A leave of absence and how I have spent 2011

How do you begin a blog post after not writing for close to 12 months? Damned if I know, but here we go.


In just over a week’s time I will be 21. The most daunting anniversary of my birth that has so far occurred. It has also now been 12 months since I finished University. How time flies and all of that.


It’s a good time to reflect, I think, on what I have achieved and where I want to go. I am content, or as content as I ever am, with where I am at this point in my life. With a degree, a passion and a grown-ass relationship. There are still things that I want to add to that list; a career that inspires me, to be better travelled, to be more at peace with myself. But they will either come or they won’t.


I have spent the last 12 months largely devoted to the one project. One that has taken me a countless number of hours, arguably unhealthy quantities of chocolate, 75,000 words and over 300 pages to complete. When I began I never dreamed that it was something that I could actually finish. But I did. Sometimes if you have a dream you have to nut up or shut up. Quit lamenting about it and sit down and do it (or stand, I guess it depends on the dream.)

What they don’t tell you when you begin to do whatever it is that you’ve dreamed about doing, is the emotional rollercoaster it takes you on. The euphoria, the crippling self-doubt, the satisfaction. It is all one big nauseating hot pot. But it is worth it.


It has been 12 months since I finished my degree. The first 12 months in almost my entire young life that I have been able to choose how I would fill it. I filled it with achieving something that I have wanted to do since I was old enough to hold a pen (back when children didn’t learn to use a computer before they learnt to read.)
I now have a manuscript and a voicemail message dated three days ago that made me cry in disbelief when I heard it. I don’t know what is going to happen. But I do know the satisfaction of finally just doing it.


I also know that I may be a little masochistic. I thought that after the tears, sweat and time that went into my first manuscript I would have sworn the process off. Now I’m 25,000 words in to a second one, so I guess not.

It all leaves me wondering where I will be in another 12 months.