A famous writer, a com­mu­ni­ty work­er who brings peo­ple togeth­er, a suc­cess­ful ani­mal activist, a screenwriter…

I look up from my note­book. Out­side, the wind plays with the long strands of hair of the birch that stands in front of the win­dow. Inside, peo­ple are read­ing qui­et­ly among end­less rows of books. This is my sec­ond vis­it to the library in our new town. The book in front of me is The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I am work­ing on this exer­cise: “In a per­fect world, I would secret­ly love to be a …”

Julia Cameron states that work can also be play. Accord­ing to her, it is nev­er too late to go down a new road. Fred­dy and I changed direc­tion in April. We left Aberdeen for Read­ing, a city close to Lon­don and Oxford. Fred­dy works here at the uni­ver­si­ty. For the time being I am going to work part-time in child­care, and I am look­ing around for vol­un­teer work and oth­er groups. And I read Llewellyn Vaugh­an-Lee (Love is a Fire):

We have to dis­cov­er what real­ly mat­ters to us, what is the most impor­tant thing in our whole life, and then have the courage to live this deep­est dream. Carl Jung said, “Find the mean­ing, and make the mean­ing your goal.”

The list keeps grow­ing as I start writ­ing again. Whether I want to become a stu­dent pas­tor, a his­to­ri­an or an ani­mal ther­a­pist, I will have to learn and try new things with­out any guar­an­tee of suc­cess. A new city is the ide­al set­ting for this. And the library will always be a safe haven for my dreams.