Swimming Upstream

October 6, 2012

It is already a year of change. Last week I resigned from my job, and although I am intermittently panicked about how we’ll make our monthly college tuition payments (not to mention pay the mortgage), I feel like someone just let me out of a cage.

And R. announced, with trepidation and tears, her plan to take a gap year next year and try her luck in LA as an actor.

Two women with big, bold plans: R. to act and me to return to life as a fulltime freelance writer.

To those who prize security, such personal U-turns might seem fool-hearty. But security has never been my top priority and I never raised R. to chase it. I weaned her on the value that I’ve held most dear: being happy in my skin.  

More than any kid I know, R. has always been her own person, and like me, she has always swum upstream, against the tide.

It can be a hard way to live. Her friends have all settled into freshman year, as has she: But everyone is content (or says they are) and dug in, staying put until their four consecutive years are over. R., however, feels tugged by her lifelong dream to act. She is distracted and torn and she doesn’t want to be. She needs to follow her passion, and it happens to not be school.

And who am I to say ‘don’t go’? I left school for a year after freshman year to pursue my dream of becoming writer. Then I went back, earned my degree, and here I am. The worst thing, I told her, would be to wake up at 54 and realize that she’d missed her chance to try.

As for me, freelance writing has always been my normal. Taking the job that I have finally left was an experiment, an attempt to find my place in the commuting, paycheck-earning, professional world.  It was a soul-crushingly bad fit, and after two years of trying to force myself to like it, I have finally exhaled.

It’s not the best economy in which to liberate myself, but then, I have never followed convention. Like my brave 18-year-old, I’m swimming against the current and into the waves, hoping they’ll carry me for awhile.