Chronicles of the Disestablished

From experience, self-reinvention takes equal measures of resilience and determination, a moderate amount of courage along with lashings of being able to laugh at yourself.

There’s also an element of stupidity involved – too stupid to know you can’t actually do what you are trying to reinvent yourself as.

Wait – that’s called self-belief – not a bad ingredient in the mix.

My reinvention is as a freelance writer – a mercenary with a pen, iMac and iPhone being the key weapons of choice available to those willing to pay the outrageous price – well a few cents per word anyway.

The thing about reinvention or second careers is the learning curve that can be vertically daunting – enough to persuade the faint hearted to give the climb amiss and take an easier route.

It’s the ‘apprenticeship’ when you make multitudes of mistakes, have misgivings and self-doubt and gather the lines of knowledge on your forehead – or whip marks on your back.

I love the television show on TV One, 800 Words, a story about an Australian writer starting a new life with his two teenage kids following the death of his wife.

Writing a periodic column called 800 Words, even when in agony after picking up a hot casserole dish, and with 20 dinner party guests in the room next door, the hero dictates crisp meaningful gems replete with a moral before the first course is even served.

Of course, he has the benefit of scriptwriters who have not only created him and his life but the words he pens.

It’s been said on more than one occasion that the process of writing is easy.

All you have to do is sit down behind your typewriter, open up your veins and bleed over the page.

Finding a lead that draws people into your story, recognising boring cliches for what they’re worth or finding fresh ways to write about an old topic all contribute to the agony and joy of writing.

But it’s really about engaging with people and that’s where the ‘blood on the page’ comes in.

You want to reveal a part of yourself through your words.

I can spend hours on end looking at my blank screen trying to find the right words – let alone 800 of the buggers.

Then all 800 whirl and whiz around my mind when I should be sleeping.

Sometimes you just want it all to stop.

There’s a room without walls called ‘Lost Dreams’.

It contains a never-ending collection of ideas, hopes, and dreams that people have simply given up on; all boxed up, labelled and catalogued.

It got too hard, too expensive, the timing was wrong – blah blah blah – excuses. I can relate.

Imagine those hopes and dreams were never lost – imagine how the world might be. Imagine you.

It’s never too late to be the person you want to be, to achieve what you want to achieve.

You just need to actually want whatever it is and go for it.

Be the scriptwriter of your own story.