I never usually find myself at Starbucks. I've been there a few times, perhaps by invitation or by obligation, but I never really imagined myself as one of those people who go here for a cup of coffee and a laptop. Perhaps they're doing work, or just surfing casually, while sipping on those green straws with chocolate bits left behind.
Today, I'm stuck in one of those establishments, waiting for a little under two hours before I could start my first driving lessons. (That, in a future entry.) I'm stuck with a laptop, to top it all off, blogging because inspiration has supposedly struck me, while I'm sipping my tall Java chip off those green straws. Sure, this scene might become a regular one when the time comes, but there's ultimately this question: will it even happen?
Perhaps it's the association I have with magazine writers, and how they always seem to live a fairly glamorous lifestyle, despite word that writing doesn't really get you anywhere. Sure, writing for one is hard work - the fact that you're already doing just that means you're experienced and hardened by years of running around for fresh articles - but eventually it boils down to that image of a bespectacled writer, typing away on a laptop while getting a caffeine high.
I was flipping through those magazines today. How they do it still amazes me - that, or how they manage to look glamorous in it.
For some reason, I seem to be drifting back to my initial ambition of being a writer. Perhaps it's the culmination of my radio frustrations - realizing that it's something I could have been forcing through my throat for the past two years, to negative effect - or perhaps it's because of my decisions as of late, to write as if I was asked to do so, and to do so with such a passion, or whatever excuse I have for it. I used to call it a fall back, and now that's where I seem to be drifting to, at least judging by the job I have taken.
And perhaps it's my frustration that's leading me to think that I don't really know where to go. I might've blamed it on the nature of my studies - of it being a jack-of-all-trades thing, with veiled options of specialization - but despite me continuing with what I think I should know, it still leads me nowhere. It might seem that I'm somewhat on the right track, with me already having a job and at least an idea on where to go, but deep inside me I'm still the frustrated, clueless person that I've always become, looking for directions when there aren't, and thus eternally lost.
Then, there are the contributors. One is seasoned, and has worked his way up the ladder; the other's just plain lucky, having written fiction before becoming this and that of this and that. I could've thought about my options, and should've worked on them when I had the chance, but now I'm here and totally unsure, I wonder. How did they go about it? How did they get there? Can I still get there, or is it too late?
A piece of career advice for the uninitiated, at least from my father, simply goes: start with something you've wanted to do. He says it's hard to start elsewhere and go towards what you really dream of in the long run. I'm partly thankful that I started here, even if I'm really apprehensive about it, hoping - and I won't lie to it - that I'll leave to tell everybody stories, and hopefully be fulfilled by it. Perhaps my writing stretches at Starbucks would come later, but who can tell? It will ultimately depend on whether I've done the right things now. And right now, well, it's starting to feel that I'm five years too late for the game.