Chasing Childhood Memories

There is something about bubbles that bring the smile to my face. I think my fiancé thought I had finally lost the plot (something a few of us writers can certainly be accused of..literary speaking!) when he asked me one year what I wanted for my birthday and I replied “I’d really like a bubble maker”.

I guess it is the adult in me still attempting to cling to the child in me, and why not? Who invented this unspoken rule that us adults have to be..well adults? Sometimes it’s good to reconnect with our childhood and do the things that put a smile on our faces. So for me that could be as simple as blowing a few bubbles and watch them swirl and float upwards or being my usual mad self and singing and bopping along to a tune or two whilst stuck at traffic lights regardless of who is looking at me.

I wish as an adult we didn’t seem to fear what others think of us, so much so that it prevents us from doing things that make us smile. This embarrassment we feel that we can’t possibly get up and dance or have a go at the karaoke without having a few drinks, because it would then give us an excuse for any dodgy moves/out of tune renditions we might make. We need more courage to do those crazy things we usually shy away from regardless of the alcohol intake (or lack of).

So if you happen to pass someone singing away in their car or bopping along, next time join them..hell don’t wait to see someone else doing it..just do it!

Go out and blow some bubbles, jump in the muddy puddles, dance about in the rain, snatch those moments that make you smile because life can be too serious at the best of times and it is far too short not to have more moments where you grinned from ear to ear and reconnected with your inner child.

If I had decided to stay the same and not try and do anything crazy that the shy self conscious me would never normally have done some 9 years ago, I would not have auditioned for a TV show, I would not have then used that experience to audition and join an Am Dram group (which I am still a part of), I would never had dreamed of going out there and looking for the love of my life. I would probably still be living with my mum and doing a job that I didn’t really enjoy, shying away from the world.

But something in me changed… I listen to ME now. Yes I still shake like crazy at auditions, yes I do think I am off my tree for even attempting to sing some songs and before I met my fiancé for the first time my mantra in my head was “I must be nuts”, yet I still met him. I regularly run through all the fears and self doubts that most people go through. Ask any writer about the moment they first decided to put anything they wrote out there for public view and they will probably rattle off a long list of doubt riddled, self deprecating thoughts that went through their mind.

Yet they still did it…why?

Because despite all those fears and doubts it mattered to them to have their voice heard. To do something that made them smile.

So in between the madness of the day, or the week, I will grasp those moments with both hands. I use the time I am stuck in traffic jams or on the motorway to take back some of me. I sing, I bop and I think about my writing, I solve writing dilemmas; just last week I finally named a dragon in my fantasy series whilst driving down the M4 (something I had been wrestling with for awhile). Anyone who has been reading my blogs regularly will remember the fun I had coaxing Fen Cleaver out of the shadows.

So snatch back those moments that make you smile. What makes you smile? What made you smile so widely when you were younger, and why haven’t you done it since?

It’s time to smile again.