About

Can you remember the first time you realised that you weren't meant for a 'normal' job, as you previously stated?

"I really hope people don't get offended with me saying a 'normal' job [laughs], but yeah, I do. It may sound surprising, but I was actually in primary school when I realised. We had to do an assembly and stand up and say to all our parents and other pupils what we aspired to be when we were older. You got all the kids standing up saying something like 'teacher', or, 'fireman', things like that and then you got me standing up saying 'wedding dress designer'. I was a daft kid. But then  I realised again when I was in high school. I've always been interested in films and media. I mean it sounds daft to other people, but when I watch a film, I always examine all the characters and 9/10 times, I'll have guessed right how the ending will be. When I listen to music, I always notice how the beats are going and what instruments are being used and I really listen out for what the singers are saying in their songs. I'm really weird, but yeah, going back to high school, we had a career guy come in and we all had a meeting with him, usually went in pairs, but I ended up going in early because I couldn't be bothered going to my science lesson. I went in and all my questions I'd answered had all been about TV presenting, music and writing. I ended up doing this test, it took forever, but my result was no joke, 87% creativity, 12% administrative & computing and 1% retail. He said himself that he hasn't had someone in a LONG time get so high on the creative spectrum. That's how I knew."

Was there anything that you did to start trying to get a media job?

"I mean, kinda, yeah. I started to do a YouTube channel when I was in school and I ended up deleting the channel in 2010 because people from school found it. I then made a new one and would upload videos with my friends, again, people found it, so we all stopped because they would all take to micky out of us. It knocked my confidence, I'm not going to lie. I then started up a blog and no one knew who I was, because I didn't put my name on it. My identity was literally 'anonymous' and my blog was called 'Dear Dumb Diary' and then that started the inspiration for the book I wrote for Google. I had 50,000 monthly readers on that blog, but again, I really did love it, but I wanted to be known for it, but I knew the moment I would reveal my identity on that, it would take away the excitement and the mystery of who it is and I kept up with that blog until 2015. Then, I deleted the whole thing as I started to suffer from depression. I then went silent on everything and just took photos, I mean, I did enter some competitions with Google and SH. I came 3rd with Google out of 50,000 people (book competition) and with SH (songwriting competition) I came 5th out of 100,000 people. I started my YouTube up again in 2017 and I've just carried on with it. It's been a bit silent recently, due to personal issues, but hopefully that's changing soon."

Here's some of Shannen's work: