You hear me right. The other day, in defence of social media, I cautioned about “hating” this space is. Yet, I’d have enough reason not to like it: There was this job I applied for almost two years ago. I handed my patchy resume,  speckled with long periods of travels and short stints of work, to a recruitment agent knowing that somewhere someone always looks for someone else do to some job.

And so it was. My agent informed me she’d passed my details on to a potential employer. A day later my agent called again to inform me the potential employer had looked at my old blog (not this place) and decided immediately against hiring me.

Let me repeat this, as I did back then continuously in my mind for WEEKS: I didn’t get a job because of my blog.

I was furious.

I howled like a dog, angry and defensive. After all, that project had been my occupation for a long, long time. Thinking about stories, taking photos, writing for hours on end. It had been all-consuming and deeply personal.

I steamed.

I stewed.

I cursed the employer.

I cursed the agent.

I blamed my blog for being shit.

I was feeling deeply, deeply insecure and humiliated.

And then something happened. I realised, because of that blog I didn’t get a job.

And that was terrific!

I was free and didn’t get stuck in some god-awful place that I was never meant to fit in.

I could be me and didn’t have to pretend to be someone else for the sake of money.

I could be happy every morning when I got out of bed, because the only limit to my creativity was within me. Only I could stretch and push it, wrestle my project into the shape I wanted it to be.

If I regarded my project as shit now, it was so because I had already exceeded my previous bounds of creativity. And that too was terrific! There were so many things I could do, I wanted to do and I DID.

You see, this is why not getting the job was a great gift.

Thank you again, universe!