Call me Duffy Moon.

"you can do it, duffy moon." -JJ.

The girl with the wry smile that creeps slowly across her face when no one is looking. The one who just disappears for hours with no explanation and returns later, expressing too many emotions to put your finger on. She spends her time reading and writing. It's not only her passion, but it's her escape. When life in the real world gets too much, that's what she does, and it's kind of perfect. Shut the doors, shut everyone out, and indulge in a passion that will continue long after she's gone. It's hopeful and endearing and dangerous all at once. Those pages hide so many secrets, so many lies, so many passions. Those words aren't just dreamed up, they are her dreams. What she writes, is what she envisages in her own future. That's her way of putting her dreams into reality. Making it physical. Putting it down on paper. Maybe it's not everyone's idea of dreaming, but it's hers. It's all she's wanted for as long as she can remember, and if she doesn't get it, she doesn't know what she'll do. She never stops writing. There's always something to write about. It doesn't matter that every piece she writes isn't up to publishing scratch. It's not for them, she writes because she needs to. Approval isn't necessary, from them, from you, from anyone. But if you do, even better. That girl will always be a dreamer. She's destined for big things. Huge things. That notebook by her bedside harbours her deepest desires and her biggest secrets, and some of the greatest 3am ideas anyone has ever had. All you need to do is remember this name, you'll see it in flashing lights one day. Duffy Moon.

My wish list.

Yes, another list. What a surprise. This time, I'm writing a wish list. Things I want right now. Things that, at this precise moment, would make me happy, turn that straight face into a smiling, refreshed one. So, the moment of truth, what are they?

1. an iPhone. Yes. I feel totally out of the loop with my BlackBerry perched less than lovingly on my knee right now. I loved it once, but the love affair ended when all of my friends, family and even mere acquaintances started to get updates. The iPhone. And now, like every other typical, naive, gullible consumer, I want one too. I feel left out, I feel boring. I feel like this is exactly what I need in my life now to step my positivity up a notch. I want the works, the whole shebang. The apps, the snap-chatting and the Instagram. All of the things that non-iPhone users get bombarded with daily all across the internet. Call me materialistic, I probably am. I'd really like one though.

2. Coffee. This will always be one. There isn't enough coffee in my life ever. Even as I sit with a coffee by my bedside right now, I'm thinking of my next opportunity to venture downstairs, into the kitchen and boil the kettle for what will be the fifth time today.

3. Nail varnish that doesn't chip. And dries as quickly as it claims. A girly want, obviously. It's my pet-hate. Quick dry nail varnish that doesn't actually do what it says, then you end up with it everywhere. Or, I do anyway. Maybe that's just a sign that I'm far too impatient, I dunno.

4. A plane ticket to New York. This one is probably a given too. My cousin Sophie and I spend far too many hours each week contemplating when we will actually, finally, hopefully get ourselves to NYC. The latest verdict is that we'll go in 5 years when Sophie is 21, so we can actually fully enjoy The Big Apple. It will happen, I assure you. Soon though, probably not.

5. A decent night's sleep. I'm not feeling too good, and haven't been for almost a week now. Although I'm in recovery, I still feel like I haven't had what I'd class as a decent night's sleep in forever. It's well overdue, and in high demand.

6. A pair of Levi jeans. I've harped on about this forever. To my family, my friends, and all of my Twitter followers. I have a craving for some, although I can't really finance my shopaholic tendencies just yet.

7. A lottery win. Again, this one is a dead giveaway. Most people want this, and the people who don't, well, it must be fine and dandy to think you've got more than enough money to be able to decline a lottery win. Btw, I'm talking about a proper lottery win, like the kind you sell your house for, the kind that changes your life and enables you to buy a holiday home somewhere exotic. I fantasize about this moment. A lot.

8. To be happy. Oh good god, shoot me already! Is that a cliché I've just spat out? Oh dear, Eleanor, Eleanor, Eleanor. Now that was stupid, wasn't it? I might as well get a teardrop tattooed right now. I mean, it's like an unspoken rule. Everyone wants happiness, but actually voicing it out loud, maybe that's the biggest taboo of all. It's like, everyone feels the same towards that little thing we call happiness. But if it's so simple, why does it seem so, I dunno, unattainable, so out of our grasp? Maybe that's just me, with my negative attitude and my ability to mess up things so easily.

9. Fame. Okay. Scratch the previous entry, this one here may be the real taboo. I've admitted something here I never thought I would. See: previous post. I've blogged about, talked about it, wrote about it. The fact that, in my eyes, wanting to be famous is like choosing to get into a car you know is going to crash. It's risky, it's ill-advised, and in most events, really stupid. It's not even ambitious, it's just naive. It's like hoping it doesn't happen, hoping for the best even though you truly know it's against all odds. So, yes. I've decided, after a long, hard think, this is what I want. I want fame, fortune and everything that I so bitterly despised a few months back. I want my name in flashing, gaudy, florescent lights, I want the money, the success, the infamy. You're now wondering, how, yeah? Well, I want to write. I want to be a writer. Whether that means in novels, newspapers or any other sort of journalism, that's what I want. I haven't gone all specific yet, I'm keeping my options open, but that's what I really want. I know it is. It's just an instinct. I want fame, and going into my second year of University, I'm more ready than I'll ever be, to grab it with both hands, and never let go. I'm ready for you fame, I'll take everything you throw at me. As long as you keep your part of the bargain.

It's not always rainbows and butterflies, it's compromise.

Yes, I'm quoting Maroon 5, and yes, I really did love them before the days that Adam Levine and Wiz Khalifa joined forces to flash their tatts and collaborate with Payphone. This line of lyrics from one of my (and probably a lot of others) all-time favourite songs, She will be loved, has been stuck in my head all morning. Well, all morning would actually imply something false, as I've only been conscious for about ninety minutes. Alcohol-related, obviously. So, in true Carrie Bradshaw style, I got to thinking. (hey, that's topical and I haven't even meant to do what I'm about to do.)

I got to thinking about compromise. From a young age, our generation has been encouraged to express our passions and follow our dreams, yet at the grand almost-old-age of twenty, I'm now being told I need the very clichéd "back-up plan", y'know, just in case all this Dreaming Big may be, in fact, too big. What am I supposed to do, when I'm torn between following my passions, and actually being realistic? There aren't many people surrounding me who actually truly, hand-on-heart, believe that I'm going to make it as some big, hot-shot writer, and earn millions and live such a lux lifestyle that I'll never have to worry about being crippled with my fourty grand of student debt. I know I'm a dreamer, I always have been. But if I don't try, I'll spend my entire life wondering. Like your uncle, who after a few-too-many pints, tells everyone "I could've been the next Beckham" and wonders why the dinner table is filled with an awkward combination of laughs and knowing glances. Unfulfilled passions are, it seems, as taboo as following your dreams sometimes. I've seen the way my grandparents sometimes look at me when I talk about University life. I'm waiting for my grandad to say "that would never happen in my day" or something equally as stereotypical. Sometimes, I'm made to feel like a pariah, a disappointment, because I chose a degree I'm passionate about over something that will get me a steady job at the end of the three years. 

"Teaching, what about teaching?!" If I had a pound for every time I'd been asked that from a relative, friend or mere acquaintance when talking about that foreign territory, after university. I'm not entirely sure what they're waiting for me to say. I mean, there's nothing wrong with being a teacher, don't get me wrong, I'm not sitting here, slagging off someone else's choice of career path, I just know it's not for me. I had the most amazing group of English teachers at school, and one or two of them in particular probably inspired me to write, rather than to teach. Maybe that's backwards, I don't know, but however good they were at their job, I knew that while everyone else was discussing the significance of the green light in Gatsby, it wasn't the exam I was thinking of. I was sitting, less-than-comfortably in those hard, ugly, plastic school chairs, thinking "this is what I want to do. I want to write something like this." It just hit me. Like a train. I wanted to write, I wanted, in sixty years time, for students to be sitting down, at what are hopefully more comfortable chairs, in what I'll assume will be more developed classrooms, discussing my book. 

Ambitious? Of course, but I'd be lying if I said I was willing to compromise. Even though, it seems to be banded about all over the place. It seems such a dirty word. Every time I hear it, I want to scream and throw a four-year-old style temper tantrum. It's like "this is what I want, and I'm sure as hell going to get it." I just shrugged my shoulders writing this, because I don't know if it's possible that I can be any more true. 

But maybe, life is just one big compromise. That's a shocker. Tell me your face isn't really super straight now. Or are you wearing a downturned smile? Yes. That one. Perched huffily on your mouth. I understand that. I get what you feel right now. You don't want to hear it any more than I want to write it, but compromise is a big part of life, and we all, at some point, need to learn how to do it. Sometimes, it might not turn out so bad after all. Just because life doesn't turn out exactly like you expected, it doesn't mean it's wrong. I mean, didn't you see Sex and the City? Charlotte spends almost the entire series pin-pointing her ideal man; tall, dark, handsome, ambitious. Someone she can raise a family with. Someone polite, kind and very much like her. However, we see something miraculous happen. Our lovely, prim-and-proper Charlotte, ends up with Harry. Harry is short and bald and sarcastic, and bad-mannered and lazy and not at all what Charlotte set out to, I suppose, "achieve." Oh, and the last worm in the woodwork, he's Jewish. See, at this point, viewers are kind of torn. Is Charlotte going to run for the hills, because Harry isn't who she thought she'd end up with, or, against all odds, is she going to find happiness with someone other than her dreamed-up ideal? Well, I don't want to spoil it, but if you haven't seen it, where the hell have you been hiding?! You must live under a very large rock, because everyone knows what happens in Sex and the City. So, our lovely Charlotte ends up with Harry. Every glitch she encounters, she shrugs her shoulders at, and deals with it. Even if that means simply converting to Judaism.

Things don't always work out how you expected. Sometimes, compromise can be the best thing that's ever happened to you.

Charlotte: I'm seeing someone . . . sort of. It's ridiculous—he's soooo not my type. He's bald. And short. And he talks with his mouth full, and . . . it's the best sex of my life.

I'm just saying.

I'm sitting in the dark, on my bed, listening to Taylor Swift and scouring my Twitter feed for any sign of intelligent life. I'm afraid to announce there's not much. I am, as I am frequently told, too obsessed with Twitter. In fact, I must admit, I do have a life outside of the mass black hole that is the tumultuous Twittersphere. I don't know why people seem to jump to the conclusion that because I have tweeted a huge 35,719 times, that I therefore cannot even comprehend, never mind pursue an actual social life. This, in fact, couldn't be further from the truth. I'm a very sociable person, usually. On and offline. There's nothing better, to me, than meeting a friend over Starbucks and having a gossip, a drink at the pub or even a tweeting marathon online. I will dispute this constantly, I have a life, both regarding and disregarding my online activity.

We've all done it. Fallen into the social-networking trap, became obsessed with the latest networking craze and found yourself planning your sleeping pattern around your Facebook newsfeed, Twitter timeline or Bebo profiles (yes, really far back in the day!) It's kind of funny really. My parents are constantly saying to me, "why don't you get off twitter and actually go talk to your friends?" with which I respond, "what do you think I'm doing now?" I've said it before, and I'll continue to say it again, I have to be one of the easiest people to get in touch with, on the planet. I have a Facebook account, a Twitter, a discarded MySpace I never really nourished, a Tumblr I have no idea how to use, but I'm always receiving emails about comments and photo posts, a YouTube I don't really need, and of course, a Blogspot. I'm always attached to my phone, and if I don't respond to a text, a tweet, a facebook message or a phone call, then I really am avoiding you, or I'm extremely busy (i.e. Watching Luther, NCIS or lost in a book.)

I love my networking, even if other people laugh at it. I've seen the looks, and heard the comments. I'll slip in something about a tweet or a blog post into a real-life, physical conversation, and there are certain people who just can't help but roll their eyes and just stand there, blatantly uninterested. That's okay. And you know why? Because it makes me happy. I like to blog and tweet. It's what I want, so it doesn't cross my mind what other people think of it. Even some of my friends, I'm sure, probably think they have better things to do than blog, but for me, it's more than just a play-by-play, online diary entry, it's a personal way I can get my writing out there, into the vast array of the internet. A powerful force, and a way, hopefully, that may open up many new opportunities for me in the future.

There's probably a lot of people close to me who think I'm clutching at straws, or just being a naive little dreamer by wanting to pursue a career in writing, but I shrug it off. You might think I'm a dreamer, but maybe I am. But years from now, I hope to see more than four office or classroom walls. I don't mind there's no steady wage or pension plan or set holidays, because what I want isn't about stability. It's about passion. Years from now, when my friends are teachers, and scientists, and pharmacists and doctors and all that stuff, maybe my name will be known for something else, for some other reason. Maybe I'll be the next F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.K Rowling or Jane Austen. I want you to be reading someone's blog who will later become a bestselling author, a journalist, or a magazine editor. I want to write, the freedom of expression, and my words down on someone else's page. It may not be conventional, but who wants to be conventional anyway. Every risk I take may get me one step closer to the thing I really want, so if that means writing a blog, and spending too much time dreaming up creative pieces, then so be it.

 

The big 5-0.

This is it. My fiftieth blog post. I can't quite believe I'm saying that. To most of you, that probably doesn't sound like a big deal, or even a number worth celebrating, but for me, it is. For me, it's worth a lot more than that. More than an approving nod or smile. You know why? It represents a whole lot more for me, for many reasons, but one in particular. The fact I've got to 50 blog posts, shows I really do possess the determined streak I long for and am proud of. It shows I'm growing as a person, and more over, a writer. The experience, the feeling, the opportunity. All of it, I couldn't have done, without this blog. I feel a lot more confident in my work, and feel a certain freedom and fulfillment in posting my writing for the world to see, whether it be a few lines moaning about lack of sleep and too much rain, or a creative piece that is close to my heart, it has the same feeling,- I get the same release from it. I tell more people about my blog now, and receive so many compliments and reactions that it never fails to shock me. With every blog view or acknowledgement, supportive comment or tweet, my confidence grows, and I get closer to realising, maybe, just maybe, I can really MAKE IT BIG.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

I want to be a real-life Carrie Bradshaw meets Bridget Jones. With a bank balance like J.K. Rowling's, a fan-base like John Green and the infamy of Oscar Wilde. That's probably ambitious, but who cares? Maybe I'll get lucky.