Am I lucky? I find myself in a fulfilling job - yet today as I lounge around my house, trying to dose myself through the pain of the mystery boil, I wonder how I got here.
How did I become a writer?
I often find myself correcting myself or my mother when I am introduced. I do not feel like a journalist - after 3 years in a journalism school I knew that wasn't what I wanted to do (that said, after the same three years studying politics, I knew that wasn't for me either).
Telling stories has apparently been a pastime of mine since I could talk. As a kid, spending my weekends steeped in Suva coffee culture, I would rattle off to my mother's friends (about god knows what) endlessly.
As I grew, I found myself unable to speak. I grew nervous and worried but watered my imagination everyday and now it sits, unkempt as my body hair, overgrown and wild.
This imagination garden, my haven, my home, has become my double edged sword. I have so many stories, but it's grown a life of it's own and often manifests in anxiety, a curious depression and doubt.
I worry that while I love my job, I love where I am, the people who surround me and everything else... that I am beneath it all.
I worry that my job is not "a real job" - not the classic 9 to 5 we expect. I always have a story idea lurking at the back of my head, a concept for a piece, a video, a proposal. I worry that I have a voice that shouldn't be seen or heard because... well... I worry I am not "Fijian" enough.
But isn't all of that just the fine print? Why not continue to colour the walls with sweeping gestures, painting a wide, wide picture that no one will really see detail in - hiding the details from scrutiny?
Ah well, maybe this is all part and parcel of my unkempt, life-of-its-own garden. Who knows?
