So, you wanted to read the news?
Have you ever experienced a career dream that you thought you wanted slip away from you?
There was a time when I wanted to be a journalist, to be more precise I wanted to be the newsreader sat behind the news desk for the BBC. There was a certain cache, and still is, attached to being a BBC newsreader and I wanted more than anything to be one, reading the main bulletins of the day on the 6pm news. I could imagine myself sat there in a natty suit, delivering the day's most important news stories with panache and empathy.
In order to get onto my path as a hot-shot news journalist, I quickly realised I needed some experience in the field. So I joined a hospital radio station and began to undertake work experience at local newspapers and commercial radio stations.
At one newspaper I had quite a lot of freedom, which was exciting. I covered local events, trials and even curated a whole piece myself, from conception to birth. Where I had to contact a local photographer to arrange pictures of my subject to be taken for my article. I also remember being sat in the back of a car (parked in a supermarket car park) furiously scribbling down quotes for the article as I spoke to the interviewee over the phone.
I found some newspaper clippings of the articles I produced during one of my work experience weeks and when I read them, I felt proud of my achievements. I had also kept an email print out from an editor which had been forwarded to me at the time. It was from 2012 and from a publicist whose client I did a small piece on which had gained good traction, and they had contacted the paper to say thank you. I remember when I received the email the editor told me to enjoy it, as according to him, thanks in journalism was rare. I felt like a bona fide journalist! Not only that, but I learnt a lot and had fun during the three weeks of work experience.
I was also co-hosting a weekly show at my local hospital radio station called Request Line — where we would play patients requested songs, the song selection was pretty niche as it was mostly little old ladies who wanted to listen to Perry Como and Johnny Mathis. The whole team there were very friendly and we became a little family.
Then it all changed when I was told I had to get a qualification if I wanted to proceed professionally, and that’s when it all began to unravel. Unfortunately, my experiences during this time completely derailed my confidence and desire to pursue this career. The lead up to one course put me completely off starting it and the second course unfortunately did not run smoothly or meet my expectations, so I left and then that was that. I walked away from it and the years past. I moved into other sectors, and the dream career that I thought I wanted slowly slipped away.
I’m not sure if the way things conspired carved out a different path for me, or maybe deep down I wasn’t ready for it and fate intervened and closed off the idea at that point in time. In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about this. If you aren’t fully open to something, it can leave you and move onto someone else. When you are ready, something else will arrive that will take its place, and you will be fully receptive to it.
I realised that although the flame had diminished, it never completely went out, and it evolved into something new as time past. Leading it to re-emerge in a different guise 10 years later. I wasn’t a journalist or a newsreader, but I became a podcaster and writer. Even now, as I write that, it feels strange to claim those titles, as if they don’t actually feel like they belong to me, but they do. Bloom and Grow and Muppetsational! both arrived at times when my world was changing. They say that a change in motion (or in the case of my podcasts' arrival changing world events) creates a shift, and they were both born out of it.
If I had pursued the journalist career and the courses worked out, I am sure these would not have happened. That version of me didn’t come into fruition, and instead a different player appeared and took an altered path. I don’t regret that I didn’t make my dream career, as I don’t feel any resentment or sadness that I didn’t make it. Sometimes things don’t go the way you planned, and it can take time for it to make sense. But when your path ultimately reveals itself, I think that it works out for the better. You never know what might happen, one day maybe journalism and a news career may open up again, only time will tell.