It suddenly struck me today that without realising it, I’ve always had a passion for writing.  I’ve always been academic and enjoyed writing essays and completing coursework.  I take great satisfaction in collating information, researching and putting it altogether in my style and words.  I’d never really thought about making a hobby or career out of such skills until recently and it got me thinking.  I think there was always a writer inside me, but I just forgot.

My Grandad recently handed me an envelope.  Inside this envelope was a rather feisty letter of complaint firing somebody.  This letter was written by pencil, in an obvious child font, from a ‘very frustrated Victoria’.

Yep, the letter was from me (pretending to be an angry customer) to my Grandad (the poor pretend person I’d hired to do a job for me!)  It’s absolutely brilliant and now safely stored in my memory box.

I realised today, perhaps I’ve always had a passion for writing and in starting this blog, at first for entirely different reasons altogether, I’ve rediscovered it.  I also wonder if many bloggers did the same as me as a youngster for enjoyment?

I regularly penned fake letters to my Grandad and enjoyed doing so.  I’d sit in his home office at his typewriter and come up with the most imaginative letters I could think of.  For pure fun!  I remember longing for a typewriter of my own.

Once a bit older, perhaps eleven or so, I began writing diaries.  I have four or five diaries in a box in my attic filled with years of entries.  I believe I wrote them most days until I was 15 or 16.  I’ve not read them since.  One day I will get them down and have a good read.  Perhaps the memories will flood back.  I don’t think the reason for writing them was to always keep the memories, but because at the time it gave me something to write about.

I also have a box in the attic filled to the brim with letters.  I often had ‘pen pals’.  These were other children I met when on holiday and we’d exchange addresses with the promise of staying in touch forever.  Sadly this forever was perhaps a couple of years at most, but that’s better than most adults I’ve come across, so a good effort for a child!  I remember the excitement I felt receiving a letter addressed to me through the letterbox, running to my bedroom to rip open the envelope to see what the sender had divulged.  But, even better, penning my letter back and being so proud of the format, layout, style and stories I had told.

I vaguely remember making pretend magazines.  I loved to read magazines and loved to dream up my own.  This is a memory I’d almost lost until I recollected all the above today.  I’d make up names for my magazines and sit for hours arranging the layout, stories and pictures.  We had no computer when I was a child, let alone the internet.  I’d sit with a notebook, pens, scissors, magazines and a stick of glue!

I’m so pleased to remember all this today.  Perhaps there was an aspiring blogger inside me all along!