Dreams

It's coming close to the time when I have to face the world head on. I'm on my last semester at the university and after that it's all a blank slate.

To me it seems that journalists are about the only working category that never retires. Rather it's more like the older you get the more interesting you become, since you have experience, you're an "old fox" of journalism. Which kind of puts us young ones in the cold. I read somewhere that here in Sweden there are way more students of journalism graduating from their studies than the various sources of media (newspapers, TV, radio and so on) can ever employ. Somehow that's a rather sobering thought.

Don't get me wrong, I don't regret even for one moment that I chose to study journalism. Writing is what I like to do and what I hope I'm good at, but it's still scary to not know where my future will take me. When I started my studies in cultural journalism our teachers made sure to point out that we had to expect to do only freelance work for at least three years after graduating. And then comes the thought: "What if I can't do it? What if I simply can't manage to claw my way in as a freelance writer? What if my writing's not good enough, my senses and instincts too weak?". But at the same time I know those are the things I cannot think about. It won't do me any good to stress out over it. Rather it's like that NIKE-commercial: "Just do it!".

Either way, all of this has made me really think about dreams. What do I really want to do with my life? What do I wish to make of myself and how should I go about it?

And I've come to a few, albeit rather frustrating, realisations.

Firstly, I'm not even sure I want to work with cultural journalism. I much prefer the variation of regular news journalism. Secondly, I feel myself leaning more and more towards more graphically challenging areas, like editor, art director or even within marketing. And lastly, I want to travel abroad. I don't want to remain here in Sweden for the rest of my life. But... if it's hard finding work for a Swedish Journalism student here in Sweden I can only imagine what it would be like to try and wrestle myself into the media of other countries.

It's a tough world out there and though it is a good thing to have dreams, sometimes it's just frustrating the hell out of me not knowing when or if I can ever realise even a part of those dreams.