‘Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.’

– Margaret Atwood

There’s a question that I can’t seem to get away from lately. It slips into conversations with hairdressers, taxi drivers, family, friends, teachers, my manager at the bakery, even the girl in the club toilets. What will you do now?

The girl in the toilet follows it up with a hiccup. My mum chases it with words of comfort and reminds me not to rush.  

It’s a good question. Currently, I don’t have an answer. I bounce indecisively from ill-formed answers, stringing words together on the thinnest of threads. I’d like to go into marketing. I’m looking into publishing. Maybe teaching?

I have spent 17 years of my life in education. Writing, drawing, creating things for other people. I’ve, for the most part, done what I’ve been told. University obviously changed this. I was taught to be independent. Create ideas that are unique to me and challenge the opinions of others. I gained a freedom to learn and write in my own way.

I like to write. I love to write. But where will I write?

Maybe I will make it in marketing. Maybe I will get to write press releases until I can’t bear to look at them anymore. Maybe I’ll find a foothold in publishing and edit someone else’s words. Pop my opinions in the small margins of their big ideas. Maybe one day I’ll get to write my own book and have my own big ideas.

For now, at least, I can write here.

Perhaps no one will read it, however with a mum like mine I find that highly unlikely.