What do I want to do with my career?
What a loaded question to as an 18-year-old.
See, I have no idea really. I mean I know the area of journalism I want to get into. And I know the way I want to make people feel when they read my stuff. I guess that’s the answer. But at the same time, it still feels so much like a theoretical life. I don’t feel like I’m living it yet. I’m not living it yet. I’m learning how to do what I need to do in order to live it.
But I’m also rambling.
I guess what I want to do, in its simplest forms, is make people happy through what I write. I want to entertain.
Specifically, I want to be a travel and/or entertainment journalist. There’s so much doom and gloom in the world of journalism, and while it’s important to stay up to date with current affairs and what’s going on in the world, it can be easy to become bogged down in all the crapness.
I’d like to be able to offer a respite. Feel good stuff. Help people plan their future dream holidays. Show them all the weird and wonderful things that are out in the world. Make them hungry to see it themselves. I want to give them a small insight into the lives of others. I want to be able to offer people an escape from reality. Talk to them about their favourite bands, or actors, movies, concerts, books, whatever. And I don’t mean in the gossipy, negative way you get in gossip mags.
I want to make people feel good.
But I think, most importantly, I want to feel good about what I’m doing.
I want to stay true to myself and to what I’m writing.
This may be idealist, and if I’m ever lucky enough to become a paid writer, hired by a company, there may very well be a certain tone or point of view that my writing will have to comply with. But I think, as long as certain aspects of those restrictions are compatible with my personal morals and values, then I’d be able to do that.
Again, that may very well be a naïve way of viewing the world and my future career, but hey, it’s what I really want out of life.
Over the last 3 or 4 years, I’ve had several people, including a number of my past English teachers, tell me that I should give up on journalism before I even started. And their reasons had nothing to do with my writing ability, but more with the industry and my alleged “fragility of character” (yes, one of them actually said that). Well, I’m here now and I have no intentions of giving up.
aesthetic narrative 