As the world moves faster and faster, the comment that one cannot join the dots going forward becomes more and more true. So often we can look back and see how we got to a certain place, but at the time the points along the route did not appear to be anything other than rest stops.
I realised this from my own personal experience when I started to write my own autobiography. That exercise alone was another step on a journey that, until now, I had not realised I had taken.
As of today I have four books published, I have a blog that is regularly read by over 4000 people and I am often called upon to write major bids for projects. So how did someone who trained to teach mathematics, moved into IT and ended up supporting SMEs become an author?
I now realise that the first dot on the journey happened when I was ten years old and I first realised that I could write. I was a good student but a girl called Bridie always seemed to come number one.
There was an essay competition run by Cadburys Chocolate and the 6 prizes were, of course chocolate. When the results were read out in reverse order and I didn’t get prizes 2 – 6 I assumed the top prize would be Bridie’s. However, it was me.
A year later my essay on ‘A day in the life of a penny’ got me the first ever boy’s place for my school in the Grammar School. It was also my creative writing skills at college that got me out of a scrape over a non-completed assignment by inventing a solution which I called the Northumberland Scheme and which fooled my lecturers.
Further writing experience came from my role as a contributor on the college magazine. But I still didn’t spot the connection between the dots and started my teaching career.
Writing the syllabus for IT studies came next, but that led me, not into writing, but into IT. There the writing skills came in useful in creating winning proposals and marketing materials.
Even when I branched out into supporting SMEs, I never realised that more dots were being put along the route through the writing of press releases that always seemed to hit the mark. How else could one get a parrot into self-employment! But that is material for another blog.
It was only when I started to involve myself in private consultancy that I found myself with gaps between assignments and started to write down my ideas so as not to lose them.
From there came the books and requests from consultancies to use my writing skills to develop winning tender submissions.
So, after 60 years I can look back and can now join the dots that have led me to this blog. The consultancy is still there, but the gaps between are now filled with the joys of the written word.
The blogs will continue, as will work on the autobiography. There are now the beginnings of a children’s book for me to work on and I have an important speech to think about.
So the lesson I have learned is that it doesn’t matter that you cannot join the dots going forward and that, in some ways, it is better not to be able to. As a result, I have found the journey to here as provided me with far more experiences to enrich my writing and it has, and continues to be, much more of an adventure.
