Changes are afoot.
It’s long overdue; I feel like my life has
been rather static lately, but finally I’ve found the right gear and now it’s a
matter of accelerating until I’m up to the right speed so that all I’ll have to
do is make sure I don’t crash into a tree or lamp-post. Having been ‘told off’
for making my blog sound like I’m a benefit scrounger (which was certainly not
my intention; I was only having a dig at the contradictive nature of my favourite
newspaper), and in light of the fact that soon I will no longer be part of this
country’s alleged job-stealing scrounger community anyway, I’ve decided it was
time for a change here too.
The last few weeks have been emotional,
educational and transformational. Having spent several months feeling
increasingly trapped in a life considered by many to be, while maybe not
perfect, certainly enviable, it took a minor mental breakdown for me to realise
I’ve spent years building up a life I have no real interest in living. Almost two
weeks have passed since that moment, and I feel happier and more at ease than I
have in a long time, for I have Plans! As the years passed, making a break for
it seemed like an increasingly bold step to take, but now that things have been
set in motion, I can hardly believe how easy everything is turning out to be.
Sure, I’m leaving a secure job for a future that may or may not work out, but
as my mum (who seemed decidedly unsurprised when I told her I’d decided to turn
my life upside down yet again) pointed out: some people need security in their
lives – I seem to need the opposite.
All these decisions are teaching me some
important lessons. Firstly, I need to be more confident about my abilities. A
career as a rocket scientist was never going to be an option thanks to a
chronic lack of discipline (or, as I prefer to think about it, an excess of
interest in far too many different things), but there are things I’m good at
that don’t require years of study and a lengthy list of qualifications, and I can
trust in those, not to make me rich, but at least to help me accomplish the
things I really want from life. Admittedly, it probably helps I have pretty modest
goals. Secondly, the apparent lack of surprise from my parents and some of my
closest friends at my announcement that I’m planning to leave suggests that not
only do they know me better than I thought, they may know me better than I know
myself, because I’d succeeded pretty well in convincing myself I’d ‘grown up’
and was ready to settle down, and for once finish my education.
The prospect of new adventures, though
still some months away, fills me with so much excitement I get a little
concerned I seem positively happy to leave my friends behind. That’s certainly
not the case – quite the opposite in fact; it hasn’t always been easy making
friends here, so I cherish the ones I have now all the more. Similarly, I
wouldn’t want to give the impression that London has treated me badly. However,
our relationship feels similar to the one you sometimes encounter with other
people; we both do our best to get along while trying to make the most of the
situation we’re faced with, but our characters are just not compatible enough
to enable us to become good friends. Having said that, I’ve been here more than
seven years – more than long enough to have lived, laughed, cried, learned some
important lessons, and grown as a person, so surely this city will always be a
small part of me.
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