A Gemini’s Revelation
My whole life I’ve struggled with how writing would fit within my plans for the future. When I was a kid, and learning how to type on the computer (thanks Mavis Beacon) I would constantly type out the sentence “I love writing, but what about my real life?” Even now as I typed out that sentence my fingers knew the pattern perfectly. My fingers trained to type out the words for decades. Looking back, I don’t know why I had this conundrum. It’s as if even from a very young age I felt the seriousness of writing, the tortured soul. Maybe it was because I watched Harriet the Spy as a kid. I was 9 years old and it was the summer of 1997. That movie changed me. It was my first wide eyed look at what it would be like as a writer and I loved it. I loved that Harriet HAD to write, that she HAD to get the words out. I loved that she was intense and had this frenzied energy about her higher calling in life.
“I want to remember everything. And I want to know everything.”
Her motto became my motto. After all Harriet was 11 and knew far more than I did at a mere 9 years old. In the movie, writing made Harriet a little bit of a loner, because it was work and it was serious. Is that why I’ve put being a writer on a pedestal all of my life? Why I feel imposter syndrome at trying this writing thing because I chose to get my degree in art?
After that fateful summer day in 1997 I knew I wanted to be a writer. I would follow in the footsteps of my older sister (who was an editor for her college newspaper on the East Coast), and major in journalism and minor in photography and work for National Geographic and write books on the side and travel the world and learn everything about everything and then write it all down to share with the world.
That was my plan.
In high school I started painting more, something I had always loved to do, and soon realized I had a talent colors and compotitions. Being a writer became a backseat option and instead I decided to go to college to pursue art history, fine art and museum studies with the hope of being a museum curator one day. Of course I would also become a famous painter on the side.
But, what about writing? I felt like a left my first love behind in exchange for a new plan, one that wasn’t as venerable, one that would have a regular paycheck.
This is getting long, but what I am trying to say it that I’ve always felt like I couldn’t do both. I CHOSE the other path; I chose the museum job. What right did I have, what right do I have to pursue that first love again? I was recently met up with a bunch of friends for a Full Moon Party and we talked about my fear that has been holding me back from really stepping into the role of writing. I explained to them, that my whole life I’ve had these two passions, and I don’t know how to have both.
“You’re a Gemini!” my astrological loving friend blurted out “You can do both!”
And I started laughing because I am a Gemini, and I have twin girls for crying out loud, OF COURSE I would have two passions in my life.
Why didn’t I think of that?
-Helen