So today’s new thing is I submitted a collection of six of my poems to University of Illinos’ literary journal the Ninth Letter. Although I am well aware that nothing will probably come of any of this I think the main thing is that I am trying to make a positive change in my life and trying harder to get closer to the life I want.
We are, all of us born with the same chance to succeed. Yes nepotism is alive and well but there are lots of people who weren’t born with well connected parents who succeed. Why? What is the difference between them and the rest of us?
Henry Ford once said:
Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t…….you’re [probably] right
and I think this may be an accurate statement. How many times have any of us dreamed of a better future but then our inner voice has gone:
“don’t be stupid you’ll never do that!”
Sometimes it’s other people’s voices too. When I was 17 I was very messed up, I had been suffering from an eating disorder for years including a long period in hospital but I was getting better and on visiting a friend at a mental hospital I bumped into her God Father, a man who looked like a pirate. It turned out he was involved in management and have just had a act sign to V2 earlier in the week. He offered me a free demo session and if he liked my stuff (music used to be my life) he would take me on and push me.
I was dizzy with excitement, I happily told my parents about my new contract, showed them his card and told them about the studio etc etc and they were the opposite of how I expected them to be. They weren’t happy or excited for me, their reaction was:
“Why’s he interested in you?”
They went on to tell me my A-Levels were important and not worth throwing away (I had no intention of stopping them). They were so scared I’d have some success and regret not finishing my A-Levels that they trod on my dreams and did their best to dampen my excitement over all the other opportunities that came my way. The end result is I didn’t go for these things and missed chances and spent the rest of my life regretting it.
I have always been a creative, I used to write poetry and specialised in photography at University; but I have always been frightened of going for it, of trying to succeed. I think it is because I have always been afraid of rejection. My parents always (don’t get me wrong they love me but they were damaged by life) made me think of what I could fail at rather than what I could do. Anything they saw as pie in the sky thinking was rubbished. My father was a frustrated artist and my mother a designer-maker; they had a history of music (my dad ran folk clubs; my mother was invited to join the Mormon Tabernacle choir and go on tour with them when she was younger and they both sang in church choirs) and I think they believed that these things could only be hobbies and that trying to make a living was futile.
I have always been different to my parents; there has always been something deep down inside that made me think that I could succeed. That if you don’t give up and persist that eventually things will fall into place. It occurred to me that I have not been going about things the right way until now. The nagging words of my family preventing me from completely going for it. That’s why I decided to start trying to do something different or new everyday, in the hope that positive begets positive and my life will improve.
It may only be the third day and nothing has come of it yet but I’m already starting to feel a little more positive.
