(But it’s good to have some questions)

Wow, you’re in your last year of high school.  How did that happen?  It’s like I blinked and you are all grown-up.  It feels like only yesterday I was standing outside your kindy room, ready to head off on an Aunty-Miss Lily adventure for the afternoon.  I can so clearly still see my arm outstretched ready to take your bag from you that you’d collected from the cubby-hole locker along with your latest masterpiece in water-based paints.  But more than a decade has gone by since then – time really does fly my lovely one.

So this year is a year I know you have been looking forward to for a while now.  I also know it is a year that contains a few ‘uh-oh’ items to contend with in the world of Miss Lily.  Okay, so one of those is the fact that your boyfriend leaves for university ahead of you, let’s just get that one out-of-the-way, because I do sympathise with you on this (you will be okay, by the way, I promise).  I’m really referring to the fact that while you go through your final year of high school (Year 13, a senior-senior and mufti at last! And all the other good stuff you’ll do alongside your many lovely friends), the prospect of 2018 looms large.

The question ‘what next?’ seems to be a weekly if not daily routine with everyone you come into contact with.  It’s nice that people are interested and care about what comes next for you, but it is also a pretty hard question for you to answer at the moment with any real clarity and sureness, and I totally get it!

I entered my final year of high school at 16, and it was term two before I was 17.  I look back and it seems crazy to me now that at that tender age I had to get a whole lot figured out for my future and fast.  I, like you, didn’t have a lot to go on at that stage, so I started with what I did know: Continue reading →