Life at 23

I am 23 years old. I am a writer, a thinker, a traveler, occasionally a retail-seller, a daughter, a friend, a girlfriend. Sometimes I'm sad and sometimes really-really sad but other times I'm over the moon ecstatic. I've written exactly 3 articles for a fashion magazine, conducted over 150 interviews, sold 1000 items of clothing, wrote one book for a chef, translated 50 bodies of various text, read numerous books, have studied countless hours. Approximately. I have cried, I have loved, I have laughed and I have written a million words about all of those emotions.
Thinking back at how I expected my life to be by the time I reached my 20s, well it was not this. I expected I would have graduated from an amazing university with honors and gotten a degree in something that I love, I would have written my first book and maybe even had it published, I would be financially independent and may have even gotten married to the love of my life. Being a teenager, 23 just seems so far away and so grown up. You expect that everything in life will have fallen into place by then and you will have everything figured out. Reality is far from that and for good reason. When at 18 I was planning my bright-looking future I picked a major that, though I stuck with for almost three years, I realized I hated. I love to educate myself (matter of fact I do educate myself every single day) but I refuse to study something that utterly bores me and that I have no intention of working with just to have a piece of paper to shove in someone's face. Furthermore, I knew in my heart that there was no school that could teach me what I already was sure I wanted to do, so I decided to drop out of University and proceed to actively follow my dream by getting writing jobs(which hasn't been easy) and by taking time to actually write. I never put school out of the question I was just only willing to study something that I really love and until I found that it would just have to wait.
I am now not so suddenly but definitely abruptly faced with the question, not so much posed to me as a question but rather as a threat, of what I want to do with my life. My options as posed by my father are these: go back to school or be cut off and left to fend for myself, in order to realize that I must go back to school. I think the phrase we are looking for is emotional blackmail. Because, while I completely agree with the fact that I have to think about my future and what I want to do with that future and with the fact that I should find the way to support myself, I feel that this is not the question my dad is posing. In his eyes I am meant to go back to school in either option whether that is by choice or by facing the hardships of the real-world and changing my mind about it and going back to school. I feel like I will not be supported in either situation but rather I am expected to fail for even trying to make it without a college degree. I am automatically put into a category of "the one without a college degree" when I am so much more than that. University degrees are for some people but not for all. Maybe they are for me too but not until and if I find what it is I would want to do with that said degree.
Forgetting the words of my father, I am posing the question of what I want to do with my life to myself, whilst having the knowledge that I have already accomplished many things and have a lot to be proud of. For I don't feel that the time I have spent has been a waste rather quite an experience that has helped me to know myself better and in that be a better writer. Because I always knew I wanted to be a writer and if I can put pen to paper and finger to keyboard and produce something worthwhile than damn it I am.
I have worked in jobs I loved and some I hated and I'd do it again, and if paying the bills means getting a job I hate then I'll do that too (maybe it'll even give me something more to write about). And if a degree is what I want to get then that's what I'll do. Though I've been dreading myself and my impossible thoughts and agony and stress methinks maybe this is not such a bad thing. I'm choosing to focus on the positive and to commit myself to committing, to really apply myself and to follow my dreams. Whatever I decide in the process of fulfilling those dreams, I won't do it out of fear or because someone said so, but because it helps me better myself, for myself and gets me one step closer to the end of my personal rainbow. 
Like my mum said "where there's a will, there's a way"

How to cook for your boyfriend...and ten other people

I hate being sick. I fucking hate it. Okay, who doesn't, but seriously it's like all the time I spend procrastinating means nothing cause now that I'm sick I start missing those things I all of a sudden have the urge to do but don't feel up for it. You ever get that? Anyone? Really?
Though I've been like this since Saturday, which is no excuse for not posting anything for almost two months (we will talk about this later), at first I thought I was just hungover from the night before, not uncommon since my buddy's band was playing Saturday night and going to their gigs hungover has become something of a tradition. The worst part is I'm not actually in a feverish delirium, inspiring Poe-worthy, morbid thoughts, bed-bound and semi-comatose. I say worst part because the way I'm feeling is like a never-ending hangover. Headache, nausea and a general mopy tiredness that seems to have to no intention of subsiding any time soon. With that said, I did manage the small feat of cooking for eleven people yesterday(an arugula and spinach salad with strawberries and bacon and a balsamic vinaigrette, meatballs on toasted brioche with a caramelized apple sauce and penne with shrimp,mushrooms and curry for the main course, impressive I know) and making eleven panna cotta set diagonally in individual glasses, a process that felt a lot like diffusing a bomb. In retrospect, my Speakeasy 20s-themed birthday-party which had me hosting twice than many people and required turning my entire living room into a bar seemed a lot easier.

 This whole time that I've been away from my blog, going out, taking weekend trips, hosting parties, taking on tasks for the sheer challenge of them, but mostly sulking at home, there's been this sense of hopelessness, for lack of a better word. Nothing is too terrible, or too exciting, meaning there's nothing really worth writing about and that, instead of making me restless or creating an urgency I so long for, is quite frankly putting me in a dreadful quick-sand of a rut. I've taken a step back for far too long and getting back on the saddle seems impossibly tedious at this point. In fact everything seems like tedious work. The tiresome reality of every fleeting day is dulling my senses and I don't feel in the least ready to face the fact that I must get into a head-on collision with this reality in order to change it. Ugh! Alas, it is up to me to acknowledge that I haven't been robbed of my talent nor have I lost myself in the mundanity of repetitiveness but rather have dimmed the switch of an otherwise brilliant light. A quarter-life crisis I think kids these days are calling it and I know I mustn't be the only one. And if getting sick is helping me realise that, well then there's definitely something wrong with me... which I am now strangely okay with. And at the end of the day if Sam Smith can win all the Grammy's, then so can I! Not win all the Grammy's that is, but at least make it through writing a post on a blog not more than five people read. Seriously, if you too are experiencing a similar situation than post a comment, share your feelings and become the lucky sixth+ person who reads my blog!