The Subtle Derailment of Leading a Double Life

“Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.”
Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

It has recently become apparent to me that I have become jammed in a very exhausting and frustrating position, which I'd be a liar to say didn't carry some beauty to it. 

I find myself torn, stuck between two incredibly crucial points of my life, neither of which I can embrace without consequence upon the other. As I am stood, my left arm is being tugged forth, yearning to dive headlong into the dream-like ethereal future I know I can embrace, but my right arm remains shackled, bound to my earthly commitments and responsibilities which I have accumulated on my path. 

In short, I lead a double life.

And I just do not seem to able to pull this off as seamlessly as Hannah Montana or Agent Cody Banks, because I'm screwing shit up left, right and center.

And this past week has become a shining example of what I mean, and how difficult the next year is going to be for me. 

So these are the two lives I lead.

1) I am a 22 year-old broke University student, living off mac'n'cheese ready meals in a pitiful excuse for a town in Southern Hertfordshire, working in a coffee shop inside a cinema during my final year studying a Mass Communications degree.

2) I am a 22 year-old blogger and upcoming writer of a blog with over one million hits, and a brand ambassador and face of a major fashion retailer. I'm the singer of a band recently picked up by BBC Introducing, in the process of writing a novel, and a freelance journalist off to report at the MTV EMA's next month. 

Now please believe me that this is not a thinly disguised humblebrag. I have always been very vocal about my unfathomable levels of gratitude for everything I have been able to do and the opportunities which have come my way. But the truth is, one of these lives cannot exist without the other, and by god, they do not sit nicely as siblings.

The irony is the only time these two lives do intersect is in my weekly sessions with a therapist because I've straight up had a nervous breakdown trying to find the balance between these two.

Because the moment I spend a little too much time indulging in one, I pay for it big time in the other.

For the week I spent in London around my birthday this year, I was able to do some incredible things with some incredible people, attend the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards and even film my own documentary. When I return, not only have I missed the start of term at Uni, but I also come home to a £100 parking fine because my permit had expired whilst I was away.

The week after that, I take some time off from blogging and that side of my life and I focus on schoolwork, trying to catch up on all the lectures and seminars I'd missed from being away, only to have VICE barking at me because I'd accidentally missed a deadline for H&M and had jeopardised the whole campaign for them.

I then get called into my module leaders office for a conference and he tells me that I have to choose, and if I want to finish university than I have to stop blogging. I have to put my Uni work first if I have any chance of getting out of here. That's when my eye begins to twitch.

This week I got to attend the incredible Gleam & Daily Mix Halloween party with the biggest youtubers in the world, and my god, it was honestly one of the greatest nights of my entire life. But then I had to frantically board an 8am train back to Herts to make it to work on time, only to stand in silence behind a counter for 8 hours with a rate of about 4 customers per hour, while my manager is harping on about how we all need to go through special 'cheese training' because we've been giving out the average scoop of 1g over the brand standard and we could really save the company money if we were more stingy with our servings.

And that's when I want to just snap, grab them by the shoulders and scream 'DO YOU THINK I CARE? DO YOU SERIOUSLY THINK I GIVE A FLYING SHIT ABOUT GIVING CUSTOMERS ONE EXTRA GRAM OF FUCKING CHEESE ON THEIR NACHOS?'

To which he'd only respond:

"They're not 'customers' Katie, they're guests."

And I just can't do that. I have to stand there and nod and pretend I'm going to really implement this into my professional routine, because I need the job to fund my year at Uni and train journeys to London for my other life.

I am so torn between my past and my future, that my present is an exhausting mess of soaring heights and plummeting lows on both sides. It's either fucking incredible or fucking debilitating, and it's come to the point where the therapy doesn't really do much either. Even she's starting to annoy me.

Please again I feel the need to stress that I am by no means ungrateful - the me of 5 years ago would have broken down in tears of joy to know that I am able to do these things... but that's arguably the worst part. This whole dilemma completely takes the sheen off these amazing opportunities and leaves me with my head in hands groaning 'Oh god, how the hell am I going to fit this in now?'

I wish to god I could just be free.

I wish I didn't have to live the uni/work life - not because I think I deserve a life full of glory or I should just be allowed to do what I want and not have to work for it like everyone else, just because it is killing me, and each day I spend torn between my reality and my future, that future becomes less and less probable an eventuality.

Yesterday I had to turn down a photoshoot and a paid music video shoot, because I had work and Uni. Not only was that PAINFUL to have to decline, I'm also really not in the position to be turning stuff like this down.

How many no's before they just stop asking?

University and work fill me with such hatred, such sadness. I feel a genuine sickness swilling in my stomach when I look at my assignments list glistening menacingly in my diary surrounded by wonderful things I'm looking forward to.  

I go in to work and I see the inhumanity behind the corporate, profit-turning agenda, to the point where we're not even allowed to drink water on the shop floor, the most fundamental human need to survive, because it's deemed 'unprofessional'.

It's like I can see this incredible life and have this tantalising taste of my own future, but I can never actually get to it. I feel almost like a caged animal standing before a wide open door to the jungle, except I'm tied down inside the box, so I can see my freedom, taste it, but I can't have it. It genuinely drains my life and on those rare moments I do have a day off, I don't want to be writing more content or working on new stuff, I just want to sink into my bed for endless hours, only rising to get food before disappearing beneath the covers again.

I find myself loathe to start writing a new post, procrastinating from stuff I usually love doing to the point in which I stop and say 'is this even what I want in life? Is this all my life will end up being if I do 'get what I want'?' 

And christttttttttt that only leads to more exhaustion.

In my perfect world, I'd just chuck all this shit in, go find a cabin in the woods in Canada or Iceland or something and spend my days among nature writing novels.

But that's not only entirely impractical, I'm sure knowing me I'll also have a crisis after about three days bellowing 'WHY DID I THINK THIS IS WHAT I WANTED?' into the mountain tops and evergreens.

And so here I am, sitting silently with a half-convincing smile on my face as my past and my future collide on either sides of me.

But,

If I stop and think, removing myself from the anxiety, the stress, the worry and the overwhelm, 

it is quite beautiful.

The plight of the youth and the dramatic woes of coming of age and growing up into an adult human being is such a beautiful thing, really.

And despite not knowing really what the fuck to do with my life right now, the most important thing I know, is what I want in the bigger picture, the future I can envision for myself, and why.

I want to make a career out of what I do because I don't want to have to waste crucial moments of my fleeting life doing something so tediously, repetitively menial, to be able to do the important stuff.

I want to be a positive exemplary, an influencer, a thinker regarded as someone who has the power to make a difference.

I want to create multimedia projects and write words and books to excite and inspire, to make people want to do beautiful things with their little pockets of gifted existence.

I want to travel across the globe, discovering different cultures and beliefs and wisdom and I want to listen. I want to understand.

I want to live in different cities and try everything new so I can gain the variety of experience and emotional intelligence to become a great writer.

I want to push and explore the boundaries of what it means to be a human being, and chronologise this to make other people wonder too.

I want to drag a sharp stick through the monotony and unsympathetic corporate, societal and educational norm which has long since settled, stubborn and putrid, and I want to show young people that they are more than just a name on a register, a grade on a spectrum, a tick in a box.

I do not know what gives me the right, I do not know what gives me the authority to do this, all I know is I feel this desire seeping from my very bones and veins and THIS is what I feel in micro format is the substance of the cells in my body, and the matter of my brain. It feels like an explosive symphony of understanding, like an energy force transmutes from the earth and the trees and the wind and runs through me in the same manner so I just know that I was always meant to do this.

And that is why when I'm sat there at Uni with a professor telling me this is 'just a hobby I should quit if I want to do well', or stood behind a counter as a customer barks at me to hurry up with their drink... I just can't take it.

But it's just one more year.

If I can make it one more year, then I'm free.

I can turn my back on those naysayers and people who don't believe I can do anything with my life without a solid degree behind me, and boy oh boy

I can prove them wrong.

*takes deep breath*

Just. One. More. Year.