ten minutes

This is in support of ugly ducklings and late bloomers everywhere.

Yesterday, I was taking the subway home from my parents' house. As I got on the train at Bloor going west, I ran into an old high school classmate, whom I'd apparently run into at a previous job and forgotten, and whose name I got wrong. Oops. Anyways, we had one of those quintessentially awkward high school reunion moments that happen when you live in a city that operates like it's New York.

"So, are you still working at _______?"(the clothing store I'd run into her the first time around, where I worked miserably and briefly for two months)
"No, no that job didn't last long. I work at a pet supply store now."
"Oh, neat. "
"Whereabouts do you work?" I asked.
"Oh, I'm a lawyer, my office is downtown, I'm in real estate, wills, things like that."
"Oh, wow."

So the lawyer and the cashier catch up till one of us mercifully gets off the subway, maybe at a stop sooner than we'd intended. And it got me thinking about this article that I'd read a long time ago on the back page of the Globe and Mail, about a waitress who didn't want to be defined by what she did for money, because on her own time, she was first and foremost a writer. I kind of feel like that.

I never liked school. It was not for lack of intelligence, or interest in learning. I was a troubled soul, and a teenager on top of that, which made for a truant and trucculant student. I dropped out when I was 17, and returned to finish high school at the tender age of 21. And I did finish, if only out of principle of completing what I'd started. But after that, and a failed attempt at college, I decided that all I really needed were my trusty books and love, and school could just be one of those things other people did that I did not.

This arrangement worked out well, despite obvious disadvantages in terms of the types of jobs I've been able to obtain, because I've had a lot more freedom than my 'gainfully employed' peers. But this freedom comes at the cost of financial stability, which, at some point, became more than an irritant, it became a hindrance to any kind of future I'd want to be living in. I'm not happy living paycheck to paycheck. But more than that, something else has caught up with me. The need, not just want, but need, to be outputting something of value and integrity and meaning into the world, beyond a swift hand at the till and a ready smile.

That's why I'm going to go back to school. I know, beyond any certainty, indeed, with the kind of certainty most people envy because it implies a deep sense of self-knowledge, that I am entering the right field. I was born to write, I was designed to let my bleeding heart drip on the blank page in lieu of a pen, and the degree of success I find is no measure of the satisfaction I will feel for doing something challenging and real. And on another level, I've realized I am actually deserving of a better quality of life. The field of journalism is a noble one, the role of the journalist is one of the safekeeping of hope, for every journalist represents, to me, someone who gives a damn beyond their own backyard, someone who wants us to operate and govern and live in the staggering illumination of fact and suffering and of what could be. I want to be a part of that.

And if I'm ten minutes late coming to that realization, so be it. I'm here now. And because of it, the future is somewhere I'll want to be.