Somewhat shamefully I find myself drawn back to the old thought of trying to make the various and often inane things I write into career. No, I dont mean this blog. I'm not so egoistical yet as to believe that the idle thoughts running through my head could ever serve as a feasible source of income. I understand that such has happened in some capacity on the Internet before, but hoping to find yourself standing in that exalted crowd is a bit like waiting for your winning lottery ticket, only a bit worse. After all, once you win the lottery your journey is effectively over. The interest of the Internet is a much more fickle thing than money will ever be.
No, I mean writing in a broader sense, and one that certainly moves past that of creating stories. It's not that I feel that writing stories is in any way beneath me, quite the contrary, no it's just becoming a published author can be well on near as daunting a task as entering the profitable Internet crowd. What I've been focusing on is journalism, professional critics, or maybe finding a column somewhere that doesn't immediately reject what I type. I don't have grandous aspirations here, I wouldn't be dissastisfied should I enter a modest career. I simply find myself enjoying writing. The process of finding words to properly describe my feeling and thoughts is becoming a form of entertainment to me, and the potential to make a job out of it is enticing.
These decisions - and there is a decision to be made here - cannot be undertaken lightly. I find myself in a unique position in my life; enrolled in university and on the verge of exploding out in to my adult years and embracing all that such entails. It also means what I do now will likely shape my life for decades to come. I'm currently on course to pursue a life in policing in one form or another. As I've said before, policing does intrigue me as well. There's a very simple reason I found myself in my current courses; I placed myself there. I was not forced by any means, and suspect I could find a fulfilling life if I take that path. With time however my opinion of what might be best continues to err on the side of writing in some fashion. There trick is figuring out whether it's a passing fancy or a truth that shouldn't be ignored any longer.
I find myself haunted by a story of my mothers past in which she came across a similar dilemma. Years ago she found herself freed from a marriage gone wrong, capable and willing to move herself about the world and faced with the choice about where her life would go. On one hand lay the path of uprooting herself and her children and moving down to Toronto to pursue a career in the zoo of all places; for you see if was always a dream of hers to work with animals. She has an uncanny ability to empathize with them, and a heart that loves them more than any other I've had the joy of knowing. It required a sizable readjustment to her life. She would lose her friends and have to take her kids hours away from their father. With a decision I believe my mother came to regret more than she would have ever thought possible at the time - she relented, and chose to stay in Ottawa.
I understand the reasons why she choose to stay and live here, but it doesn't change the way it's remembered. It was a chance for her to do what she wanted and I can't help but feel the regret every time it's brought up, a cloud of wistful "what if"'s encircle the thought. It's lead to my poor attempts to revive some faint possibility that she might be able to do what she truly wishes now - much later in her life. Time itself has become an enemy, it makes the decision so much more difficult when you've become entrenched in your current lifestyle. The money that we all want doesnt give the freedom we thought it would, it just restricts us in subtler, different ways. To find herself in a job that she would really love and really want to go in every day she'd need to change so very many things in her life, and risk even more. I could encourage her to take the chance and see what comes of it every time we talk and I still wouldn't be able to overcome the burden responsibility has put on her shoulders.
I would like to think that I could go to university for criminology and policing and see what that life has in store, certain that I could see what writing has in comprarasion at any moment - but I know that isn't the case. Life is too complicated, it's a frail and distant hope that I might avoid the entanglements that'll make choosing my own future impossible. I don't want to look back on this time in my life and regret what I see, and that means I need to walk down the right path now.
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