeeze into something that’s not made for me. Something that made me unhappy in so many more ways than just deleting my social media.

There is still nothing I love more, than writing about my life, sharing too much and feeling oddly safe to do so. And now I’m not squeezing into that round hole, what else could I do but throw myself into writing again and create a blog?

It was fun while it lasted, (I’m lying, it really wasn’t all that fun.) but here I am, engaging in the ultimate rebellion: writing a personal blog.

“There’s no wrong or right, just write.”

I’m not entirely surely where that quote is from or who said it, but I saw it when I first started to write the novel ‘It Will Always Be You.’ and it’s really stuck with me. I think I even may have made an inspirational Instagram post about it.

I love writing. I love creative writing, academic writing, writing lyrics or poems, I even love a good letter of complaint! (I was always best at that when I was at school, don’t mess with me.) But for the amount I love for writing, there comes an equal amount of self-doubt.

My mind will scream at me while I’m writing:
“No one’s going to read it.” “Well, that doesn’t make sense.” “BORRRING!”

For a long time, I would listen to what my self-doubt monster was telling me and I would hold back, but the times I have told the monster to get in the bin, I’ve always has positive feedback.

I remember the first time I shared anything I ever wrote. It was on Tumblr (remember when that was the biz and not just full of porn?) and I posted a part of a story I was writing. Okay, it was a fanfic, but listen, we all start somewhere! Anyway, it got so many likes and I had many messages telling me how good it was. A message I specifically remember was someone saying it was, ‘the most well written fanfic she had ever read.’ and although I don’t know how tragic the other fanfics she read were, it was still positive feedback that’s stook with me for the last 10 years.

But even though I had that positive feedback, you know what I never did? Finish the fanfic. I talked myself into the idea that doing that would be a bad thing because anything else I could write wouldn’t be as good as that segment I had shared. Does that make sense? No? I didn’t think so.

I didn’t do anymore creative writing until I was severely depressed, and I decided to create a story I could lose myself in; it was the only way I could feel anything. Sadly, my laptop decided it’s time had come, and it passed away (RIP) and that story was never to be seen again. Until 2019, when I had a relapse in my depression and I decided it was time to pick up on that story and rewrite it; this then became It Will Always Be You.’.

After years of academic writing instead of creative, it was hard to get into, but I relaxed and thought ‘there’s no wrong or right, just write.’ and ended up with 70,000 words and a novel that contained my heart and soul.

I had my reservations and I didn’t want to share it, but I did; I shared it with two of my best friends.
One friend gave me good feedback.
One friend gave me bad feedback.

My Tumblr self from 10 years ago would have solely listened to the bad feedback and gave up completely. But my current self said no, I will listen to both. And so, I changed the ‘bad’ bits to make them better and I’ve learnt from it. I’m proud of the things I write, and that one friend that didn’t like it didn’t assist my self-doubt monster in climbing out of the bin, my self-doubt monster instead just stays where it is.

Not everyone is going to like everything, that’s a fact of life. But that doesn’t mean that they’re wrong or right, because at the end of the day, that’s the rule I now write by: There’s no wrong or right, just write.

Welcome

My first blog post! Well, not really. For as long as I’ve been on the internet, I’ve had a blog running, so this is just the first post on this blog.

Each blog I have had has been rather like a diary on the internet, a place to talk about anything. To mutter about life, mental health and what kind of existential crisis I’m going through that week.

I’ve missed writing a blog, even though all I’ve been doing this last year is write! Since September 2019 I’ve been writing my first novel, and although the story is written in it’s complete, I am proof reading and making sure everything is as I want it so I am ready to move on to the next task: publishing.

The truth is I have no idea what I’m doing, which is true in most areas of my life, but it’s exciting to be embarking on a new adventure.

I don’t know what I’m doing and it’s exciting… fancy sticking around for the ride?