Imagine getting the
chance to talk to all your favourite (and even the not-so-favourite) people in
the world. Imagine getting the chance to ask them important and trivial
questions alike, just because you can. Imagine not having to do this by
sneaking into their houses and tying them up against their will (which is wrong
and an invasion of privacy, and can also get you locked up).
This is the kind of
life I envisioned for myself when I decided I want to be a journalist.
Preferably a music journalist, I always specify, but fashion is okay too. I say
this because I was never told I couldn’t pick what path I wanted to take in
life. I know what these people earn and I know it’s not completely comfortable and
so do my parents which is why they constantly tried to steer me in the
direction of law, or advertising (which I may even take up someday) even
through their supportiveness of my decisions, all because of a system of
education that does not know how to cater to the needs and wants of Generation Y and therefore leads people to believe that our bloodshot eyes and arthritic
fingers developed from the hours we spend looking at screens and typing out
missives will never get us anywhere in life. This is not true. Why should we be
judged based on our fascination with devices invented by the judges in the
first place? As Spock would say, it is simply not logical.
While the Internet is
condemned as a domain of lies and annoying advertising, it has provided me a
platform that has allowed me the chance to study mathematics if I wanted to
(which I wouldn’t because I math and I have a terrible history) and write about
which alt-pop song has my spine tingling. With websites like Coursera.com,
catering to the generation that has essentially grown up on the Internet, there
are a large number of options available to us. Of course, a physical, viable
degree is also important from physical, viable universities because no one’s
going to take you seriously if you say you got your degree in Marketing from an
online website, but it’s a step into the future.
I’ve wanted to be
many things, and those things were on the science track for a while- at 6, I
wanted to be a doctor, at 8, an inventor, at 9, an archaeologist, before taking
what I will term as the ‘dreamy preteen track’, with wanting to become a
musician at age 11, when I first received a guitar which subsequently lost all
its strings before I learned how to play it, wanting to be a writer of
fantastic novels from ages 12-14 before I realised that I really did have to
pick something and pick it quick.
By this time, I had discovered blogging and
Tavi Gevinson and I had my inspiration and it was all about fashion and fashion
magazines for me for a while, with a particular one-track focus on journalism
before Tavi founded Rookie Magazine and I was forced to confront what I really
wanted to do with my life. Here was a girl my age doing the things I wanted to
be doing and I felt inadequate because I had not achieved as much as she had
nor did it seem like I had the willpower to do so and it felt as if I had been
walking someone else’s path, essentially living a lie. So for a while, I tried
my hand at other things and nearly came unhinged because I was thinking: I’m so
bad at this, or this is so boring, what am I doing here???
Then I heard Lorde
for the first time in 2013 and I remember thinking, ‘wow, this girl really
knows what she’s talking about’ and so I googled her and all these interviews
and articles sprang up and I read about how she did her own thing and didn’t
overthink the opinions of others and was intelligent (doctorate proof-reading,
anyone?) and how she was awkward but never let that stop her, and I began to
understand the kind of person I was. Or at least, the kind of person I hoped to
be.
I’m a seventeen year
old girl and in this day and age, some people still take that to mean that I
don’t know how to make my own decisions. Sadly for them, I really, really do.
I want to travel, for
one, and maybe settle down in Italy or New York, someday. I want to work for Alternative Press and Pitchfork and
every decent music magazine I can get my hands on before I’m 30. I want to
pitch in for music sections of fashion magazines I really love. I want to
interview Imagine Dragons and Ryn Weaver and Lorde and First Aid Kit, and even
Taylor Swift. I want to help good indie artists get their music out there. I
want to go to festivals and dance my heart out. I want to converse with the
girls who are my heroes (Lorde, Tavi Gevinson) still even though I have become
my own person with my own dreams and aspirations and wants. I want to get a PhD
in a few years in Literature or English just so I can flaunt it in the faces of
people who may still wish to define me by my looks or my age or my gender or
even, archaically, by the colour of my skin. I want to finish a book. I want to
win an award. I want to maybe one day find my t’hy’la (cool points to those who
recognise the Star Trek reference).
I want things and
maybe I don’t even have to wait to grow old to get them. I just have to keep my
eyes (and mind and heart) on everything I’ve listed, and the things I haven’t
and maybe I won’t be a screw-up like it has been predicted by people who can't possibly see the future that I will become.
Live long, and prosper.
