Rewriting the middle

This is a term I keep hearing being thrown around and it’s got me thinking. Is this a real thing or just another catchphrase, entitling people to jump on the moany bandwagon? It attempts to describe what’s happening now to people of a similar age to me, where we were sold the dream of higher education getting you a good job to now finding ourselves asking the quetion…is this what it was all for? We worked hard, got ourselves into huge amounts of student debt and started our careers on the bottom rung of the ladder, worked our way up to wherever we are now and are now looking down the barrel of another 30 years of the same. We are not well off, we have struggled to buy a house in our late 30’s (or not at all) and struggle at times to make ends meet.

This doesn’t describe my experience, however, not entirely. I went to university to study English with Classical Literature with the lofty goal of converting my degree post grad into teaching. Well, I hated teaching. I made it two thirds of the way through my post grad degree and dropped out. It made me miserable and I was never going to do it as a job so why continue? But I was crushed, bereft. My world collapsed around me. Everything I had worked towards, now amounted to…well, not a lot. An English degree doesn’t qualify you for anything particular and I needed to earn a living. And so my journey of job hopping began, in my twenties at least. I then had two children in close succession and we all know what happens to your career when that happens. I temporarily said goodbye to my prospects and hello to softplay dates and trips to Lego Land. *Photo below is not me.

Now is the time that my ‘crisis’ is happening. And it’s not a crisis at all. I have a fantastic full time job, fairly low paid but appropriate for the level of skill involved. It allows me to work from home, pick my kids up from school and I work with a great team of people. I have a lot to be grateful for. But this isn’t the path meant for me, I just know it. I was honest last week in my appraisal with my lovely manager when I told her that I think the lifespan of this job is probably another 12 months or so. I work in healthcare and never want to get to the point of ‘apathy’ as she succinctly put it. But equally I have no desire to ‘climb the ladder’ because doing that in the healthcare world means stepping away from patients and spending most of your time balancing spreadsheets.

In a full circle moment, we are brought round to the very reason I started this blog. As one of the main driving factors of wanting to ‘rewrite the middle’ was to work for myself doing something I love. Well, I love to write. I’m not a wordsmith in any sense, but I enjoy it and I want to pursue it. So, I’ve started an accredited copywriting course. It should take me around four months to complete if I get my arse into gear and then I can start it as a side hustle. The aim is to do this for however long it takes before I can take the plunge and do it full time.

I’d absolutely love to hear from any copywriters. Especially freelance ones. How did you get into it, do you like it, does it fulfil you? Thanks for joining me as always. Speak soon 🙂