Wednesday, April 14, 2010

What might have been

I have a big chalk board in my kitchen which I use for various things.  Mostly I like to write quotes or scriptures that speak to me and inspire me.  I recently came across this quote,

"It's never too late to become the person you might have been." 

As I think about becoming a writer and launching into a whole new phase of my life that really resonates.  Although I have to say I never dreamed of being a writer, never had wonderful things writen on my papers in high school and really didn't learn to spell until the invention of spell checker.  I actually still remember I got a D in senior year english.  As I said, I never considered writing as being part of my future. 

I was going to do something in business.  Accounting was the direction I thought I would head.  And after high school I worked in various accounting clerk jobs where I did mediocre at best.  I knew what I was doing but wasn't particularly detail oriented.  Something apparently they expect you to be when working with numbers and money.

After Jake was born I found myself sitting on the couch for several months looking out the window while he nursed.  That time of solitude gave me an opportunity to look back on my little "career" and really consider what I did right and what I did wrong during my working years. It also gave me a chance to really ask myself who I was and what I was meant to do.  It didn't take me long to realize that accounting was definately NOT what I was meant to do.  I had the wrong personality and temperment to ever spend my life creating columns of numbers.  I felt so much relief to be able to free myself from that path but I did wonder what career path might be before me instead.

Well 15 years later I can safely say that wife, mother, homemaker was the career path before me and with a 5 year old still keeping me busy it will continue to be my primary focus for many years to come.  But here comes writing.  Something I am finding myself enjoying so much.  Something I don't feel like I am forcing myself to do but would do even if I was the only one who read what I wrote.  Or my 10 blog readers.  (Only 3 of which are willing to follow me...)  And the good news is that people actually are validating this new direction in my life.

I don't know where it is taking me but I know it is worth pursuing and I know that it is definately not too late to pursue becoming the person I might have been all along if I had understood myself at 19 the way I understand myself at 39.

2 comments:

  1. That's the true irony of life. You're supposed to "choose" your life work at 19 when you don't even know yourself. And then your 35 and you realize what you should've been doing all along.

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  2. Great blog Melanie. Thanks for sharing. At least you finally figured out what you want to do with the remaining years of your working life. I'm going to be 47 next month and still don't know what I want to be when I grow up (LOL!) Actually, I think I should have stuck it out in college and possibly went into writing myself. It's something that I really enjoy but after being at the bank for almost 29 years now, I can't see giving up my 6 weeks of vacation, etc. Once my health issues are resolved, maybe I'll take a few writing classes that could help me find a better job within Wells Fargo. Until then, I guess I'll just stick to writing amateur movie reviews and lengthy messages on my FB friends walls (ha,ha!)

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