Stuck. Frozen in perpetual frustration, the moment my eyes look at my blank manuscript, littered with a sparse outline masquerading as something substantial. This is every time I open a personal scrivener project. For six years, I’ve felt the cold chill in my bones of writing something that might become a book. Finding myself as a writer on this scale has been much more challenging than anything I’ve overcome.  

While there is an element of fear, as all creatives especially writers experience, I am not afraid of my talent or a lack of. I can comfortably admit that professionally, I’m an accomplished writer, which is entirely dependent on what your definition of accomplished is. I write words and the money pays the bills. I am comfortable and want for nothing. While I don’t drive a Lamborghini, I am successful in the sense where I am healthy, happy, financially stable and able to work when the inspiration peaks, unrestricted by typical office hours. That’s more than amazing for me. I spend most of my days working on client copy and fine tuning everything to make sure that they receive nothing short of the high quality that goes with my company’s unrivalled delivery, and I truly love what I do. 

But all of this work for clients has awoken something deep within that was dormant. It feels like it’s time for me to really explore my talents and delve deeper into a part of me that’s hidden, obscured from view for reasons unknown. I am not afraid of writing or publishing, else this blog would have never existed. This space has been a part of my life for over a decade, overseeing my professional metamorphosis from event manager to marketeer to writer. There have been many articles that were published here that I cringe at the thought of, some I even deleted due to its lack of current relevance. Fear of being seen or of a lack of talent simply doesn’t exist for me, else I wouldn’t write and publish with careless abandon and public vulnerability for the last ten years.  

My life is punctuated with deep emotion and my past littered with pain and trauma that no one should have to face. A question of my identity, my place in the world and my purpose persists, restlessly. Words are my weapon of choice. Though the weapon is sharp, and ready for battle, it seems my arm has a cryptic reluctance to wield such a weapon. Whether these are the reasons responsible for this reluctance are beyond me. 

I am currently reading, nearly finished actually, Deborah Harkness’ All Souls Trilogy after discovering the television series last month. Over the last 4 years, I have been reading significantly more than years before, but this book series has really immersed me in ways I haven’t been able to disappear into sine I was a child. Fiction was a way for me to escape the world I endured growing up. I would slip away to faraway lands of impossible wonder, clutching to the hope that there was more in the world. As I got older, I was chastised for my incessant rumination and forced to leave that behind… until now. I have found myself with the magic of mystery and fiction awakening within me in the same ways that Diana found her magic awakening within her – only when she was ready for it, and only when she had her dark knight. The similarities between the lead character and myself were enough for me to accept this part of me and understand it was time to wield it, as Diana accepted who she was and learned to use her power. 

My relationship with writing is very much like a relationship between a fairytale witch and her magic. Words can create and destroy worlds, and for me, it is the most powerful magic to have ever existed, since they can be used for love, hate, peace, war, blessings and curses. They can transport you to the past or future, this world or the next, and even the far outer reaches of the universe. Words can create monsters and heroes to slay them, swiftly suffocating the nightmares of children. Our stories passed down through families for millennia, carried vital information for survival from generation to generation, eventually becoming folklore and mythology. Stories of gods and great wars, of love and loss and betrayal, of heaven and hell, all to warn us of dangers and explain the unknown elements of the world at the time to ensure our success and survival as a species. There is nothing more potent than words. They are the fabric of our universe. 

In the last month, I’ve felt the world around me coming to life in ways I haven’t experienced since I was a child. The swaying of the trees in the wind whisper softly, while the leaves falling tell ominous tales. I feel very much like Luna from Harry Potter, a bit wistful and airy, during these moments when life around me becomes more animated. It’s as though the world was always dull, and now that my playful writer’s brain is awake, the world is bursting at the seams with vivid colour. Everything has a story to be told; in every corner, inspiration lurks. 

This year, I’ve felt a growing need to create something of my own. While the TILT agency is indisputably mine, the work is still at the clients’ discretion, no matter how strongly I feel about an idea. And while I do have creative outlets that I can dispel sudden bursts of energy, it is not sufficing the increasing need. At the turn of the year, I made a promise to myself to spend more time writing and dedicating some of that time to personal projects. I have done increasingly more writing, in fact most of my work now is just writing, but not enough in the personal space, which is where I can let my inner creativity run wildly amok. In the last three months, the nagging need to create worlds has turned from a minor annoyance or a ravenous hunger. All I want to do is write, and all I seem to be doing is not writing. 

This brings me back to the issue of being stuck. I have this unwavering hunger to step into a blank universe and weave whole worlds together, punctuated with themes of love, loss, and hope. Past, present and future, woven into a patchwork quilt, to keep boys and girls, young and old, comfortable in their lives, decimating their nightmares and bringing their hopes into the light. This is what my spirit is yearning to do, but I’m often left frozen, as though I have been stunned by an invisible blow. 

Am I trying to escape? Or am I trying to find myself? Or worse, am I trying to do both simultaneously? If you know me, you’ll know that the latter would probably be the one, since no path taken in my past has been a simple, uncomplicated route, so why should my search for myself be any different? 

This paralysis must come to an end, else I’m left with two choices: bury this need deep within Pandora’s box and forget it, never to pick it up again, or allow it to descend me into madness, needing to create and being unable to. It’s time to be brave, to step into a blank universe and find the first threads to begin the weaving. 

What is the search of myself about? 

We spend our entire lives trying to figure out who we are and what our purpose is on earth. Who am I? What am I supposed to be doing? What’s my life purpose? What does my soul yearn to do? These are all the questions we ask ourselves when we’re in the darkest of places, because as a society we avoid any form of existential internalisation, for fear that we do not have the answers and may never have them. Most people are stuck in society’s hamster wheel and asking these questions provides enough of a deviation from their routine for them to realise the mundane existence they live, so it’s easier to tuck it away, hide it, and never ask it again. We do not like hard questions. But I do. 

I’ve spent my whole life, well the short thirty years thus far, asking myself this question. What’s my life purpose? What does my soul yearn for? Who am I? The search for myself is really about exploring these ideas. 

Mundane has never been my thing. The idea of going to school, then university to put myself in debt to get a degree, so that I have a job to repay that debt, but then also have to meet someone of the opposite sex who is a decent human being that I might want to subject myself to permanence with, and then go into 30+ years worth of debt with to buy a house that we couldn’t physically afford in that moment, and then procreate with this other person who I’m sharing my lifestyle prison cell with, to add more pressure to the already pressured system (remember university debt and mortgage and car), while also fretting about paint colours, university options for the kids who are all still under 5 years old, and thinking about retirement… but then not retiring until I’m 65+ when I have no more health or energy to enjoy the rest of my life with my cellmate, who I care about but stuck with because divorce is expensive and we’re past that point anyway. This has never made sense to me. Who made these rules? Why are these even rules? Why must I have children? Or get married? I just never understood it. 

This book, In Search of Myself, is a chronicle of my life’s navigation for ten years. From 30 through to 40. I don’t have the answers. I might find them. I don’t know. So far this is what I know: 

The year is 2020, the year of the coronavirus pandemic, and I’m now 30. I’ve finally settled into a writing career and pouring my entire soul into it; balancing both personal book and blog writing and a writing/design business to ensure lights stay on. I am introverted, but not shy. I drink a lot of coffee and 40-me will not be happy with 30-me, but tough shit. I am at that point of trying to figure out how to navigate the world, while not becoming totally jaded with the whole thing and running away to a wood cabin in the Scottish highlands where no one lives and internet is a distant memory. 

My first 20 years left me scarred with trauma and PTSD that lead me down a weird path in my 20’s, but it was not interesting enough to write about, since it was mainly work and illness. Sorry, my 20’s wasn’t filled with stories involving sex, drugs and rock and roll. Just a whole lot of responsible adult things while trying to shove my childhood trauma into the darkest corner of Pandora’s box. Being a business focused introvert helped to keep me on the right path in my 20’s, for which my liver is very grateful for. 

30 is interesting for me. When I was 26, I migrated back to the UK and spent the next few years struggling to get on my feet, which I talk about in my book, Native Immigrant. But when I was 28, I had a car crash and met someone in the same week, two events that literally changed my life, and in the following months, I quit my job, started my creative agency and became a full time writer, working remotely and allowing my bank account to have less panic attacks. It was the start of a new chapter, and I watched my old life flake away like dead skin, revealing new skin that said 30’s. 

It’s really weird how the whole thing happened, as though it was meant to happen when I started a new decade, with my career settling into writing, so that I can sit here and type this all out for the next ten years. Future me will think that past me wrote like a spastic, which is why it’s so awesome to have a blog that is feeding into a book, because in ten years, while I edit this specific page, it might not read exactly the same, but this blog is eternal. But yes, the whole thing is weird, so weird that I’ve decided to document the decade in a book. Gods help us this is going to be a long book.