The Beginning...

The start, the beginning, from whence it all came....

Well, let me fill you in a bit. I'm a guy approaching his mid-30s. I live in a quiet and semi-remote town (although its inhabitants would beg to differ) in England.

A couple of months ago I decided that I needed a change in my life. Things had been going pretty well. I was married, had a job I was very good at, had a lot of friends and everything was nice and stable. But I wasn’t happy.

“How can you not be happy? Looks like everything is nice and perfect.”

Well, “Nice” is such a terrible word, isn’t it? I guess that the problem was that it was all too “nice.” I needed change. I needed challenge. I needed to live the life that I wanted to live – not that one I was expected to live.

So, I upped sticks and moved. I decided to quit my job and start doing what I had always promised myself I would do – write. You see, writing has been a dream of mine for such a long time. I can remember back in junior school when the writing bug first bit. I used to create such fantastic and fanciful stories that I even surprised myself. But then I grew older and the pressures of life, the responsibilities of “good, sensible adults” started to bear down on me.

So I cast down my quill and struck forth to earn the bread I needed to eat. But somewhere, deep down in that compartment in which you hide your innermost desires, I still harboured the hope that someday my work would lead me on the path I’d longed to take – the path of a writer.

But alas, it was not to be. Fifteen years later I looked back at my life and discovered that I’d been false to myself. Oh yes, I had everything that I’d worked for. There was a roof over my head and food in my belly. But there was still this hole in my heart. And each time I allowed myself a moment of time to examine it I noticed that it was just getting bigger and bigger.

I decided that as I wasn’t getting any younger, and that I’d already proven it to myself that I could be a grown-up, now was the time to prove that I could also follow my dreams.

So, I quit my job. This, in itself, was a big decision. I knew that my wife would not countenance the change and therefore would leave me if I went through with it. So the choice I’d to make was more than just about work. It was about everything that had ever meant something to me, everything I’d ever thought about myself, everything I’d ever dreamed.

And I made that choice.

So, here I sit today, unemployed, homeless, and without a faithful partner in life. But I’m happy.

“How can that be?”

Well, I might not be living the life I want to lead – being a successful author, rolling in profits and royalties. But I am doing what I dreamed of doing. I’m writing. I’m back to creating worlds of my own, filling them with life and colour, watching them grow before my very eyes.

And I’m growing too.

I’ll be the first to admit that I still have a lot to learn about the art of writing. I have a number of fantastic ideas that I’m learning to put to paper. It’s going to require a lot of hard work and a lot of sacrifice.

But I believe that I’m well on my way.

This is the story of that journey. It's, well, it's sort of a Big Brother-type blog. A Big Blogger - if you will. I’ll try to keep you up-to-date on my activities as I travel down this new and exciting road. I know that I’ll get to my destination in the end. And hopefully my story will provide you with some sort of inspiration to make your own dreams come true.