A Chapter of Uncertainty

My life at the moment leads up to the 1st of January 2025. From the 2nd of January onwards, I have no plans. I don’t know where I will work next year, where I will live or what I will be doing. 

I’m currently waiting on job applications and tossing up decisions and basically brainstorming what I want to do with my life for the next few years. The five-year plan I wrote at 20 has long been thrown out of the window. Nothing is tying me down and nothing is set in stone anymore. It’s freeing and it’s terrifying and it’s ultimately pretty stressful for an anxiety-ridden 23-year old who wants to achieve far too many things for one lifetime. Some ships have already sailed and some other metaphorical ships have thrown me overboard, leaving me treading water, wondering how other sailors make it work for them. It seems to be storm after storm for me sometimes.

Only one thing keeps me grounded and that is my creativity. No matter what happens, I can always make art. I can write. I can sing. I can paint. That is the only constant. You could drop me on a desert island and I would draw in the sand. I will always make things (in spite of everything, and because of everything).

I have loved art forever and I know I always will. I was 5, bringing a sketchbook to church (appropriately sacreligious) and my brother’s cricket games. One day I might be 80, painting portraits of the love of my life in a pretty house with a garden and a lazy, old dog. There’s no way of knowing where my path leads, but it’s comforting to know that art will always follow me, wherever I go.

In the next three months, everything or nothing could change, and since I can’t read ahead and I can’t control the uncontrollable (no matter how hard I try), I need to make peace with that. 

At least, if absolutely nothing else, I will always have the arts. 

xx Rose