What did you love to do when you were a kid? Sometimes we were most authentic when we played as kids and anything was possible.
I know a primary school teacher who, as a little girl, lined up her dolls to teach them. Sometimes it was the alphabet or a song, sometimes it was something she had learnt at school that day and sometimes she read them a story. Today, she is an excellent teacher.
I have been talking with a woman in her twenties who has recently left her hospitality job. She told me she doesn’t know what she wants to do – she needs some time to think.
‘What did you love to do when you were a kid?’ I asked her.
‘Oh, I want to study horticulture – I want to be outside,’ she answered. She knew.
I’ve been reading one of my old journals from when I was 11, as my protagonist is 12 and I’m thinking about what’s important to 11 and 12 year-old girls. I’m equally admiring/cringing at my eleven-year-old self – so perceptive for a kid yet so ignorant at the same time. And the writing style – well, let’s not go there!
Here are a few diary highlights –
- I handed in my project called My hobby – writing stories. I used my silver and green ‘special’ texta for the bubble writing heading.
- There’s also a folded piece of paper in the back of the diary. One side is a page from one of Dad’s chemistry papers on a water treatment plant – the other has notes for a short story called, ‘You, me and the dead.’ I must have been going through a goth stage perhaps! The handwriting looks older – maybe I was 13 or 14?
- On the 10th November, 1984, my friend Jacinta and I made a chocolate cake in Mum’s butterfly cake tin. I have that tin now! And I still love baking and eating chocolate cake.
- A couple of days later, I reread Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery and wished I could be a famous author like her.
- I listed some of my favourite words, like ‘shimmering.’ In a recent writing course, Kate Forsyth reminded us that words with ‘m’ sound comforting and nourishing – home, mum, womb …
- I described my room like this – My windows are opened but my curtains are closed. When the wind blows they are pressing themselves against the windows like old women gasping with horror.
Three and a half decades later, I’m still writing. Are you still doing what you loved as a kid?
Yes I am! I spent my childhood reading and many years later I am still reading.
My favourite authors may have changed, I have moved on from Enid Blyton, but I still lose myself in a book daily.
Reading is definitely for life and all ages.
I was always going to be a nurse (sister) but overseas caring for poor, sick people. I did become that nurse but not overseas!
I still looked after poor, sick people and anyone else who needed care. I hope my grandchildren have dreams and ambitions to follow like we did. They are all creative, engaging and I’m sure will take every opportunity to do what we have done.
Well done for living out your dream, Pam!
I too always wanted to be a nurse, to be a missionary worker, I did become a nurse but not the missionary worker although before retiring I did do some volunteering nursing in Vietnam. My 4yr old granddaughter, Ivy wants to be a nurse, I hope her dreams are reached.
I would call volunteer nursing overseas missionary work, Colleen!
I read constantly and wrote and told stories to my older siblings and liked to play “shops”with all the empty cigar boxes(from my grandfather)and tea and soap, biscuits etc empties. So I guess all my years of working in bookshops were a reflection of my childhood years.
So you ended up exactly where you were meant to be, Shirley – working in a beautiful bookshop!
Still crafting, still reading!!
Yay, Carolyn!