I was inspired by a teacher with Suzi Quatro hair

I’m lucky. I have a day job that is pretty good, the pay is decent and the people I work with are, for the most part, nice people.

I’ve also had a few jobs where I was so stressed I’d be crying even as I typed into my keyboard, the letters on screen blurring like a car windscreen on a wet day.

But these two scenarios are not that dissimilar if truth be told, because in both cases, the effect is the same: whether a good job or a bad job, they both take me away from the thing I really want to do, which is writing.

I’ve always loved writing. In school, English was my favorite subject. I was the geek who loved the English exams because we’d be given a writing prompt and told to write a story of 500 words starting with “It was a day like any other, until…”. I loved it and would jump in, scribbling away while most of the rest of the class looked around in panic.

Fast forward too many years to mention and I still wonder how I ended up as an accountant, surrounded by spreadsheets, month end deadlines and staff to manage.

I remember Miss T, one of my English teachers, almost with adoration. She was young and self-assured, with a style that bordered on being a hippy. She wore long floaty skirts and her fair hair was styled like Suzi Quatro.

Miss T was one of the few people who “saw” me. I was always an average child, most of my report cards cited “could do better” as if it were a dreary shopping list.

But Miss T saw more than the child who could do better. She encouraged me to read and write. She would ask me to stand up in class and read aloud. I was shy and awkward, but secretly enjoyed the attention and being able to shine for a few moments.

Nowadays I’m expected to stand up and speak, whether it’s to present the monthly results, sit in on recruitment panels or provide training on some dry finance process. I guess Miss T unwittingly set the foundations that would give me enough confidence to let my voice be heard. Although it’s a stretch to say I enjoy this kind of speaking. Lacking warmth or drama or rhyme, it’s just not the same.

I once wrote a prize-winning poem. I was about 15 or 16. It was a time when there was an horrendous famine in Ethiopia. Every day the television pumped out heartbreaking pictures of children dying of starvation, their faces caved and their stomachs distended. I must’ve been moved because I penned a poem and entered it into the School’s annual writing competition.

Frankly I was amazed when I won. People like me — the average, could-do-better types, never won anything.

At the end of year assembly there was to be a prize giving. We would all cram into the echoing gym hall, staff and students together, and I would have to stand up and read my poem to the whole school. Then they would give me a small prize cup and smile and clap. I did it, because Miss T was there, smiling and clapping, She’d already shown me that I could read aloud in front of others.

I was still awkward and embarrassed…and secretly proud.

I’m good at my day job. I don’t win prizes, but I know my work is appreciated and forms the basis for decision makers higher up than me to get on with their jobs.

And ironically, I love spreadsheets! There’s something enjoyable about building a spreadsheet, knowing what formulas to use, the experimentation with layouts and commands, eventually leading to a piece of work that captures information, turns it over in its computational mind and then spews out the results you were aiming for. There’s creativity involved in building a good, useful spreadsheet.

It’s the same feeling I get when I create a story from piecing together memories, thoughts and ideas into something someone else will enjoy.

Finding the time to balance my day job with my writing isn’t easy. Sadly, what is always easy is having a full-on day at work and feeling too tired to want to write by the time I get home.

But, much like my 15-year-old self, who had Miss T to help and encourage her, I now look inward to find the encouragement, inspiration and tools that will help me navigate towards this much wanted outcome.

I’m no longer the shy, awkward teenager, embarrassed at my own voice. My job has made sure of that. My job has built on the foundations that Miss T put down, so that I’ve grown, albeit via an unexpected route into someone who wants to share and be heard.

Yes, I’m lucky to have a day job that’s pretty good.