Destiny

It is time to explain how I took control of my destiny. (I have not been being deliberately mysterious about this, not since I got it sorted out anyway – I am just useless at finding time to gather my thoughts and write posts. This one has been sitting around half-written for a little while.)

SO, I realised (and yes, it’s all obvious in hindsight) that what I really want to be is a writer. It’s the one thing I really have some genuine talent at, and really do actually enjoy doing. The editing part of my job can be painfully tedious at times, but the writing part – once I get over my fearful paralysis and actually start writing – is exhilarating, challenging, satisfying. Moreover, your destiny does not simply waltz up to you and present itself: if I am to be a writer, I have to make it happen. Moreover, I have a unique opportunity to do that right now, without losing too much if I fail completely. I am in Mexico, I speak Spanish, more or less, I know the country, more or less, and I’m able to dedicate some time to trying to write about it before I have to move on to a(nother) proper job.

SO, I screwed up my courage and asked my boss if he would like me to stay on for a bit longer. The result was a new four-month contract, under which I would work three weeks out of every four, with the fourth being free for me to do my own research trips.

This is an exciting and wonderful thing. I am very glad that I have finally figured out one of the things I would really like to do with my life (there are a couple of others, but they are EVEN MORE impractical, hard to believe though that is). It is also completely terrifying.

One of the results was me moving off campus, as I would have had to pay a quarter of the rent if I’d stayed, whereas if I moved I would get paid money instead, in the form of a housing allowance. I was initially quite excited about this – a new stage of my life, a new challenge living in town, maybe meeting and spending time with different people, being all cool and hanging out (I wish my imagination wasn’t so optimistic) – and I do like my house a lot. It is peaceful, secure, and had lovely big windows and arched brick ceilings. On the other hand, the hassle, expense and incredible time-consumingness of all the packing, unpacking, cleaning, and furnishing – plus the rain coming in through my beautiful ceiling – has taken the shine off a little. And it is a wee bit lonely. I don’t like to admit it, but I think it was not having the internet, not not having company, that made it more lonely.

The writing plan, as first conceived, was to try my hand at some quirky travel/culture articles, but I realised pretty quickly that I wanted to write a book. A couple of vague book ideas have become a definite idea, and a plan is fleshing itself out all the time. I am a bit coy about it, partly because I have an irrational paranoia that someone will steal my idea, but mostly because I am afraid that people will people will think it is stupid and my confidence is yet a teetering house of cards. But I do think it is a good idea, a viable one, and each time I have to tell someone about it it is a bit less terrible.

Of course I can’t really write a whole book based on a few odd weeks’ research. The plan is to gather enough material for a few chapters, then try to get an agent, then a publisher and an advance when I got home. This is all very well in theory, but terrifyingly difficult (and random) in practice. As my first research trip approached, three weeks or so ago, and I explained this plan to a friend, I felt like I was being completely ridiculous even to dream that it might work out for me. Millions of people want to be writers, and how many of them manage it with any reasonable degree of success? What makes me think I’m so special? I felt like a spoilt and stupid child. I felt like the living embodiment of hubris.

My trip was in part great and in part disastrous. On the whole I have more hope and more faith in my book now than I did before I began, but the magnitude of the task is also a lot clearer to me. This intimidates me but it won't stop me.

Meanwhile, the exquisite tortures of the Boy who doesn't want me being my best friend in Mexico, the person who listens to me, the person who makes me laugh and makes me calm and makes me happy. But also the person who teases me and torments me and is so undemonstrative and private that I find it hard to believe even in our friendship. Of wondering about the questions he doesn’t answer or I daren’t ask and having no right to answers, and then the answers being just as bad. Of being able to think and - mostly - act rationally, but completely unable to feel rationally about it. With my friendship with the Boy shaken and uncertain, I feel friendless and shaken in myself. I often do not feel brave enough even to carry on being here, fighting loneliness all the time, let alone to push myself to go to strange places and talk to strange people. And yet the idea of leaving Mexico is so painful I can’t let myself think about it.