My first year out of school was not the easiest. I was lost, full of yearning and big dreams.

I didn’t realise the ways in which my time at school had been containing my anxiety. I was too busy, along with all the other girls, being excited about the future. School and its expectations were there to be railed against, and teachers and rules are to be left far behind. Bring on the future! I would leave home and move to the city to study! I would perform in plays! How thrilling! And wonderful!

But … it wasn’t those things. I was exhausted. I had given the HSC everything and didn’t have the resources for university.

Nor did I feel ready, once I got there, to make new friends. My old ones felt like family; you can’t just snap your fingers and create new relationships. I was doing the wrong course, at the wrong institution, attempting to live in the wrong places and – just to add insult to injury – falling in love with the wrong people. I had a child’s understanding that dreams do come true, just how you imagine they will – exactly that way. You can control the path ahead with the strength of your own desire.

I had chosen my university because of its proximity to Sydney’s National Institute for Dramatic Art. That was where I wanted to be. I didn’t want to live in my head; I wanted the physical experience of immersion in character. I remember standing on the far side of the campus, arms heavy with law books, longingly watching the acting students practise fencing, leaping and jousting in Shakespearean costume. But I did not get into NIDA – as hard as I tried – and after a year I dropped out of university to make it as an actor on my own. I was 18 and out of my depth.

I eventually did study acting at the Victorian College of the Arts, and my years there held many wonderful discoveries about text and character. But when I graduated, I found myself, once again, unemployed. In between auditions I worked in kitchens, bars, hotels … I served drinks, scraped plates, made sandwiches. I sold potatoes at festivals dolloped with sour cream, corn and bolognese.

I was a fairy, too. Every weekend with coat-hanger wings strapped to my back, I would entertain kids at birthday parties. At one point I signed up for unemployment benefits. This was in the days before the internet, and employment opportunities were occasionally sent by mail. A letter arrived from the Department of Social Security and, without enthusiasm (nobody wanted to hear from the Department of Social Security), I opened it. There was the little yellow card with its handwritten job description: writer. I stopped in my tracks. Writer? Did the DSS know something I did not? Might I be a writer?

I had always kept a journal, always loved to read and to make up stories. As a child I’d loved poetry. I’d written plays to perform for friends and family. Had in fact toyed with the idea of writing a show for myself to act in. A film. I read the card again. Writer. The DSS knew me better than I knew myself! Then I looked again. Not writer but waiter.

In hindsight, I can say that every effort was a building block. Those hard days counted. The thwarted dreams. The failed auditions. The struggle. The stage fright and the failure. The fairy dust in my clothes, the smeared face paint and bedraggled fairy wings. Those drives back from the city at 4am after mopping floors at the club. All of it counted.

Maybe days like that are counting for you, too. Maybe parts in yourself are carrying you towards your brightest most wonderful dream. Even when days feel long. Even when there are clouds in your sky. Something more powerful might quietly be at work.

I would begin to study writing a few years after the invitation sent to me by the DSS. I thought, if I can’t find work as an actor, then maybe I’ll write myself some work. A deeper, more authentic part of me was finally taking the lead. I wasn’t as rigid, in that instant that I decided to study writing, about what the future should look like.

It turned out that, when I first read the letter from the Department of Social Security, I had been right all along.

• Sofie Laguna is a writer based in Melbourne