Rewritten

26th April 2016

As I look up, the state of the art sky-high buildings tower over me, filling me with a sense of overwhelming trepidation but equally an overpowering admiration. The photo’s on the walls exhibiting countless world-changing journalists and people of great affluence and brilliance stare back at me and for a moment I forget why I’m even here, taking in the spectacle and absorbing every detail unfolding before my eyes. Media City, the hollywood of the BBC and the media industry, a world so very far from anything I’ve ever experienced before.

But I’m really here! Four months ago I took a leap of faith and applied for a position I thought was so far beyond my reach and capabilities, just submitting the application seemed like I was grasping at a dream too high, too big, too prestigious for a small-town girl like me. I never in my wildest dreams thought I would ever get the chance to sit in the very buildings, walk alongside the very people, where multitudes of life-changing work originated and continuous to derive from. 

As I walk up to the front desk the nerves seem to amplify beyond a point of what I thought my body was capable of producing. “Take a seat over there and someone will be with you shortly,” says the kind lady on reception. This is it. Thousands upon thousands of applicants; and I find myself alongside just 59 others here for an assessment day and interview, privileged and so grateful for the opportunity to showcase what I might one day be capable of and show them a bit of who I am. 

I wait quietly, plumping myself down on a chair in the corner, and let myself just for a few minutes grasp the magnitude of this opportunity, envisioning the potential of how my life could change forever. 

The minutes tick by slowly, the anticipation building every second, and as the feelings of doubt, insecurity and inadequacy attempt to lay their foundations at the centre of my mind, I remind myself of the video I made just a few months ago. ‘Impossible’. Refreshing my memory I extract the one quote from Michael Jordan that has stuck by me through so many times of hardship and trials. 

“I have missed more than 9 thousand shots in my career. I have lost almost 3 hundred games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And THAT is why I succeed.” 

It doesn’t matter that my journey has been so vastly different than most others I come across. It doesn’t matter that I screwed up time after time after time. It doesn’t matter that the deep dark depths of my past which try so fiercely to overshadow the success I know I have already achieved just by sitting in this very place. For the first time I realise for myself that it is exactly those failures, it is exactly those dark years that has brought me to this precise moment. It hasn’t just shaped who I am, it has given me the burning passion inside where I finally know who I really want to be and what I want to become. 

Life isn’t about getting lucky. It isn’t about waiting for ‘your’ moment. It’s about choosing to be who you want to be. I spent so many years living in victim mode. So many years being hard done by the cards I got dealt. And then it hit me hard that it was up to me, and only me, to actually make something of the one life I had been given. It’s been a process and I so often still get it wrong. But going for the biggest interview of my life made me realise that anything really is possible. I never dreamed that I would one day sit in front of some of the top BBC journalists explaining my story and the passion that burns inside of me for people and to get my message out. I never dreamed that the biggest media platform in the world might give me the opportunity to help them reach an audience of millions. My assessment day was tough! And there is every possibility I might not get the job. But as much as getting it would be a dream come true, I know it doesn’t change anything if I don’t get it. It has opened my eyes to the possibilities. The possibilities of what happens when you choose life and choose to fight against the odds. What happens when you decide to turn your mess into a message and the tests you were forced to face into a testimony. 

This blog isn’t about pretending that life is now perfect for me and it has all finally fallen into place. Far from it! It’s about the realisation that I look around and see so many people still struggling. So many people living as victims. So many people desperate, hopeless, still in dire situations or unable to see past the problems they are currently facing. Yes life for me is a heck of a lot easier than it was even two years ago. But there came a point where I had to choose. I had to choose to fight. I had to decide to make something of the crap that I had to go through. I had to accept and embrace everything that was ever thrown at me and turn it into something positive and powerful. 

It’s about the lady in the wheelchair who decides every night to still take her dogs out, no matter how hard it might be or how exhausting it is to move around. It’s about the young man who lost his sight but it doesn’t stop him from teaching kids in his local community how to play the piano. It’s about the mother who lost her son to cancer but now helps other grieving families who are going through the same thing. It’s about you and me who have a past, who might still be going through heartache, pain and sorrow but finding that thing that makes you special, helps you relate and gifts you in a way where no one else could ever make that difference.

That’s what I learnt from being chosen over thousands and thousands of other applicants to have my chance at giving what I love doing a shot and potentially one day be able to do it full time and for a living. Life a choice. Do we choose to accept it as it is? Or do we choose to make something of what could be.