to write or not to write

21Jun07

once upon a time, even before i was a not-so-teeny tween, I found my love for writing and words- which was very much connected to my greater and older love for making up fantastical things in my head. Then somewhere along the twisty winding road of growing up, it got (unwittingly or not) buried and forgotten. You hear too much talk of practicality and reality, earning a good safe keep, and being a filial obedient daughter. But if there’s one thing i noticed in my soon-to-be 21 years on earth, God takes you in circles and sometimes and you end up right where you started.

So here I am, in a newsroom when it wasnt too long ago that a journalistic career was merely a fleeting fancy idea i toyed with in my head. yes, i did once want to be a war correspondent, which freaked my parents out enough that the idea lasted no longer than a few months in my head and was quickly relegated to my “haha yea right dream jobs” list, taking its place amongst “spy”, “FBI criminal profiler”, “F1 race engineer”.

Having now a slight taste of what journalism is like, I can’t yet say for sure if i want to do this for a career, or the rest of my life. The idea of it is fun- meeting interesting people, exciting events, being at the forefront of news, or just plain writing about something different and unusual- and it is fun. I used to day dream about how wonderful it must be to not just be a normal person receiving news and reading the daily newspaper in the morning sipping coffee, but actually being the one shaping the news, having the power to influence events, thoughts and people. I wanted to meet all these offbeat people- the rich and famous, the poor and forgotten; to travel the world in pursuit of bringing little known stories to readers. But of course there’s always the flip side, the long hours, self-censorship, not-so-exciting local news and scene, not-very-good pay etc.

You’ve got to love it to do it. I don’t know how much I could love it now, but like love, you can never really know for sure without taking some risk, closing your eyes and plunging in head first.

Here’s to our little dreams (:

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