You're An Inspiration and You Don't Even Know it...

My earliest memories of a love for writing, well, more specifically, a love of stories was of writing and reading bedtime stories to my younger siblings.

I'd also write little plays and perform them with my siblings and the kids from the neighbourhood in the back garden, on a stage made of garden furniture and upturned toy boxes.

I’d sit in the corner of a library or registry office while dad researched the family tree, and be leafing through the fabulous old books and scribbling in my own little notebook.

As a teenager, I wrote terrible angsty poetry and remember the abject humiliation of one of the boys in class getting his hands on my precious notebook and reading my poems out!

I insisted on submitting my poetry and short stories as part of my GCSE English portfolio, despite the teacher telling me it was a waste of time – I always was bloody stubborn.

I think it was my 14^th birthday when I was given a typewriter.

I used it to start writing a book – a book I finally finished in my 30’s but I’ve not published it (maybe I will one day).

My dream was to see the name ‘Amy Fitzjohn’ on the spine of a book. I was going to be a writer.

During those formative years, I had a couple of regular babysitting gigs. One was for my little brother’s best mate and his family. The matriarch of that particular household was the wonderful children’s author, Beth Webb.

Knowing that Beth made a living as an author kept me going. She encouraged me to write - my parents did too, but somehow being encouraged by someone who’d ‘made it’ held more sway for me.

While teachers and careers advisors were telling me that being an author wasn’t a ‘proper job’, somewhere in the back of my mind a voice kept reminding me that couldn’t be true. I had evidence. Beth’s books were there, on the shelves of the school library!

Thanks to social media, I’ve stayed in touch with Beth and it was a short messenger conversation that inspired this article. She wrote that she hadn’t realised she’d had such an influence on me, to which I replied that just by virtue of existing in the world, she had inspired me.

Sometimes, you don’t have to do much to be an inspiration to others.

You just need to be there.

You’re doing what you love and sharing it with he world, and even if someone avidly follows your blogs and social media updates and never converts to become a customer or hardly engages with your content, you’ve still had an impact.

Writing your own blogs, sharing your story and your passion isn’t just about converting readers to leads and prospects to customers – it’s about ‘influencing’, in other words it’s about ‘inspiring’.

Write, just for the sheer joy of doing it. For the satisfaction of being heard. For the catharsis of getting it out of your system and having your say.

I realised my dream of being an author in 2013. I’d love to go back in time and give that awkward little girl a hug and tell her she was right to be so stubborn and to keep doing what she loves.

Do what you love. Share it, and do so with passion, purpose and intention and you will be an inspiration without even realising it.