The Middle

A good story has a beginning, a middle and an end.

Curiously enough, this story starts in the middle and doesn't have an ending yet.

That is to say, this isn't a good story.

Yet.

It's a work in progress.

I love a story, don't you? I also love a good mystery. Well, it turns out that my life ended up being a bit of both. I'm not going to sit here and arrogantly explain to you that I have a better story than anyone else. I'm writing this, if anything, to let you know that you and only you can delve within and give your life any narrative, meaning, purpose or direction. Forget your parents, your teacher, your boss, your best friend's opinion, that journey starts with you taking that step, laying that first brick or flipping on that switch. No one else can do that for you. You're the master of your own destiny. It's easy to let yourself down, other people can disappoint you and drag you down too, but it's you that ultimately decides if you get back up again.

Time and time again I had let myself down in life. I blamed my past, I let other people get the best of me and I spent many years wallowing in self pity, haunted and fearful of other human beings. I'm still in bad habits here and there, but I have that fight in me too, the guts and the stones to use my shortcomings and regressions as motivation to improve and spur me on in the right direction.

I heard a lot of "you can't do that" and "you're not good enough" in the first half of my life. For the most part, I listened. I shouldn't have. I turned my life around by making some decisions, not listening to the naysayers and seeing it through until the end. These decisions changed my life for the better and not one of those killjoys stayed in my life. I got that degree. I moved to that country. I got my foot in the tattoo industry's door. I got that gig at one of the top studios in town. Now I choose to specialise in Japanese style tattooing where I had told myself that it wasn't possible, I wasn't good enough. Sometimes I look back on what I've done already and wonder how in the name of fuck I managed to swing it, I ask myself "how did I get here?". Similarly, I now also look ahead for the first time and ask myself

"where can I go next?"

But now I smile at the same time.

Who are you? How did you get here? Where do you want to go now? How are you going to get there?

These questions should be daunting. The answers can be fun to find out.