Where do I want to be in 20 years time?

I have been thinking about this recently, especially seeing as I have been having trouble with Tech recently. I put this on this blog because it also heavily revolves around my writing.

The short term goals for the last two years have been, finish tech get a good job, everything else will come later. I still want them to definitely be the short term goals, but where do I really want to be in 20 years time, when I'm 38 years old.

Basically, to finish the full blown Advanced Diploma of Accounting, it is going to take another one and a half years of massive stress and exhaustion to complete. What I really want to do is finish the Diploma of Accounting and get a good job. With want I want to do with my life, in all honesty, the Diploma is all I really need, it has the budgeting subject that I want and doesn't gravitate too much around tax. Well it's going to start to.

Basically I am bad at tax, really bad, I don't like it, have a hard time understanding it and nearly cry every Wednesday when I have to sit through it. I don't want to work in tax, I want the fun budgeters job which is at times tedious will always take a very very long time involving a lot of research and a lot of re-working of numbers, that to me, is what I want.

But in 20 years, when I am (hopefully) married, have had as many kids as God is willing to bless me with, watched my cousin and brothers do the same. I want to be successful, I want to have money, I want to have a family, so where does writing fit in? Well that's what I need. I recently read Tempest Rising, a Jane True novel...she needed to be near the water, other wise she got tired, angry and all around nasty to be around...well writing is my element, I need it.

It would be ideal to be published. Deep down although I refuse to admit it to myself, or to anyone else...I want so badly to see my name on a book on the shelves. I want so badly to read a blog like Storywings and see my book there with a great review, I want people to look at me and think "writer" not accountant or business woman or No 3 on Australia's rich list, or "oh that's so-and-so's granddaughter," I want book lovers to see me and say "hey, she wrote that series," or "That book of hers I read really touched me"

And yeah, it's selfish, yeah, it's unrealistic and yeah I'm probably not good enough, but I feel so very deep deep down, that writing is what I should do.

I don't want to throw away my job or my money or my future place on the rich list but I do want to write, be known for my writing.

I want it so badly that tech is suffering. I should be studying right now instead of writing this, I should have been studying the day I decided to finally type up all the work on The Queens Dresses and I should be thinking about certain Note and Statement formations at night instead of dreaming up ideas for Practically Dead.

So what do I do? I don't want another year of tech, I want to finish this year so badly that I'm thinking of running to my mum right now and begging her not to make me go back. I want to get to Christmas this and be finnished, I want to get out of my shitty dead-end job and work in a massive company that will pay me lots of money to tell them how much money to keep aside for certain operations and most of all, I want to write.

I have tears running down my face at this very moment, which is making it very hard to write, because I have finally reallised that is what I want and need and that I am really wasting time and money by continuing subjects that I don't really need next year.

Why? Because I am scared shitless.

I am terrified of failing, I think I always have been. In life things to do with getting it myself have always come easy and this is going to be hard. I am going to have to work hard for what I want and I am going to have to sit down and research certain things so that I don't look like the idiot writer who said classic guitar instead of acoustic. I want to be diverse and write different genres, I want to be provocative and creative and unique.

I am also terrified of telling my family that I want to leave tech after this year. My boyfriend will be over the moon because that's all the more time he will get to see me...but the rest.

My dad who has always said (and I agreed) that it may be hard but in the long run it's easier to get the study out of the way young, and I have 3 years on everyone else.

My mum, who paid for all of this for me, who's eyes sparkle whenever I come home with distinctions on my semester reports.

And most of all my nan, who is my life. Who only wants to see me happy, but also sees me as "the smart one" I always had the good marks and never really had to work for them, she sees the stress I'm under but we both have the way of thinking that to back out now, would be quitting...and we aren't quitters.

I don't really expect an answer because this is so long and rambling that even I wouldn't read it.

Do I become a quitter? Back out of the last year of tech because I don't strictly need it and because it's too hard...or do I keep going? stress myself to the point of week-long sickness, which is currently what is happening, keep my writing on the back burner which kills me inside every time i see the multitude of empty folders with names on the side, begging me to be filled with ideas and drafts.

I hate saying it's too hard, nothing has ever, ever been too hard as far as brain power goes...it's going against so much, but it also makes so much sense.

In 20 years...I want to have kids, I want to have a sustainable job and I WANT TO BE A PUBLISHED AUTHOR

Does this make you mad?

Ok, I will admit that I have a very over-active imagination, but last night someone said something to me that hurt a little.

Basically I came up with a very far-fetched fantasy idea that I am still wondering if I could get to work, it would be difficult but yeah...doable.

I was telling someone about it, someone I place a lot of value in and he pretty much shot me down. It was a very raw idea, something that could be incorporated into something else. He hasn't read any of my work and yet told me that it's a far cry from what I usually write...fantasy, paranormal, far-fetched weird stuff is what I write.

I don't know, I'm probably over-reacting but it just hurt that someone who hasn't read anything I've done, who doesn't even read books in general could start telling me that I couldn't just go and write a book about that and that I should flesh out the idea more before I even start writing it...like does he think I'm stupid?

"Oh yes, today I just pictured a fairy in a pretty yellow dress who looked a bit like an acorn and has a sparkly wand...I am going to write about her now with no idea of any of her adventures...dum dee dum dee dum..."

Like I know that there are going to be a shizer load of people that are going to dislike even hate my work...but at least they would have read a couple of pages of it first before forming that opinion.

I don't know, I think I just wanted a bit of support from those I love - far too much to expect, I know. I'm a long way from even thinking of pursuing a publishing dream, I just write stories that make me happy.

I think I've just started writing a children's story...

A full on Dr. Seuss style rhyming children's story...

It started out as a poem about a vampire and turned into a monster under the bed type cartoon Play School story.

Hmmm, I think this might be called "branching out"

Now when I finish it, I will need some Mum's opinions on whether or not they would actually read it to their children...because it might be deemed a bit scary.

A Question for the Poets - Do you revise/change your original work?

Poetry for me has always just flowed. And I have always felt that a true poem written by me, is the original one that flowed when I first sat to write it down. Sure I have gone back and re-read later but once it is out, that's it. Not like a novel or short story that needs to be tweaked and changed fifty million times before it even begins to be right.

I have always felt that the true nature of the poem can only be captured in that one sitting, when it is first written, later on you won't have the feeling/inspiration/thought process that first spurred you to write it.

Lately though I have been reading some of my old work and have found a couple of missed beats. I'm not a free verse writer, I am meticulous in rhyming and rhythm, but sometimes, when I just want to finish something off I will stick a word in that if said a certain way can be right, but not really.

So now I have a dilemma, go against my belief of "first draft is true draft" and go with "three years down the track I thought of a better line that could fit in there"

So do you ever change your poetry after yo have first written it? If so, how much is too much. I don't want to change the vibe of the poem, which I think is why I'm so scared to change any part of it, in my head, it will cease to be a feeling, and just become another bunch of words on a scrap of paper.

The Tortoise is Hibernating...

No matter how much I need to write, I just do not have the time at the moment.

I am concentrating too much on Storywings and my writing is being neglected. Not only that but I am having trouble with one of my classes. I am not going to try to a start writing until I have cleared the stress off my plate, otherwise my stories won't come out right :(

I have a couple of poem ideas that have been trickling in lately, I just can't seem to grasp onto them, you know how the details of a dream are at the edge of your conciousness and everytime you try to grab them they slip further away...well that is what is happening at the moment. And it sucks.

After the 18th of May I am going to try and get back on the shell. Until then, I will have to try to stay sane.