On Purpose

Learning how to pivot when you want to just let life happen….

‘I don’t think the world needs another cancer story written by a middle-aged white woman,’ says Jamie, my friend and retired literary agent, when I tell him I want to revisit the memoir I wrote about surviving a terminal cancer diagnosis. Jamie is also the former editor of the Erotic Review Magazine, which to date is still the only medium that has published any of my fiction. Does this titbit of information disclose my covert ambition of becoming the next E.L. James?. The end of this month is the deadline for the Bridport memoir prize and I am thinking of submitting.

I disagree with Jamie. Everything depends on angle, on perspective. Tales as old as time can be reimagined and retold over and over again. Admittedly I struggle with identifying exactly what the unique added value of my personal cancer experience is. But it was more the “middle aged” part of Jamie’s comment that bugs me. I am forty-seven, so on that, I can’t disagree. Not wanting to be considered middle aged depends on my definition of the term. Things that I associate with being middle aged, are things that hopefully don’t apply to me (yet or ever). For some reason it makes me think of things like burnt out, washed up, achy joints, fragile bones and every part of the body that once was full of bounce caving to the force of gravity. I don’t want to be all sad and saggy. Middle aged also sounds too late for change. The way they called John Travolta fat, forty and finished. But that was before Quentin Tarantino.

Does a professional drive last beyond middle age?

Does a professional drive last beyond middle age? I lost mine a long time ago. When I got sick, I lost all ambition. All I wanted was to spend time with loved ones, be close to nature and enjoy everything our sensory experience has to offer: Taste beautiful food, smell all the flowers, listen to soul fluttering music, have long baths and feel the sun or the wind. When it started to dawn on us that death wasn’t as near as initially expected, my dad joked it was time to start thinking of a pension.

I did not want to think about retiring, but I did want to go back to work. First and foremost for the money. Having relied on a modest disability allowance and my parents help, I desperately wanted to regain some financial independence. I took a job as a commercial SEO-copywriter in fashion. It was remote and reasonably well paid. It also allowed me to live in the rhythm my body demanded. Surviving a dual terminal cancer diagnosis does not come without its challenges. I need to rest, I need to move and I need to stop without pushing my boundaries.

At the time I had a dream of dividing my time between the Netherlands and Transylvania. I wanted to spend more time closer to wild nature, and I wanted to set up a small sustainable fashion label. The idea was to combine the insane amount of overstock and second-hand fashion that is imported into Romania with local textile traditions. Punk folklore was the theme. I was dreaming of a little country cottage where I could establish an off-grid atelier to work on the label. AER LIBER: under one free sky we are all equal.

A decade later I still have that same job and I still don’t have a pension plan. The fledgling fashion label never spread wings or left the nest. The country cottage and off grid atelier never came to be. I recently abandoned my half renovated house in Zalanpatak. Lack of funds, lack of local support and lack of socialisation all lumped together, it got the better of me. I don’t lack tenacity or resilience and I am totally ok with this recent decision. But it does make me question what I want out of life. What I want to learn, achieve, create and contribute. And what I am willing to do to get it.

Last year I had started dedicating more time to writing fiction and I started Substack. Even though it wasn’t bringing in enough money to fix a leaking roof, or feed the pack, I tried to stretch it as long as possible. Until I decided enough is enough. Or the opposite: It was not enough. I need to radically rebalance work, money and life.

My friend and I discussed work, drive, meaning and ambition a lot in these past months. We are both looking for a change, but not quite able to identify a clear objective, let alone find the stepping stones in a new direction.

“I am a bit worried I no longer want to be somebody in any field…. a tad of ambition drives you forward. I have none. I want to drink cocktails in anonimity forever.”

I would gladly join her. And know a few perfect places for it too.

I am not sure what drives me, but I want more. There is an urge to learn, explore, discover. My commercial copywork lacks purpose. It does not satisfy at all. I dread my deadlines. Recently one of the agencies I work for has started sending out automated messages. All these daily due date reminders make me want to do, is walk out and bury my laptop deep in the woods somewhere.

Recently I read this on Instagram:

Most people burn out, working on something they don’t believe in for people they don’t like.

Browsing vacancies in “my field” nothing appeals. Most do the opposite: They repel. Just reading the tone-of-voice of the vacancies make me want to run for the hills again. There is not a single part of me, professionally or personally, that wishes to dedicate their skills as a “witty writer… to come up with cool campaigns, catchy taglines and sharp script to make cool A-brands shine…” “If I read the word “shine” one more time in Dutch job description I am packing it in completely,” I said to a friend who was asking how the job hunting is going. ‘They are probably looking for someone younger,’ she said.

I have worked in fashion since I was eighteen. And yes, there can be something very frivolous and superficial about it, pretentious too, but to doesn’t have to be. When I was being interviewed for one of the forty spots at London College of Fashion’s degree in Fashion Promotion I was asked where I saw myself down the line. Editor of Vogue I answered without blinking. Youthful audacity or sheer ambition, I don’t know. I do know that I got very easily sidetracked and never made it even remotely close to that particular career destination. Did I lack, purpose, drive and ambition? What was so important in life that it had to be prioritized over chasing a goal or dream?

I have the same questions concerning how I have spent the last 13 years of my life. This is all bonus time. What did I do with it? Where are the books I could have written? Have I become the ultimate procrastinator using cancer and living as an excuse? Why have I not been concerned with penning down any type of legacy. Was I, as the late Wayner Dyer put it, going to die with my music still in me?

Fashion has lost it’s sparkle in many ways. If I was handed the reins of any major fashion publication right now I would decline. That is really no longer me. I also don’t think I want an atelier or a fashion label anymore. Which leaves a large amount of machines and materials to repurpose.

I do still very much need to write (hence this Substack endeavour).

Over time I have become more interested in craftsmanship and sustainability. I studied Cultural Studies with a specialisation in the representation of identities and a minor in Islam. I would love to broaden the scope of who and what I write for or about. I thought about going deeper into fashion studies, but even that seems too narrow these days. Human interest, culture, health and well-being, it is all interlinked and it all still somehow means something to me. I want to write or work where it matters to others too. I miss meaning.

Is this my Monty Python moment? AND NOW IT IS TIME FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!

I love reading stories about forty plus people who found fame and fortune later in life, or essays on how changing careers mid-life can be beneficial. I have examples around me of friends who are currently retraining as nurses, who swapped consultancy work for the hospitality industry or are about to leave the university library to pursue a career as a jewellery designer. My grandfather’s best friend started a PhD well into his seventies.

I have a friend who sends me weird job vacancies for things like forest ranger or shepherd. I personally get really excited by jobs as spiritual coach or medium, tarot reader or fortune cooky writer. I would also not mind spending my days cuddling baby chimpanzees or volunteering at a cat sanctuary on Crete. My own CV includes cake designer, I once pretended to be a tour guide for a week in Romania, and I have been called the Mary Poppins of pets (the latter is due to my two-month stint as a dog sitter in Sydney, where I rewrote various famous musical tunes into the soundtrack of The Life of Boris&Igor, two tiny terriers).

For years I have been thinking about doing a degree in psychology. It would give more tools to tackle life’s wobbles, add depth to my writing. My own therapist, a former psychiatrist who left his prescription pad behind for a new and dual approach that blends psychotherapy with something that lives more on a soul level, has suggested several times that should become a counsellor or a coach.

What is my purpose? Writing has always been what I have loved doing most, but I need to pivot.

For a long while after the “cancer era” time stood still for me in a way. But this year it finally caught up with me. The emotional stress of recent “adventures” in Transylvania have visibly marked me. Suddenly I have wrinkles, grey hair, and sad and tired eyes. I will bounce back, I hope, but I can’t turn back time. 47 will inevitably become 48, if I am lucky. In essence I will always be grateful for every new day. I think it would be the most beautiful irony of my life, if it turns out that I spent years believing I was dying, to then for example, live to be a 100. I would love that. In this light, seeing 47 as middle aged does not sound so bad because twice that would get me to at least 94. If I am looking at another twenty five years of working, then how do I see myself spending that time, if not just writing?

I am already grateful for the age I have reached. When it comes to #goals, just aging I feel like a winner. At the same time, I am scared, because I am not entirely convinced that I have spent all this bonus time wisely. My mission to go back to basic in the Transylvanian countryside failed miserably. Looking back now, I feel I may have wasted some very precious time. The pain is still too raw to understand how it will turn into wisdom. I don’t want to live a life where I regularly hear myself say: Did I survive cancer for this? But I keep reminding myself that hindsight is about as useful as staring up a cow’s ass.

A friend once said: ‘You need to do more now to impress us, besides just staying alive.’ I agree, I just don’t know what direction to take it in. Moving forward, where do I go? What do I do?

After years of back and forth between the Netherlands and Romania, being in the Netherlands right now I have no intention to go back. When I recounted some of the events that drove me to pack up all my pets and drive away from Zalanpatak to a friend, she said: ‘You should write a book about it.’ So, the memoir is back on the table. It will not exactly be another Eat Love Pray. It feels more like a new breed of psychological horror stories.

Last week I talked about cancer in relation to both my childhood and my future with one of my cousins, who is a therapist. I told her about my idea to study psychosocial therapy. If I have a basic qualification, I want to follow it up with Gabor Mate’s course in compassionate inquiry. I also want to look into end-of-life councelling. Maybe become a death doula. I had one and she is still profoundly precious to me.

It is all for a personal cause, but also because I want to see what I have to offer others. My vast life experience combined with a theoretic and practical framework I think could be beneficial. I am just not sure in what form it would be integrated into my professional life.

Then write about exploring it, she said.

To be continued…