Late Bloomers

Continuing my thoughts of yesterday about never giving up your dream I would remind myself and you that there is such a thing as Late Bloomers. Indeed, Brendan Gill has written a book by that title which discusses the lives of some 75 individuals who achieved recognition late in life. Some didn’t even find their passion until middle age, like Julia Child and some switched careers to become famous, like Harry Truman.

Now for most of us switching careers and taking chances isn’t part of our personality because we aren’t gamblers. When I was down on my luck back in the ‘90s I was hanging on by my fingertips in a low paying job and the thought of quitting the only job available to take a chance in sales was too frightening for me to consider. My observation at the time was that the women who were becoming successful in that career were either completely destitute (by this I mean they did not own a their own home) or they had a husband to support them. I had a house with a mortgage and I could not afford to take chances by quitting a regular job on the off chance that I could sell a lot of lipstick. It became a sideline for me and when something is a sideline it rarely takes off because one needs to put a lot of time and effort into a thing. Some people are born sales people and would be successful regardless of what they were selling but I am not one of those people.

Looking back over the last decade I recognize another thing that I am not. I am not a self motivator. By this I mean that sometimes I require an impetus to push me forward into something new. I have spent a good part of these 10 years or more excusing my laziness by saying that “I am so tired when I get home. It’s so dark, blah, blah, blah.” It’s true that I was tired but I also knew that I had to stop giving myself this excuse and get doing something or my life was going to sail away on a grey and murky river of nothing. Despite coaching myself I found it hard to be motivated to do anything. I finally took a leap of faith and signed up for a writing weekend. Now I feel my young ambition coming back to me.

I had been a little discouraged when I read Stephen King’s book “On Writing” where he said something along the lines if one was not writing every day one wasn’t a writer. I didn’t consider my journals writing so I thought “I guess I’m not a writer.” Wrong answer. Final answer? No. I changed my answer to “I am a writer no matter what anyone says.”

Writing is my passion and whether or not it is worthy of praise from others, this is what I need to do for myself.

My name is Sanne and I am a Late Bloomer!