Lottery Winners

This is a post about choices. It is a post about dreams. It is a post about mistakes, and about life from the perspective of a 19 year-old, and about lottery winners.

I've had a problem for a very long time - pretty much my entire life, in fact. But it never really became a problem until September 2016, because that was when I actually really acknowledged it for the first time; I had to.

My problem is this:

I have always wanted to be an author. Always. Stories have called out to me like it's in my blood or my bones or that place that fills up your shoulders and chest when you have an idea and have to do something about it or it will tear itself free. Acting comes in a similar way - after all, they're just different ways of making the story. And with both of them, it's like it's... Right. In both I grew and got better and I can look back in horror at what I thought was good five years ago (or more), but it's still the case that there's always been a knack. I'm hesitant to use "talent" because it's generally dismissive of the person behind it. Even a child who is "talented" at drawing has spent hours and hours and hours - in class, in the playground, at home, with a handheld torch after bedtime - drawing and drawing and drawing, but because they're so young and so good we just consider it a "talent". So along those lines, arguably, it's just my practise that's given me a way with stories. A way to make letters on a page into laughter, or a body on a stage into tears. But even then, I like to think there was at least some kind of innate ability there. Maybe, though, it's simply the ability to see things from a slightly different angle - to pick apart the story from the Thing That's Happened, and after learning from observation, to know how to make it into something more. I was younger than seven when I wrote my first novel; it was about a bat adventurer who was sent by a bat princess to retrieve her stolen necklace. And to this day, I am still in awe of the plot twist less-than-seven y/o me delivered to the invisible audience: the princess turned out to have been a villain all along. I continued to write for the next twelve years (and hopefully more) so you can definitely argue for practice, but frankly I think that there has to be some kind of "talent" for a less-than-seven y/o to come up with that kind of plot twist off their own back.

My problem is this:

I have always been a smart kid. Above average intelligence. Clever. They say that the worst thing for a child is to be slightly above average IQ-wise, because when you're young it sets an expectation of being better, not through work or perseverance but simply by nature, and at some point the world is going to come crashing down on you with the reminder that there are people who are much, much better than you.

My problem is this:

I have always been told to follow my dreams. Until I was thirteen, when I was told by high school careers officers and by enthusiastic teachers and by the parents of friends to follow a dream. And because I was smart, I knew that what I wanted wouldn't be acceptable. I can't even remember how long I've known that I needed A Back-up Plan. It seems like a lesson that's been with me since birth: Sure, kid, have your big dream, but... Make sure you have something else. Something real. Just in case, y'know? Not that we don't believe in you, but...

And... I'm not slating that. Not really. I once overheard two teachers discussing a boy in my year who was determined that he was going to be a Premier League footballer when he left school. They were terrified to knock down his dream, didn't want to destroy his ambition, but they also knew that he was not a particularly good football player, that he didn't have the resources to actually pursue the dream, and that he refused a back-up plan because that would be giving up on himself. And everyone knows that the underdog always achieves it when everyone else knocks them down, right?

And thirteen year-old me probably scoffed. Yeah, football kid wasn't gonna' achieve his dream. And he wasn't even smart enough to lie to the careers officer about it!

Because that was what I did. I was different, you see. I had talent, I had determination. I was a story, and in a story... You always win in the end.

But I wasn't actually brave enough to run with that to anybody's face, because I knew what would happen: English teachers who had read my stories would concede that they were good, and a nice teaching assistant would give me a thumbs-up, and then they would gently remind me, while handing me leaflets about A-levels and apprenticeships, that I needed A Back-up Plan.

And I couldn't hear those words, I knew that I wouldn't be able to hear them, because football kid was right. A back-up plan would be giving up on myself.

So I pretended. That was easier. I lied. I told the careers officer I had a wide range of interests but I particularly liked animals, literature, and theatre. She frowned and said that was a little broad to build a career on - I would have to start specialising at GCSE, or I'd never get ahead in the job market. I don't know what they told kids thirty years ago or what they tell them today, but when I was in high school we were honestly expected to have our career planned before we even ticked the boxes to select our optional GCSE subjects at the age of fourteen.

I held my ground here, and I picked three subjects not that would allow me to specialise in one discipline, but that allowed me to do things I liked.

By the time I was sixteen and applying to colleges and sixth forms, the careers people were getting pushier. I had to come up with a better lie. I picked my third or fourth favourite subject, Biology, because it was the only one that had a viable career behind it (I thought).

Before I started A-levels, though, two further things had happened.

The first was that I had decided I wanted to do an Animal Management B-tech/apprenticeship. I liked being hands-on with the animals, and it was practical, and it definitely had careers ahead of it, even "menial" ones - and after all, I didn't even need a high-paying career; I was going to be an author.

The second was that I had written two full novels, one of which I had published.

I did not take a B-tech or apprenticeship. I took five A-levels, one of which I failed and two further of which I dropped in the first year (I picked up a sixth and did both years in one year to make up the UCAS points).

And my writing career did not magically take off and save me from all of these choices. I kept writing.

And then, suddenly, in less than a year, it was time to apply to universities. Now I was definitely under pressure. I wished I'd thought about it more when I'd chosen my A-levels; my choices in degree were now limited by my odd mixture of A-levels, and why hadn't I considered this earlier?

Oh, yeah - because I never expected to get to this stage. Like, obviously I did, but I think in a way I'd still refused to accept it. This was my back-up plan, but it wasn't real. It was just an illusion to trick the disbelieving adults into thinking I wasn't being overambitious... Right?

About the same time, I started to take my writing more seriously. Acknowledge The Red Prince was terrible, but that it had importance as my first full-length novel (350,000 words, actually, so really more like three full-length novels. I went all out). Acknowledge Seeking was not great, but that it had importance as my first published novel (a more modest 120,000 words, thank goodness). Now, Dying Ember. Edit it properly. Get feedback. Close up those plot holes. Spend time. Take a risk with it. A bigger risk even than asking a friend to proof-read The Red Prince, even than publishing Seeking, had been.

Despite my limited choices I still ran with Biology. I was rejected from both of my first choice universities because I had done badly in my first year and also chosen the wrong subjects, and then...

Then it all kind of happened at once.

Summer volunteering at the Hawk Conservancy. Make big leaps with the first draft of Sylvestus. Trip to Amsterdam with friends.

And then I started my Biology degree.

What I had realised was this:

I wanted to work at the Hawk Conservancy. Or somewhere like it. It was more physically demanding than I was used to, I've never been a massively outdoorsy person, it was about common sense more than intelligence... But I wanted it. I wanted it more than I've ever wanted anything since I used to imagine giving talks about my books in packed convention halls and talking to fans and changing lives with my stories.

What I had realised was this:

If I had taken an animal management B-tech or apprenticeship when I was sixteen, I could have been here already. But I was "too smart". Teachers and friends' parents had told me it was beneath what I was capable of. They said I wouldn't be fulfilled and it was a shame to waste my talents. And I was filled with overwhelming rage and grief with the realisation that their doubt - and that my own dispassionate desire to please - had stripped this away from me. I was too old to take an animal management apprenticeship; the Conservancy told me outright when I summed up the courage to ask that I was already too overqualified to ever be staff there.

What I had realised was this:

I wanted to live in Amsterdam. Every second I spent there it was like my soul was reaching out of my body and begging for it. Maybe that's what the thing in my shoulders and chest is that pulls itself free when I'm filled with an idea. It rarely happens when I think about writing any more.

What I had realised was this:

I had spent my entire life trying to be smart enough to still be considered the best by everyone I came across. I would watch endless episodes of QI and The Unbelievable Truth just so that I could spew random facts whenever I met someone new to try and impress them. But it was like being smart came with a responsibility - to be a scientist, or a doctor, or a lawyer. And people may admit that Stephen Fry is very intelligent and also an actor slash satirist, yet if a smart kid says they want to be an actor, most adults will grimace and suggest that... They probably want a back-up plan, though, you know, not that we don't believe in you...

What I had realised - what came crashing down on me, overwhelming and crushing and breath-taking, while I sat in a plant biology lab session listening to lists of dates of assignments and tests and exams - was that I didn't want to be here.

I didn't want to be a biologist. I didn't want to be at uni. I didn't want to be in this lab, I didn't want to learn this information, I didn't want to suffer through exams and assignments for something that would go somewhere I didn't want to end up, I didn't want...

Anything I had done for myself.

I had made a mistake.

That was what came to me.

I realised, overwhelmingly and inescapably, that I would rather be dirt-poor and treated like a drop-out, but working every day of my life with spectacular birds of prey, than be here. That I would rather be working an ordinary mundane job in Amsterdam, a city I had fallen utterly in love with, where I could sit in the Oosterpark and listen to the cello beneath the Rijksmuseum and write in the evening in my tiny sun-filled apartment, than be here. That I would rather be a broke actor with no time to write and no chance of ever really "making it", working in an industry I had tried to dampen my love for because it wasn't considered prestigious enough for my above-average intelligence vanity.

The only reason I didn't drop out in October was fear.

Because there is one thing I have always been overwhelmingly afraid of, and that is living an ordinary life. Because writing still took priority, and because the Hawk Conservancy and Amsterdam were both equally as out of reach now. I was terrified of working 9-5 in a suffocating office or strictly-managed shop. The thought genuinely still makes my throat start to close and my eyes water with panic. I would die. People say it's okay to hate your job and love your free time, but I am terrified of wasting my life hating half of it and waiting constantly for the good parts.

And an ordinary job? What if it exhausted me? What if I spent so much of my life trying to pay bills and stay alive that I never had the time or energy to write? I knew I could work five days a week and volunteer at the Conservancy one day a week and just live like an ordinary person in the ordinary world who works an ordinary job and has hobbies but it terrified me just a little more than staying in uni did, to think that I might one day look around and realise I had been trying so hard to just survive that I was nothing but a shell, and all of my dreams and stories were dust in my shoes.
This is quite existential for a 19 year-old. I imagine older readers being slightly alarmed by this point. When you're raised on a mixture of Follow your dreams and Have a sensible dream, on Do what you love at the same time as Do what will secure your financial future, you get stuck with this kind of hysteria. And if you're in doubt about it, trust me: pretty much everyone I've spoken to in my generation about it has had the exact same crushing panic at some point, most constantly.

Of course, I was also acutely aware that I was hurtling toward something I still didn't want - a career in ecology, or cell biology, or plant anatomy, where I would be just as exhausted by the long hours and soul-sucking bureaucracy, but where I was expected to feel rewarded by the fact that I was working in an area I loved and found fascinating.

Which I didn't. Not enough. Fascinating enough to have wanted to study it when studying meant no more to me than a hobby does to someone with a better career plan, but nowhere near enough to want it to be that career and to be able to find it sustaining enough to live on.

So I made myself a deal. I would stay for first year. You get one fail-year covered by student finance, so I'd be in more debt if I ever decided to go back to uni, but I would still get the loans and grants interest-free for the second attempt. And I was going to come to a decision in that year. I either came up with an actual career in biology I was excited about and willing to follow to the end, or I dropped out and admitted what I had been hiding all my life: I wanted to be an author. I would work an ordinary job and make new plans, ones that settled for second-best. Not slightly above-average. Just... Precisely average. Sometimes that's okay. Sometimes you can't be better, and you don't have to.

Up until now my life-plan had been this: pretend you have a viable career goal e.g. scientist; follow expected career path with elaborate ruse so no-one is suspicious about your lack of genuine interest in it; write write write in the meantime; get published; make £££; stop other career; do whatever u want in regards to acting, birds of prey, and art, because ur super-rich and technically qualified for one of them.

Of course it had occurred to me before that this might fail - when I was sixteen, I believe, in one soul-crushing cascade of realisations that I gradually came to terms with and built back from - but now the fact was clearer and closer.

And I genuinely can't remember who, but I confessed this to an adult, laughing it off and pretending like even saying the words didn't hurt, and they laughed too. "We all believe that," they chuckled. "We still do. All our lives we keep believing that one day we'll follow the proper dream and get rich. It's nothing to be embarrassed about hoping for."

And I appreciated their words, I did, and I suppose a part of me was reassured. But I was also terrified because for a second, what I had thought was this:

I am not everyone. I am not hoping. I am the person who succeeds. I am the person who is slightly better. I am a story. I was born with this gift and I have worked on it and perfected it until it is an art. I am a story. I am the main character. I know not everyone can achieve their dreams, but I can. I have to.

I will.

Typing it out sounds like crushing narcissism, but I think we all think this way. We know everyone can't achieve their dreams and we acknowledge this but in our hearts... In our hearts we know the truth.

We are all special. We are all going to be The One.

I think even when we try for humility and realism, we have to hold onto this just a little bit or we lose hope completely. Maybe I'm special because I had a knack even when I was as young as I can remember, or maybe because I am prepared to work exceedingly hard for it, or maybe because I have a tendency to take centre-stage and do small amounts of remarkable things.
We have to keep believing that.

I saw an interview with Bo Burnham, a... Comedian-musician-thing? I've only seen clips and gifsets of him but it's that kind of genre. The interviewer asked, as they always do, what advice he had for all those kids who loved his work and wanted to follow his career path. And what he said is terrible, and it is also perfect:

"Give up. The system is rigged against you. Your hard work and talent will not pay off. I would say don't take advice from people like me who have gotten very lucky. We're very biased. You know, like Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, 'Liquidize your assets, buy Powerball tickets, it works!'"

In April, I made a decision. Even as I prepared to power down for the editing of Sylvestus, I started looking at graduate accelerated veterinary programmes. So, the new plan is to graduate from this university with a BSc in Zoology, then somehow acquire ~£90,000 in order to do a graduate accelerated Veterinary Medicine programme at another university; because of the BSc I'll be able to do the BVetMed in half the time of an A-level entrant. The intention is still to specialise in avian treatment.
It was a hard thing to start looking at, because the decision felt like failure.
By acknowledging that I might not ever be a famous writer who spends their non-writing time speaking to packed convention halls and arranging television adaptation deals, it felt like giving up completely on that possibility. That's why I've never, truly and in all honesty, tried to achieve something like getting onto the VetMed before.

When I'd looked at courses and written down open day dates and calculated how much money I'd need, I couldn't write for a while. No point pouring my soul into Sylvestus when no-one would read it, no point making more Dying Ember illustrations, no point no point no point...
JK Rowling saying that she almost gave up on Harry Potter because she thought no-one would like it and "the world needs your story; keep going" doesn't help, because JK Rowling won the lottery. Stephen Fry won the lottery. Maggie Stiefvater won the lottery. I'm happy for anyone who can be inspired by their stories, but they don't cut it for me any more.

I set deadlines and started again not because the world needs my story, or because someone told me how much they enjoyed Dying Ember, or because I saw a motivating quote on Facebook, but because I wanted to. Because stories live in the winged place in my chest that reaches out sometimes and takes hold, and writing them makes me happy. Because I've been writing nearly every day for the past six years solid, and old habits die about as well as white heterosexuals in an action movie.

Maybe this post reads as nihilistic and depressing, but it wasn't intended that way.
I'm not here to tell you to follow your dream no matter what the #h8rs say, and I'm not here to tell you to give up on your dream and accept your fate as an ordinary person.
This post is for the people my age who have never thought beyond getting to uni and suddenly find themselves stranded with no further plans. For the kids who know their dream is impossible and are terrified to tell people about it because they know they'll be expected to fail. For the people who scoff at what a 19 year-old could possibly know about life, already.
I haven't reached a conclusion yet. Maybe when I'm old the answer will become startlingly clear, but I doubt it. I don't know whether settling on a VetMed plan counts as giving up on writing, and I don't know whether I should have dropped out and started working in a cafe in Amsterdam, and I don't know whether I'm ever going to *make it*, whatever that actually means.
But I'm trying. And I'll keep trying. And I'll damn well be happy while I do it, even if it kills me.

Daniel Radcliffe, offering relatable resignation in these troubling times, as ever