A piece written in my final months as a student in 2017.
I’m stuck in the liminal space, and I am lost.
It’s the space where a person has said goodbye to the tried and tested, but they have yet to say hello to the new endeavour. Floating in the in-between lost and without a direction.
A few days ago I finished my final exam for my Film and Screen Studies degree at the University of Northampton. I have no course work, and no job. I have no reason to actually get up and be productive in the mornings, no reason to wake up before midday. I haven’t graduated, but I have no more of university left to complete. Am I a student? Am I a graduate? Am I an adult? What is my purpose for the next few months before I can at least categorically say… I am not a student. What will I be saying after that? For at least if I can’t say what I am, I can say what I am not?
Having dedicated my mind and my heart to the university experience, and finishing the final year with some of the most stressful and anxiety-inducing weeks, I now don’t know what to put my heart into, or what to keep my mind active on. I’m planning on bumbling around in between jobs before I hopefully land in one which makes me excited to get up in the morning, and to find as much inspiration in the little things as I can. I want to write scripts, screen-plays and words to make people feel something. But I’ve lost inspiration this month. Having been so focused and disciplined on my studies. Essays and exams where I’m restricted in what I want to write, I’m now at a loss with my freedom. Words are still coming to me, there just bland with no feeling. I think to be a writer, one needs to constantly feel. No matter the emotion or the situation they should feel it and understand it deeply enough that when/if it comes the time to emulate it, they can do so with authenticity.
Many parts of a persons life are spent floating in a transitional state. Baby – Child, Child – Teen, Teen – Young Adult, Young Adult – to who knows. Age is but a number and it never reflects the emotional and mental state of a person. I’m 23, I’m not waiting for the moment I can call myself an adult because I have a mortgage, a stable job, or a sudden inability to stay up past 10pm (my parents are the reason for that observation). But I am definitely waddling around in the water, looking for the next stepping stone and praying to anything that I’m heading in the right direction. This blog, as small and irrelevant as it may seem is my first step in the pond. I don’t want the lessons (both academically and in life) to crumble into the distance in my head, I want to keep them, and improve them, and keep on learning and doing. I will put my film knowledge to use and my writing skills to the test on these pages. I will be confident to put something out there, and try something new in an attempt to find my way out of the liminal space.
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