What do you do with a BA in English,

Or rather Philosophy, if you're not the leading character of Avenue Q. 

I'd apologise for the silence, but I would feel like some sort of reason must be given as to what I have been doing instead of blogging, but quite frankly there has been nothing much really. Or things which have been happening have been personal and I haven't really wanted to share. The problem has been that I have struggled to know quite which way is up due to a lot of different factors, and I haven't really been dealing with myself very well, which has made me strip everything back and not quite start again, but rethink a lot of things. 

Recently I found out that I do now in fact have a degree, and not before time, too. I have finally become a graduate, though my time to walk across the stage in cap and gown is a delight that December will bring, and I can't wait for it. As much as the last four years have presented me with many traumas, I feel glad for the fact that I have finally made it through and the whole thing can have a new level of worth to me. 

Even more recently I ended an argument I had been having with myself and decided that the anxiety I get from the idea of getting behind the wheel of a car doesn't constitute a good reason not to do it, so this morning, more than four years on from my last proper driving lesson, I was driving around London, and somehow managing to not crash the car. Whilst I freely admit I am still anxious about driving and the idea of parallel (why is that word so difficult to spell!?!) parking is still something that sounds monstrous and makes me feel sick, the idea of driving in general is not something which I think of as utterly horrifying and completely beyond me. Which is quite nice, because I used to really enjoy driving..

I know it's not over yet, but this year has been a difficult one. There have been times where I have wondered whether I would finish my degree, whether I would ever live in a place where I would be comfortable and settled, whether I would be able to stay in London after my degree, and even times where I have questioned whether I would be best off just giving up on my dream of writing altogether and submitting myself to something much more manageable, but then I look at the bookcase of notebooks in the corner of my bedroom and wonder if all those ideas and characters and things can really fit back inside my head, let alone in a small box to gather memory dust and become faded. Could I really ever take myself away from something which redefined solitude to a place which was not lonely, but full of whatever I wanted? Would it really be possible for me to put down the notebooks that I have carried with me for so long and pretend that they never mattered? Because that's what giving up on this dream equates to. 

Imaginations don't have an on/off switch. Were there a way to turn them off, I'm not sure that I would turn off mine. It's true that sometimes my mind goes off on such tangents that I wonder how to get it back and all important thoughts seem to believe that they are relieved of duty and disappear into the night, but it's worth being a bit of a dingbat in order to be able to create something... 

I guess, more than anything, I've felt in a bit of a crisis as to what to do next. The last thing I want is to remain stationary and I flatly refuse to do it. It's time for me to figure out what comes next and just jump for it, but there are so many roads to choose. 

Are There Any Aminals In Here?,

I feel slightly like Lilo stepping into the back of the pet rescue centre at the moment, looking at this thing again and wondering if it is alive or not... 

Anyway, things have been hectic, I was without proper internet for a while, but from here, things are on the up. 

I'm finally living on my own in a wonderful little flat where if I want to potter around at the weekends and not do much, I can. I can basically do what I want for all the time I'm not working. As much as it sounds all OCD, I can be in control of what happens in my living space, and that is such a calming experience for me. 

I've also got my degree results, which has taken long enough, but I am so happy it's here. I'm finally able to move on with my life. 


Anyway, I have a lot to do, and should really be aiming to be in bed in an hour! More on this later!

Butterflies,

So, occasionally there are things I want to do, and I make a commitment to them, and then life doesn't pan out the way I think it will and so things go slightly off course. Or very off course. 

I had committed myself to the idea of writing every day in June, and I wanted to stick to that, but I haven't. In many ways it has been a difficult month. Finishing university felt like such a flooding relief because I didn't have such an amazing time of it, as has been evident, but the thing is, my expectations of myself were really unreasonable and I felt as though I would have all of this freedom and not know what to do with it. The actual fact is I have been run down and exhausted from going back to working full time and it's all felt pretty none stop. I have made myself feel quite ill by just throwing myself at it at full force instead of allowing myself to just stop and just be for a bit.

The good news is I have been writing, just not on here. 

I'd love to say that I have got a new novel finished or been editing or something, but the fact is that I am struggling. 

I'm tired and I'm not doing great at being healthy - in the sense of eating three proper meals a day and sleeping properly and making sure I'm taking all my vitamins and such. More than anything, I've been coasting myself along a little in lieu of a major kick up the arse. 

The fact is that at some point I need to accept that I'm 22, not 17. I'm not on a summer away from college and I don't have a separate study where I can hide out, not eat, work frantically from when I wake up at 10 in the morning and only hear my stomach yelling "feed me!" at something past four in the afternoon. If writing is something I want to do, and it is, I need to get my life sorted and be able to accept that things are different from before. I am no longer able to throw all my time at it, because I have to keep a job, pay bills and all that sort of thing. 

Saying that, there is a lot of things I could learn from 17 year old me, and I'm trying to.

Despite a habit of being something of a jeans girl, I put so much effort into how I looked at 17, not because I needed anyone else to tell me I looked good, and not because wolf whistlers don't piss me off, but because it's something of an ego boost when you walk out of the house thinking, everyone else can think what they think, because I am happy with how I look today.

On the other hand, 17 year old me is just going to have to accept that maybe Scivener isn't as bad as she thought. 

The overarching thing that I am trying to emphasise is this - the somewhat constant state of flux which my life is currently in means that I am kind of awful at making concrete plans for what to do with my noveling career, but the fact is that I am no more willing to accept that it's a pipe dream than I was at 17. If anything, the last few years have taught me to respect the fact that I can't change who and what I am, and an integral part of that has always been, and will always be, the dream of being able to write, and publish and anything else is just a bonus.

I'm Going to Count This as the Fourth,

So, I'm making dinner at midnight and trying to figure out what I will need for a weekend being even further south than the last four years have made me used to. 

Any sort of special occasion that requires dressing up, make-up and a damn good excuse to go for a little pampering in the hair salon is a great occasion to me, so I am looking forward to evening coming together and looking a little bit fabulous (I don't even care if that's arrogant :)) The on,y down side is going to be having to set off in the car at half past five in the morning, but thankfully I'm not the one driving (that hasn't happened in a few years!!) 

The only problem is that I want to do a million things at once right now because I feel like I have finally got my life back - even though I've started working full time. Ah lol, life will go on as it will.

So, I messed up a little,

As I am sure many of you are aware, I made a commitment on this blog just a few weeks ago to write a blog a day for the whole of June and, as you can see, I haven't managed to that thus far. One of the problems is that I am finally getting to catch up with all the things I put on hold whilst university needed to be my focus. The other is I've become quite into the writing off another new novel: The Disposition of an Idle Mind. TDIM for short hand.

In many ways, I have been thinking about it for years. I have been thinking about it, dreaming about it, and in some ways living it since as long as I can remember loving writing. It would be a complete lie to say that it is the only thing that I love or the thing which I love the most in the world, but if any of the things I have ever written have been my little pet projects, this is. And it will be beautiful.

So will Yours, when I actually manage to get it edited. 

Hello Out There,

It feels like forever since I last did this, but it's actually been less than a month and I'm pretty thankful for that. 

It's been a hell of a month with a few different things going on and in all honesty, it has been making it difficult to be able to just get through my university stuff, without thinking about anything else, but I have realised something and I hope I never forget this again. ~ No matter what is happening in my life, I can't let go of the things which are important to me, because it makes me lose my grip on reality a little bit. 

What I mean in particular is things like politics, novelling, live music events and all the things I enjoyed pre-uni. And all the people I enjoyed spending time with pre-uni. 

I am glad it is nearly over, because I want to have a life that isn't all about imposed deadlines and reading things I don't want to read and I'm not interested in. If you've been reading this blog for a while (first off, thank you and second) I can be quite a passionate person about the things that matter to me. Unfortunately I no longer feel that way about my degree. I have found that I feel that way about my job though, or some aspects of it, which is why I'm looking at staying within the same industry. 

I think it's at least in part because of the fact that it gives me time, as well as experiences with such a wide range of people and that never really hurt. I have time to figure out what I want to do, time to spend doing the things I love, time to spend with the people I love and time to live in a city that still has the power to make me fall in love with it over and over again despite me having lived here for getting close to four years. 

I want things to change after I have finished university and although I know that I will still take a while to get Yours, to the point where it can be published onto the Kindle and Kindle apps, I'm going to make a commitment to blogging every day in June, just to get myself back into the swing of sitting, thinking and writing at least once every day.

Anyway, 6 days until the exam, so I'd better get back to it...

A Fairy Walked into a Bar and Said...

I keep wanting to be able to find time to write blogs, but life (as described in the previous blog) is still bing quite relentless, and I am requiring more and more Relentless (and Red Bull and coffee) just to get through the days.

Feeling tired and achey and ill a lot makes all this finishing uni stuff very, very hard, and it's made even harder by the fact that my tutors only consolation is to say, well, if you need any extensions or deferrals, just drop us a line. I don't think they realise that I have had quite enough of all of this stuff and would like it Over and Done With (like the song by The Proclaimers) as soon as is humanly, okay Charlie-ly possible. 

The most annoying part of it all is sitting back and assessing how my life is now, and realising that all along, I never needed a degree to do what I want to do with my life, or the jobs that will support me whilst I try my hardest to do what I want to do. In one way, it makes me angry, frustrated and a lot of other things at once, but then again, I made the choices I made at 18 for a reason, and I'm making the choices I'm making at 22 for different reasons, and it is a bit redundant for me to try and classify either of them as inherently wrong. 

Okay, so university hasn't been the best thing in my life so far, okay, it has taken me an extra year to get through it, okay, I could have been doing the job I do now four years ago, but I wouldn't be the same person, Yours, wouldn't be the same novel, I might not have met my wonderful partner and the sky might have fallen down and painted the grass blue. I keep having to remind myself not to think about the choices I have already made, and to just make the ones in front of me, but it is very hard.

There have been so many things I have wanted to write little blog posts about, but everything university related is taking up the majority of my time and energy at this moment, but the end is now somewhere in sight. By the 22nd May, this will all be over.

I'll see you then... (never type on iPad bluetooth keyboards - typos suck!)