Going Through Changes
GIF by Jackson Elliott
Words by Declan Harrick
I feel entirely ill-equipped to talk about the future. I’m moving to a city I’ve never lived in to stay in a suburb I’ve never visited, all while the world goes through an event I’ve never seen.
Indeed, 2020 is not quite what I envisioned.
Yet, while I might not be able to predict a pandemic or even come close to nailing a same game multi for that matter, one thing I do know is that the future will involve change. And change has always been something I’ve struggled with.
Be it crying on an overnight camp in year 4 because I was homesick, to feeling incredibly self-conscious thanks to a new haircut; I’ve never quite been able to accept change.
Ironically, it’s only as I write this article that I think I probably should.
Because change will happen whether we want it to or not. That’s the scary thing about it.
But I’m not here to preach and ponder. I’m hardly wise enough to do so. I am, after all, only days removed from living at home and depending on mum for the majority of my meals.
Instead, what I can talk about with confidence is how change has affected me in the past.
And while talking about the past in an issue all about the future might seem counterintuitive, I think we can all agree that foresight is the last thing we need to hear from a man who once thought Schapelle Corby was innocent.
Thankfully I was a bit wiser by the time uni ended. I was also lucky enough to be talking to some AFL clubs about making the jump to professional footy. Now I say lucky, because I’m quite tall and I’m entirely sure that’s where the interested stemmed. I can’t kick, can’t handball, can’t jump and have a laughably low footy IQ. But again, I’m tall and the clubs seemed to love that.
I began running a lot as I quickly sold myself on the idea of stardom. Insta followers, recognition in the street, famous footy friends, I’d convinced myself of all of it. Never mind that a recruiter told me that I’d have a “3 percent chance of getting picked up.” He was wrong and I’d prove it.
Or so I thought. The offers dried up about as quickly as they came in, and after about 5 months the dream was dead. It was the first thing I’d ever failed at entirely. I was broken. A change I’d been anticipating had swung the other way. And fast.
It was then that I realised I had absolutely no idea where I was going with life.
The majority of my mates were all starting their first full-time jobs and I was left on the couch pondering what could’ve been. For the first time in my life, things were changing but I wasn’t.
And it really got to me. I felt like everyone was going on to bigger and better things while I was left behind. Part-time jobs at a café and a pub as well as continual attempts to break into this industry only exacerbated the feeling.
If you did AWARD School this year and you’re somehow still reading, I’m sure you can relate. This is an unbelievably hard industry to break into. It took me 3 and a half years and two goes at the course to feel like I’m even coming close. Indeed, for the most part, the change I was after felt like it would never happen.
But that’s the beauty of change – it does what it says.
So if you had to take anything from this article, it’s not that I cry on overnight camps or that I can’t kick; it’s that the only consistent thing in this world is change. It’s fine to accept where you’re at, because just know it’s not where you’ll end up.
