Thank You by Stephen Fogarty
After writing something, I always notice a certain quality, a je ne sais quoi. I just used a French phrase to sound intelligent, when in reality I got a D in my French Junior Certificate. It is just the way I write, and for the time being, nothing is going to change that. Unless, God forbid, I become a better writer. But not at this time; I abandon any pretense to a greater intelligence, talent, or wisdom to write something very important to me.
I want to be a film critic. As simple as that sentence seems, I cannot express how long it took me to realise that about myself. It fits so beautifully. I have always loved stories, and that is a passion which has only intensified with age. I have been exposed to so many stories through the different medias and visuals of film, television, literature, audio drama, graphic novels, video games, animé, and web series. That is just what exists right now. There are so many many more brilliant and beautiful stories just waiting to be experienced. When I find a story that is truly great I cannot express the sheer joy and jubilation I feel. I am passionate about the things I enjoy and I want to devote my life to learning about film and being able to watch and think about it and discuss it as a career. I see it as a way to make a living. It is a concept so unbelievably perfect it cannot be put into words.
I would like to consider the road not taken. There was a long time when this passion was lying dormant inside me and I did not even know it was there. If it had continued like that, I can only imagine my world being just that little bit darker. Because of that single event which led to me discovering my passion, it also sent me down this new road. If this had not happened, there would be so many things I would have never discovered, so many sources of euphoria left untapped, both in the world of fiction and in the real world, where I define myself as the person I am today. That day was today five years ago on the 20th of January 2009. It was on that day that I watched my first episode of Doctor Who, which may seem pretentious and insignificant, but it is so much more than that.
Doctor Who is about friendship and bravery, love and loss, life and death, forgiveness and guilt, and being human and being less than human, and sometimes being a little bit more than human, skill and intellect and sometimes a little bit of luck, finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, looking up at the night sky and realizing that you are part of an impossibly beautiful and mysterious universe and that, ultimately, you don’t know all the answers no matter how clever you are. It’s about looking inside yourself and realizing that you are far greater than the external conditions of your life. You are not a shop girl, you are not a medical student, you are not an office temp, you are not a little girl who needs to grow up, or a boy who thinks the love of his life could have done better. You are the most important person in all of creation, and at the same time, you are the most insignificant creature in the world. Having the ability to change between the two at any moment is simply fantastic. It is about embracing your inner darkness, so you can stand in the light of your truth. It is about having the guts to do the right thing when everyone else just runs away. And five years ago, Doctor Who bestowed upon me boundless joy and and a determination to do something with my life that I could be proud of… thank you!