Last updated on November 16th, 2023 at 03:55 pm
As I approach my 30th birthday I hate to admit I am one of those that is looking back and asking myself what have I achieved so far? My life definitely has not followed the path I envisioned nor was it a bad path that I fell upon, just a different one. I would never have imagined that I would be a homemaker, or housewife and at 30, still no career. I was the girl in school, who was popular, played sports, but also wanted to achieve highly with perfect grades and honors. I grew up in a small town in the country and I dreamed one day I would move to a big city, maybe New York someday and write for magazines, newspapers, etc. As I turned 18, I did the next best thing I moved to the closest big city nearby, Seattle. There I enrolled in The University of Washington, hoping to get a journalist or English degree.
At college we each get assigned a career counselor and I wasn’t so lucky with mine. She quickly convinced me that there wasn’t a lot of opportunities for a weak writer such as myself. Way to knock my confidence off. It would be a lot of hard work and no gain. So I switched my major to business and marketing. It was just the easier option to choose that I thought would be versatile while still allowing me to take those English classes and creative writing workshops as extra curriculum. I worked hard and got excellent grades while working full time as a office manager. My grades looked good on my resume as well as my experience to back my degree up but I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t doing what I really wanted to do, or was passion about. I wanted to write and I kept having people talk me out of it or say I wasn’t good enough.
So I decided after graduating I would move to New York and work as an intern for a friend of mine that was a magazine editor at the time. I thought if I could gain some industry experience and take some English classes on the side. Not only could I learn in the process but I could build relationships within the writing industry itself along the way. I planned a trip to Mexico prior to my up rooting to the Big Apple. To my utter amazement because relationships and babies were not on my agenda, I fell in love with a Brit while vacationing and that love took me farther than the Big Apple to Manchester, England. How could life steer me so far from my plans but I followed my heart and changed my agenda. Who says I couldn’t write in England too.
When I made the big move across the pond, I was surprised how hard it was to get a job, forget a writing job. The market had crashed and it was a terrible time for someone who just graduated and had no real experience in a specific area to get a job. I moved around from personal assistants, to answering phones, to tempting just to make money. My dream of starting that career looked further and further away. It took me a year to get my work visa in order then another year to find solid work. Then my agenda changed again and I was out of a job for the third time in a year so I sat down and wrote my first novel, When Love & Culture Collide.
Even after writing my first novel and getting it out there I never expected it to be so hard to get into the writing world. My skills were lacking from the time taken out to move and settle in another country and my skills from the states didn’t follow the same guidelines of writing skills in the UK. I was farther from what I wanted then I had been when I first started.
Then I gave birth to my beautiful baby boy, Buba and he changed my priorities and my life for good. I no longer panicked that I hadn’t started a career I was a mommy. Then he was turning 1 year and I thought to myself. Its time to get back in there and fight for something. My brain was turning to mush and I needed to challenge it but to my astonishment I fell pregnant with my lovely baby girl, Missy Moo. I was ecstatic but knew in my mind it would be another year before I got time put into my writing and start something. This brings me to the present day where I am about to turning 30 and I am looking back at all this and wondering how can I be turning 30 and still have no career started. What happened to that girl that wanted to wear the power suits and be successful. Is she still in there? Can it still happen after 30? I wouldn’t change meeting my husband or having both my children for the world. I don’t even feel grown up yet and I am already supposed to have these huge accomplishments. Life moves too fast but its clear that I best get on track with my business side of life or it just might be too late!!!!