100 Day Creative Challenge Day 78: One Wild and Precious Life
When I was four I wanted to be a teacher. When I was ten I wanted to be a writer. When I was fourteen I wanted to go to Norway. When I was seventeen I had no idea of what I wanted to be when I grew up. When I was twenty one I wanted to backpack around the world. When I was thirty I was a mum to two children. When I was forty I gave up teaching to become a full-time writer. Then I started to go to Cambodia to train teachers as well as writing. Now I’m a writer who teaches and travels.
It’s funny how my 4 year old self, my ten year old self and my twenty one year old self knew what it was that I wanted to be and do, and yet while I was living my life I had no idea what I was doing. I just lived my life without any detailed plans or intentions.
It’s not that easy to figure life out. I loved Elizabeth Gilbert’s talk on Curiosity . Sometimes you have to follow where curiosity leads to find out where you’re meant to be. Knowing exactly what it is that we want to do and all the details of how to make that happen aren’t all that’s necessary. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow and somehow you get led back to what you were wired to do.
All I know for certain is that this is how I want to spend my life—collaborating to the best of my ability with forces of inspiration that I can neither see, nor prove, nor command, nor understand. It’s a strange line of work, admittedly. I cannot think of a better way to pass my days. Elizabeth Gilbert
My great loves of reading, writing, teaching and travelling have been themes through out my life and somehow they all came together in one of those moments where we say, ‘This is what I want to do with my life.’
Living as a writer and traveller is an incredible life. I’m blessed to live a life I dreamed of, in fact, better than I ever dreamed. I’m privileged to have choices and to live a life of creativity. I’m humbled to be able to help others live out their life dreams through mentoring.
I know that this is what I was born for.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
