an epiphany of sorts

March 2010 changed my life. I went to New York for a week with my husband and the trip itself changed my outlook on life. New York made me realise that I had simply been drifting in life with no real aims and ambitions, just the vague idea that I wanted to write. I have had ideas for about three or four novels none of which have got beyond the first few chapters. New York inspired me to follow the dream that I have dreamed about for the last twenty years but never actually followed.

On the way to the airport I wanted to jump out of the cab and leave my life behind. I was dreading going back to my life. In the last few months I have been depressed for numerous reasons and I hated the idea of returning to the way I had previously felt. It was such a strong compulsion to get out the cab and move to new York that when we hit the worse turbulence I have ever experienced I convinced myself that that compulsion to run away from my life had actually been intuition that the plane was going to crash and that we were all doomed.

I have worked in various admin roles since leaving university nearly five years ago and always planned it to be a stop gap until I worked out what I actually wanted to do with my life. Nearly five years and many half baked ideas later and I'm still not 100% sure. If I had of died on that flight all I would have had to show for 25 years on this Earth would be the fact that I lived an ordinary life but had extraordinary thoughts and ideas. Oh and a half finished kitchen in my house. The time has come to create something a little more substantial than that.

As I sat on the plane, convinced my time was about to come to an end, cursing myself for not following my intuition and staying in New York simply because I was too afraid to do something spontaneous I began to pray for the first time since 1996. (The last time I prayed was after extra time in the Euro 96 semi-final when England played Germany, I prayed for England to win and told God that if they didn't I would never believe in him again - I'm a very stubborn person so I was a staunch atheist for the next 14 years) My prayer was as follows;

'Dear God
Please land this plane safely in Amsterdam and I will make something of myself, I will start living my life [instead of just existing] and I will appreciate every single day'

I think I sat repeating this over and over in my head for about 15 minutes. I'm not saying that's the reason why we landed safely but it was a promise that I made that I intend to stick to. As even if there is no God (I'm still a cynic) that prayer or promise was a comfort to me at that time and it's the wake up call I so badly needed.