Right Here, Right Now

Thank you Sir John Hegarty. Thank you for taking the time to share with us a snippet of your thoughts. They are currently scrawled across 6, A4 pages in my notebook as I was frantically trying to note down every word. But most importantly thank you for this quote:

Do interesting things and interesting things will happen to you

Being in my mid twenties having not started a ‘proper’ career can sometimes feel like I am behind. Friends are starting to get promoted to incredible jobs, buy houses, have children and get married which can leave me asking if I am getting left behind. The social pressure amongst us mid twenties is to have lived out all your fun years, grown up and got a good job can sometimes feel all too real. 

I spent 4 years on/off travelling, if I wasn’t travelling I was working to save to travel again. When my partner and I decided it was time we wanted to get careers I felt lost and wondered if I would ever be able to settle into a career. I found good summer work and then completed the D&AD New Blood Shift which I loved, however just as it finished Covid hit and unfortunately my placements fell through. Thankfully, after the worst of the lockdown I started at SCA. 

When the quote was read it completely resonated to me. I would never say travelling was something I regretted but sometimes it did feel like it put me back. But this quote made me think that perhaps it was more than just a holiday, perhaps it was purposeful. Perhaps all those crammed bus rides through the night, the 36 bed dorm rooms and times spent haggling over a penny might be little interesting dots that I was collecting. Perhaps being slightly behind friends in my career because instead of getting a degree, I was riding camels in the desert or trekking in patagonia could actually help me. Looking back, perhaps I have spent my whole life so far doing interesting things and interesting things happening to me, sometimes by luck and sometimes by working really hard. I worked long hours for free for years when I was younger so that I could go to fashion photo shoots, which in turn has given me a whole bank of interesting stories. I spent 3 months volunteering in Zimbabwe and again, in return lots of interesting things happened to me. It really confirmed to me that John Hegarty was right and that I haven’t wasted my time, instead used my time wisely.
So although I am not planning to non stop travel the world again, and I am certainly never planning on sharing a room with 36 people ever again, I will continue to consciously do interesting things in the hope interesting things will happen to me. I will make sure to remind myself that I am not behind, I am exactly where I am supposed to be.