The Map

I always wanted to write and I have written every day of my life but not really WRITTEN like  a journalist or a novelist. My writing experience has been more like signing a cheque, adding to the never end to do list in my journal or scribbling my autograph on the doorstep for my local Amazon delivery driver. It's a sad fact that I haven't quite reached the pinnacle of my teenage dream, nor the hopes of my encouraging teachers and definately not the vision my parents had chalked up. And that is why this blog has come into existence. 

So like I say I'm not a journalist. I'm not a novelist. Those plans didn't escape my imagination into reality. But this account means I can at last write. And maybe someone might stumble upon it and be curious and then maybe I'll have a reader. I promise there will be better posts than this...this is practice. I am a novice after all.  Almost. I lied when I wrote that my experience is as limited as signing for  lockdown parcels designed to punctuate the monotony. I have written millions of sentences, but never for a publisher nor a Fleet Street editor. My writing has been more reflections. Poems. Love letters. Break up and make up letters. Letters of joy and letters of gloom. Letters to parents of ex pupils. Several thousand school reports and the odd article for a local publication...but nothing of any particular note. 

My life has been and is wonderful and I am grateful. And the past 43 years have been peppered with achievements and success in areas that others would envy. But my measures of fulfillment and success seem different to other people's. I've lived with a feeling deep inside me for many years. It's been there I reckon from aged 16. It came into being on one particular school night but I'll save that story for a future post.

The feeling is shame. I've finally reached a point in life and age where I am casting off the actual shame I feel for not fulfilling my promise. That is such a weighted phrase isn't it? When people refer to a child's future as promising or full of potential it's so easy for that child to be imprinted with that loaded expectation. I think that's what happened to me. I don't think anyone around me ever deliberately acted in a way or treated me in a way to make me feel this. It just evolved from a tiny seed into an out of control poisonous weed. I've almost nurtured the shame when I should have been liberally applying weed killer through therapy or just hypothetically slapping myself hard and regular. Live and learn. Better to have an epiphany at 43 and not 93. Besides I've come to realise that for me feeling shame is quite normal and a consequence of having aspirations not yet achieved. Like the consequence of love is grief when fate steals your loved one. But this ache doesn't define me. 

I'm also pretty damn sure that the path I've trodden these past 20 odd years is one well trodden by millions before me. I might sound rather miserable, sour and dramatic, but I'm really not. In fact I am generally happy, grateful and humble. But like many people, I want more from life and I feel life speeding up and an urgency to catch up with my vanishing dreams. How I feel is just a fact and I am changing things to dilute it's strength and remember that 16 year old who somehow got lost. You could say I have been in a dark room for years looking for the exit and I've found it. And on the other side of the threshold is a destination and a road map. I think this pandemic has been the long overdue kick up the ass I needed.

This space is where I will jot down the journey and share some of the one behind me. The good stuff, the bad stuff and the really pretty ugly stuff. It's been an interesting life with many a moment Jeremy Kyle would love to have cut his teeth on. Committing this journey into words should force me to mine the dedication I will need to graduate from underachiever to achiever. And choosing Firefly as a name is some small symbol of the plan. Because right now I'm more fruit fly. 

I'm not entirely sure what the final destination looks like or how I shall get there. I suspect with multiple crashes but hey ho. So to finish up this first post these are certainly some of the many things that my roadmap will need to take in:

• I am unpublished.
• I have zero savings.
• I live in a house where in 2017 I attempted to change a light switch in the kitchen and the wires are still hanging out. Plus the roof leaks. The garden fence has blown down. I pulled up the lounge floor and revealed beautiful boards....covered in around 5 litres of bitumen. And there's mould in the spare room.
• I am single AGAIN (1 ex husband, 3 ex boyfriends, too many flings to remember but 2 fabulous daughters).
• My car is 16 next month with just enough rust to remind me each time I drive it.
• I've gained a good stone since lockdown.
• I've stopped running like I once did.
• My clothes therefore don't fit. But they are so old some of them have BHS labels so that might be a good thing.
• My sleep is poor (menopause?)
• My mattress has lumps. More likely the culprit of poor sleep.
• I've got a fine I forget to pay on time.
• And the lounge blind just fell down for the 50 millionth time.

Roger that. I am sliding towards 50 and surely I can reach my goals before that sobering birthday?