To My 10 Year Old Self
I started writing diaries when I was 10 years old. Looking back now the content is more comical than anything else.- sibling rivalries, frenemies and the word "buff" appears way too much.
At the time, particularly when I was around 15 and 16, some issues would have signified the end of the world - nope, the end of the universe.
Thinking about that time has given me a renewed empathy for my nieces and nephews, or any young person, who is at that age or coming into that age. What you feel and experience is real and valid. There may be times that are painful and really embarrassing but you will also gain a strength and a deeper understanding of who you and where you want to be.
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In my youth, while working in retail administration on Oxford Street, I was asked or coerced into doing a stock take once the store had closed one evening. For reasons that, to this day, baffle me, the stock take took all night. The manager gave our small team cash to get a cab home. I emerged onto an eerily quiet Oxford Street, with the sun peeking over the buildings.
I managed to raise my tired arm to hail a black cab. The driver pulled over. I told him where I wanted to go and I slumped into the seat ready to be whisked off to my warm, comfortable bed. Before I could properly settle in, I saw the cab driver hesitate. Then he turned around to me and said, “You’ll need to pay up front.” I beg your pardon?!