Blogging Goodbye to Butterflies

Tag: career choice

  • Spoiled Rotten

    This summer, my family and I spent two amazing weeks at a huge resort celebrating my Dad’s 50th birthday. We were spoiled rotten with two pools, a section of the beach, on-site restaurants, a HUGE buffet, a gym, a coffee shop, need I go on? I don’t recall ever having felt so relaxed! It was beautiful.

    Now, I’m home again and I’m still not sure where I’m going from here. I’d allowed myself to forget all about real life and came back down to Earth with a bit of a crash when we got back.

    Since then though, I’ve met up with friends, been to a sixtieth birthday party where drinks were served in teacups and headed into London to see a hilarious show.

    I’m trying to keep my head up. I’m having to remind myself constantly that everything is going to be okay and that I don’t have to have it all figured out just yet.

    It’s still summer and I’ve still time. I think this afternoon I’ll write a pro/con list, that always helps.

    I have so many questions whizzing around my head. Do I go back to the job that has had me feeling more anxious than I have in years, but also happier than I have too? Is the fulfilment and happiness I’ve felt enough to counteract the stress of it and is this job ever actually going to get me to where I want to go?

  • Deciding what’s next after university

    One minute I’m ridiculously excited over a quote from a book on an interesting historical topic or I’m so engrossed in writing the opinionated conclusion to my essay that I forget it isn’t cool to be caught enjoying coursework. The next minute I’m stood in my room singing Mozart’s Agnus Dei, loving it and deciding that singing is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

    Since the age of 5 I’ve been telling people I want to be an author or as I get older, a journalist: Younger Bronwen stapled pieces of A5 paper together, designed front covers in felt-tip and crayon and then wrote numerous ‘Chapter Ones’ for what she planned would be hugely successful novels. She bought note pads and then ripped out half the pages just because she decided the story she’d written inside wasn’t worthy of publishing.

    When I discovered singing at the age of 9 suddenly, that was all I wanted to do. One performance on stage turned into two, which turned into three and before I knew it I was addicted. Performing on stage isn’t comparable to anything else I’ve done or I think, anything I will ever do. Nothing annoys me more than a frog in my throat or a cold that stops me singing. Nothing clears my head more than an hour spent at the piano singing and playing until I forget what on Earth I had to escape from in the first place. Or of course a few minutes in the spotlight scared out of my socks, but up on cloud nine.

    My first meeting with my tutor this year ended with a discussion about the future; about what I planned to do when I left University and ventured out into the big wide world. I could go on to study Journalism; review musical concerts, lead political debates, write agony aunt columns. I could study Post Graduate Music at a conservatoire in the hope of becoming a professional performer. I realised just how hard the decision is going to be. For one thing I still go through days when both singing and writing are stressing me out so much that I don’t want to face either of them. Who knows? Maybe I’ll decide I want to do something completely different.

    All I know is, it’s time for breakfast and I need food for thought. Hot Cross Buns it is.