Seeing as I work full time, go out a fair bit (mainly to Iceland and the theatre), care for a grown man who can’t fix a broken fridge door, and like to enjoy the time that’s left as downtime, it can be pretty hard to get myself to write for fun. Not because I don’t enjoy writing, but simply because in the five minutes it takes for my laptop to start up once home at 10PM-ish, I’ve probably already passed out in a milky puddle of Curiously Cinnamon and stale toast.
Following writing inspiration profiles on Twitter and noticing how often they tell me to JUST WRITE, it’s dawning on me that maybe this business isn’t for me, maybe I’m doomed to an eternity of content writing, by which I mean linking one SEO keyword to another SEO keyword in order to force Google to believe that what I’m talking about is worth people’s collective time. And it is, mostly. If you’re a confused international student looking for a university to hand over your parent’s hard-earned cash to.
But what next? Good question. And one which I’m pretty hesitant to ask seeing as Christmas is coming up and I’ve still got paid holiday coming my way. And it’s not like I don’t enjoy my job, I do, but for all the wrong reasons. Two reasons to be precise. These being my Hampstead Heath lunch hour trips and the gay friend who accompanies me on them. Our lunch hour is where we speculate on all the things we could be doing right now, if not tied to a 40-hour working week. We ask questions like, why do so many people not question this way of working? If we freelanced would we just sleep all day and then have to move back home due to pennilessness? Why is that man bathing in the lido, alone, in November? Existential things.
So here’s me, unfulfilled, itching to write for people like me and incredibly scared of calling myself a real-life, real-time writer. To be confident enough to say you should pay me for the thoughts I’m having on culture, London and being a pretty average 22-year-old with bad eating habits, parents who read The Daily Mail (it’s an ongoing battle) and a wanderlust that just won’t quit no matter how hard I try and tell it to just simmer down for a couple of years. In the meantime I’ll continue to write for me. I have to now, I’ve just told you I would.
Laura
