It was the end of week one, and after attending three marketing classes, I was convinced – It wasn’t for me anymore. I’d been dreading waking up in the morning and attending university. The classes were great but I felt out of place. There was an uneasiness that settled in my gut, and every single day, I questioned whether I could see myself doing this for the rest of my life. The destination seemed great where I was standing but it felt like the journey wasn’t going to be a fulfilling one. There was this nagging feeling as if a bus I should be on was about to leave me.
I got the chance to start over my education after years of working and so It was a big deal for me, and for the first time in a while, I was heavily considering my life choices. To continue the practical route or try to go with my gut instead. Throw the ticket, buy another one, and get on a different bus.
Since I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a writer. That is where my gut was leading me. However, I was initially afraid of choosing writing as a career because of three reasons. First, it meant that I would have to do it as a job, increasing the chances of me dreading it over time. I had a ‘wife and mistress’ theory to this, which is that a wife becomes a comfortable existence as a constant, and the mistress, the passionate variable from the former. I find that once you get used to something, there is a sense of monotone that makes you forget all the reasons you fell in love with it in the first place, eventually, taking it for granted. And since I’ve always had a love for writing, I was afraid if I committed, it would cease to be a mistress. My passion for it would diminish over time.
The second reason was the fear of acknowledging myself as a writer. Getting a degree would be an assurance to the world that I wrote for a living, and I could no longer excuse any awful writing towards the fact that I had no qualifications for it. Mistakes wouldn’t be tolerated easily because the expectations would be higher.
Lastly, the third reason was financial stability. Realistically, writers lived their lives passion-based instead of monetary. Once one chooses to undertake a path toward creativity, one can expect little to no success, except for a lucky few. Most times, passion doesn’t always equate to a lucrative life, quite the contrary. Take Jo March for example, from Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Little Women’ – which yes, is a fictional character – but whose life is said to have been loosely adapted from the writer’s own life so she can be a great example. If we look at it from a conventional point of view, Jo wasn’t as affluent in her career as she’d hoped. She constantly followed her passions rather than the traditional route of what was expected of her, and yet with little success. This was the complete opposite of her younger sister Amy, who was smarter and understood her place in the world. She did what was expected and one might argue that it led her to beautiful places. In a world full of Amy’s, it is rather difficult, lonely, and quite foolish to be a Jo. So, in summary, the cons were many for this passion-led path, If I were to choose to undertake it.
I decided to discuss it with friends and family. Hoping most of them would give me logical reasons to talk me out of it, and they did. We all agreed it was all too impractical. There was a lot I had to take into consideration. Especially being in my late twenties, I could not allow myself to be capricious and make decisions on a whim based on gut feelings. There was too much at stake, one of the main ones being that this was possibly the last chance for a studying do-over. And yet, despite everything I told myself, my feet walked to the administration’s office and requested a course change. The next few weeks, as I waited for a reply, were filled with anxiety at the realization of what I did. I silently hoped and prayed for a rejection.
Alas, two weeks later, the approval came in. I had no way of backing out now. Despite having had two things checked off from my bucket list – one, pursuing a degree and two, becoming a writer – I was more apprehensive of the future than I’d ever been. But, I can hardly say it is inconceivable that I chose the impractical way because, throughout my life, I have repeatedly been captivated by the unconventional. And the truth was, even though I’ve feared turning out like Jo March, I always admired and aspired to be her.
Two things calmed me through the journey to becoming a writer. The first was a memory of a conversation I had with my late father years ago. He mentioned how he could envision me writing a book about my life in the future. The core memory felt like a sign to follow this route. The second was a poem I read called Fig Tree by Sylvia Plath. It shed awareness on the difficulty of choosing and how one can get stuck in a moment for too long without picking an option. We must choose but one thing, and whatever choice we make, there will always be hundreds of others we left behind and multiple what-ifs that follow. But we must choose, for in staying with the fear of picking one, there is a danger of losing it all. And so I made a choice. Even though my hopes for writing a book had diminished over time, I could hope to become a decent film reviewer, feature, or food writer. Unlike life, in writing, one could eat as many figs from the tree. The possibilities were endless.
I promised myself to document every single day of my life whilst undertaking this journey, for the sole reason that I refer back to it years later when I’m struggling as a writer, to remind myself that at least at one point through this endeavor, there was excitement and hope.
I hoped that once I possessed the degree, I would make my late father proud by making his vision come to life. I hoped I’d finally be proud of myself. I, the lady in the corner office who always thought writing was magic, would now have the wand in her hand. I hoped that it all works out for her in the end, because for the first time in a long while – and in her own idealistic way – she felt like she was on the right bus.
Farha Mukhashin 