I've been feeling rather uninspired of late - or perhaps I should scratch that, because a lack of inspiration hasn't been the problem for me. There's been plenty going on inside my pretentious-writer-y brain, but I seem to have lost the ability to express myself through writing (and those of you who know me well will know this is more of a disaster for me than it might be for other people, because I am incapable of expressing myself well through speech. I'm one of those irritating people who pepper their lexicons with fillers and non-fluency features (or 'um' and 'er', for those who don't speak language-nerd)).
Whenever I'm angry, or stressed, or upset, I write. Usually to myself, sometimes to people who never get to see what I've written, and 'occasionally' to Cora, who gets stuck with a lot more of my self-focused internal monologue than is really fair on her. (Though it seems she knows things even when I don't say them, so perhaps it's just as well that I am fairly honest with her.) But it occurred to me yesterday that, as I move into my uni on the 19th of September, I now have two months left. Two remaining months of the life I've been living for the last eighteen years; eight more weeks of living at home, living with my family... that's only about 56 more days before I truly say goodbye to the lifestyle I've known since I was born - goodbye to my childhood, I suppose.
I know I've posted a lot on this subject recently, but that's because it's the biggest thing in my life right now - and that of the lives of many, many people worldwide too - and it's... well, it's huge. It's by far the biggest change I've ever faced in my life to date and it's approaching at the speed of light, and I need this blog now because writing is what I do, and who better to listen than nobody and everybody at the same time? When I write here, the only thing sharing my words is the big blank white screen in front of me, and yet the whole world can follow my little 'story'. I find that incredible and so incredibly weird. Everybody's lurking where nobody is.
If the world is my oyster, how do I know I've picked the shell with the pearl inside? I'm lucky - I've known linguistics is my calling pretty much all my life - but can a person have more than one calling? What happens if the calling stops... well... calling? What if you get curious about the howling from the woods instead? Maybe there's a pearl in every shell; maybe it just doesn't shine at first. Maybe we just have to dig it out and polish it up. Or maybe I'm chasing a crayfish - maybe I should turn the hell around and snatch my oyster back. Maybe then I'll come to the same conclusion I always reach: that doubts are normal. That this is a decision which needs to be carefully considered. That it's never too late to change my mind but in the end, why would I want to? Words are what I do. This path I'm following is right for me and I know that - and, like I've told people who also wonder if they've made the right decision, if you don't doubt your choice, how can you come back around to the realization that you've never wanted to do anything else?
I want to go to Denmark and study Danish. I kind of want to learn Russian. I want to write and record songs. I want to be a speech therapist, I want to live abroad and teach English as a foreign language, I want to publish linguistics theories. But this is great, because all my wants are linked; basically, I want to spend my life rolling in a great big sea of words, floating on familiar and foreign grammatical structures and nestling down to sleep on a comma at night. I want to hang out with the semi-colons and maybe undangle a participle or two (not as dirty as it sounds). I want to gaze from my window at the glowing full stops speckled across the black night sky. I know for sure, as I always have, that I've found my oyster... now where did I put my pearl polish?
Molly x
Whenever I'm angry, or stressed, or upset, I write. Usually to myself, sometimes to people who never get to see what I've written, and 'occasionally' to Cora, who gets stuck with a lot more of my self-focused internal monologue than is really fair on her. (Though it seems she knows things even when I don't say them, so perhaps it's just as well that I am fairly honest with her.) But it occurred to me yesterday that, as I move into my uni on the 19th of September, I now have two months left. Two remaining months of the life I've been living for the last eighteen years; eight more weeks of living at home, living with my family... that's only about 56 more days before I truly say goodbye to the lifestyle I've known since I was born - goodbye to my childhood, I suppose.
I know I've posted a lot on this subject recently, but that's because it's the biggest thing in my life right now - and that of the lives of many, many people worldwide too - and it's... well, it's huge. It's by far the biggest change I've ever faced in my life to date and it's approaching at the speed of light, and I need this blog now because writing is what I do, and who better to listen than nobody and everybody at the same time? When I write here, the only thing sharing my words is the big blank white screen in front of me, and yet the whole world can follow my little 'story'. I find that incredible and so incredibly weird. Everybody's lurking where nobody is.
If the world is my oyster, how do I know I've picked the shell with the pearl inside? I'm lucky - I've known linguistics is my calling pretty much all my life - but can a person have more than one calling? What happens if the calling stops... well... calling? What if you get curious about the howling from the woods instead? Maybe there's a pearl in every shell; maybe it just doesn't shine at first. Maybe we just have to dig it out and polish it up. Or maybe I'm chasing a crayfish - maybe I should turn the hell around and snatch my oyster back. Maybe then I'll come to the same conclusion I always reach: that doubts are normal. That this is a decision which needs to be carefully considered. That it's never too late to change my mind but in the end, why would I want to? Words are what I do. This path I'm following is right for me and I know that - and, like I've told people who also wonder if they've made the right decision, if you don't doubt your choice, how can you come back around to the realization that you've never wanted to do anything else?
I want to go to Denmark and study Danish. I kind of want to learn Russian. I want to write and record songs. I want to be a speech therapist, I want to live abroad and teach English as a foreign language, I want to publish linguistics theories. But this is great, because all my wants are linked; basically, I want to spend my life rolling in a great big sea of words, floating on familiar and foreign grammatical structures and nestling down to sleep on a comma at night. I want to hang out with the semi-colons and maybe undangle a participle or two (not as dirty as it sounds). I want to gaze from my window at the glowing full stops speckled across the black night sky. I know for sure, as I always have, that I've found my oyster... now where did I put my pearl polish?
Molly x
