You know that nagging feeling the one that says 'I'd like to write a play' or 'I'd like to be in a band' or or start a business being a taxidermist making jewelery or 'I'd like to walk around the entire coast line of Scotland'. And you know how you don't do anything about it? Well that nagging feeling doesn't go away but your sense of depair, failure and of time passing and the sheer drearyness of life becomes more and more pressing and you start to fear thinking about anything except the grindstone directly infront of you - becaue its just too painful to think of anything much just the next thing that will obliterate how much you just aren't enjoying your life. You know the next comfort whether its Cadbury's or a large slug of red wine or evening of telly but it doesn't really work it just distracts you momentarily from the conditions of your life.

The nagging thirst is to be listened to and entertained and accommodated. It's there for a reason. There is nothing more painful than knowing someone has died early and not done what they really wanted. Its a stark thing to say but learning of my best friend's death on the phone from Germany when I was 25 was a huge huge wake up call for me and I soon after made the decision to make films and leave my job in publishing.  The second early death came for me earlier this year when my friend Rachel Sherratt was found dead after a walk over the new year. This was terrible and her funeral was packed. Not only had a large number of people lost a wonderful steadfast friend but people with learning disabilites which Rachel, worked for had lost an energetic, powerful advocate. But Rachel was a woman who had learned though expereince, losing a business, moving often, that life is to be shaped to one's own passions. So a few years ago Rachel started to walk around the coast line of Scotland - thousands of miles. Every couple of months she would take time off work and walk another stretch, take photographs and come back with amazing stories of seeing the dolphins in the Moray Firth or some other wonderful thing. By the time she died she had done Berwick to past Aberdeen. It was a huge comfort to know that she had done many of the things that she wanted to do, she hadn't put them off for later.

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Now I've bludged you over the head.

Take your Thirst to the page. 

Get a pad of paper or a notebook nothing fancy, perferably not lined (too much like school). Go to Woolworths at lunchtime and buy a cheap ink cartridge pen. Every morning when you wake up grab a cup of coffee and scribble about your Thirst, start a dialogue with it. Explore it. What does it want to do? How can you listen to it? How can you help  it? Crazy or not the first thing to get our dreams into action is to allow them into our lives in the first place.