The Joy is in the Journey

Today, as I blog for the first time in far too long, I'm sat writing at my new desk, freshly positioned in my new office.  Yes, it's that time: time for a much-needed furniture move around, time for change.  Because for me nothing gets the motivation, energy and inspiration pumping like a change of office or living space.

In the eighteen months we’ve lived in the bungalow this will be the third room I've inhabited as my place to write and study.  Chances are, it won’t be the last.

Now that my office window overlooks the back garden, I can sit and watch the fir trees blustering in the breeze, enjoying the vista of the adjoining fields that have recently been harvested reflected in the screen of my Mac.  And now’s the time to get down to some serious work and begin to accept the reality, which the process of the room change was supposed to help me forget: that last semester’s grades have arrived, and yet again I’ve failed to accomplish those Firsts I strived so hard to achieve, and believed I deserved.

Because unlike the difficulties I had back in January, I wasn’t struggling for inspiration on my assignments or to simply get words down on the page to meet the word count.  This time round my words and story flowed effortlessly, and I was proud of the work I handed in.

And yet, still, something went wrong.

Of course, after experiencing the sickly ache of disappointment, I immediately wrote off the whole experience.  Telling myself that the work I’d handed in was useless, that I am useless, more worryingly that my ability to judge my work is off key.  That I can’t write.  That I am destined and doomed to a life of 9 to 5 office work in which I, along with my creativity, will slowly shrivel away.

I was angry too, understanding that the possibility of me being able to achieve an overall First in my Degree was becoming slim to none, and that I was failing to reach the target I had set myself.

However, after one or two pep talks from Steve and time to reflect I’ve finally had the necessary epiphany and thankfully get it: I understand my silliness about it all.

You see, three years ago, I would never even have imagined I was even capable of getting this far, of having completed the second year of a Degree.  And yet, somehow, I have lost sight of that, I have lost all perspective.

Back at school, I was an awful student.  I had no concept that education mattered, or that it defined your potential career.  When I wanted to take A levels, my school suggested gently that perhaps it wasn’t for me.  So, I went to a local college who would have me and started A level’s in English Literature and Theatre Studies alongside a Foundation Course in Theatre.

I soon dropped the English Literature and focused on my then passion, theatre, and sort of bumbled along not really achieving very much.

Twenty years later, after a great deal more bumbling through the motions, I found my life had come full circle as I perused the brochure of the same college I attended decades before, desperate to find an evening course I could get involved in.  Mainly because Steve was planning to start a history course and I hate to be left out. 

Although, the thrill and lure of a new course starting in September has an overwhelmingly powerful effect.  Even the prospectus contains the magic.  All those courses dazzling you from the page, offering tremendous promise and possibilities for your life: of the person you could become if you only attend each week.

In the end, I decided on the A level English Literature course.  Partly because it was only a one-year course, which is a comfortable level of commitment for me, and because I thought that by reading the classics it would help me to improve and inspire my own writing.

But with the school’s assessment of me ‘not being bright enough for A levels’ still ringing in my ears, and the embarrassment of a D in Theatre Studies clear evidence of their opinion, I soon panicked that I would not be able to manage the course.  That I had taken on more than I could handle.

A few weeks in to the course though and I was enjoying myself and feeling a benefit in my understanding of other’s work.  I had also begun to realize that not only could I do this, I could potentially do this well.

Maybe, I wasn’t so stupid after all.

And so with this new thought fuelling my motivations, and with a need to lose myself in study to escape the difficulties of the previous year, my desire for a grade A was created.

Soon after I discovered you could study Creative Writing at Degree Level and suddenly I was applying and being accepted within an educational system that I never, ever imagined myself being clever enough to be part of. 

I’ve spent my entire life believing I was academically stupid.  Now a new world was opening up before me and in a subject I was passionate about; it was almost too good to be real.

In my excitement though, I lost sight of my aim, which was to improve my own writing and develop confidence in my work.  Instead, I set myself a target of achieving what appears, for me, to be an elusive First and have ended up struggling over the past two years to live up to the expectations and demands I have placed upon myself.  Weighing myself down with unnecessary pressure whilst managing to strangle my creativity, and deny myself any fun I may have had along the way.

In this yoga DVD I have, the instructor talks about the process of stretching and encouraging our bodies to free themselves from the knots we force them in to with bad posture and lazy lifestyles. This process, she says, will take time but we must remember that, ‘the joy is in the journey.’

And that is what I have forgotten these past few years: that the joy is in the journey.

In being so rigid about achieving a top grade rather than simply focusing on what I can learn and the enjoyment that can be experienced in doing so, I have crushed any sense of joy in my educational journey.

How stupid is that?

However, there is hope.  After the therapeutic process of the room change, I’m able to look back with a calmer, more focused perspective and recognise that it is from the horribly low grades that I’m embarrassed about that I have learned the most.  Those grades forced me to try and combat my issues with grammar and punctuation; they have encouraged me to identify my style of writing more clearly.  They’ve taught me that short stories don’t like to be condensed into a word count, and that it’s best to write them as they want to be written and then edit. 

More importantly, with a couple of harsh assessments of my writing that conflicted dramatically with other’s opinions of the same work, I have learned that I don’t always have to trust what others say.  Listen to them and understand what they have to tell me, yes.  Trust what they are saying at face value and without questioning, no. 

The other thing I finally realised is that a bad grade isn’t saying: ‘You can’t write, you’re going to have to go back to the day job in customer services.’  What it is saying is this: ‘In this particular piece of writing, something is not working and needs fixing.’ 

And there’s a big difference.

During this process as a mature student, I have learned a tremendous amount about myself.  Not least that I seem to have conquered my commitment issues with courses beyond a year and also begun the process of disabling internal beliefs of my ‘stupidity’. 

But there are other things that I perhaps wouldn’t have learned elsewhere if I wasn’t surrounded by teenagers: like being comfortable in who I am as I approach forty; enjoying the maturity of ageing, self-acceptance, that I’m a slightly anti-social person who has learned to feel okay sitting alone in a classroom among clusters of chatting students. 

Unquestionably, being in a classroom environment has, at times, been challenging when the gremlins of school experiences have returned to haunt me.  But I have also felt empowered, feeling able to break through some of those fears that we can cling to unknowingly.

So, after the remaining few weeks of the holidays undoubtedly whizz by, and I begin the final year, my intention is not to focus exclusively on the completion of assignments or become blindsided by the end result of the grade. No, what I plan to do is to open myself up fully to the process of learning and even more daringly, try to enjoy it.

Because I don’t want my final year to simply be a stressful struggle towards the end result of graduation.  Instead, I want to complete my university experience with the emphasis firmly focused on fulfilling my potential as a writer.  So, no more scrabbling to achieve unattainable goals because from now on I intend to embrace every moment, experiencing the joy created by this momentous journey that I am on.