As If I Needed,

I have gone and done myself an, albeit minor, injury.

Last week, in a fit of infinite stupidity a message between brain and muscle got confused so instead of moving a whiskey glass upwards and sideways, I moved it diagonally, smashed it into a table, smashing it and slicing open a large cut in my finger. As that was bleeding profusely and refusing to heal quickly - it was pretty grim - I apparently failed to notice that a glass splinter had lodged in another of my fingers. Now that the cut is healing, the glass splinter is causing me a few problems.

Part of the problem with this is it is on my dominant hand and my other finger is still sore from the injury it sustained. My typing speed has taken a real hit and as this splinter is in the tip of my index finger, which is my main digit for typing. It's also pretty vital for pens and quills, so I can't even handwrite everything.

It might seem like I'm being dramatic - it surely feels dramatic when people around me are insisting I go to a walk in centre or something - but it really is rather bothersome at the moment.

Hopefully it won't have too dramatic an effect as it is almost Camp NaNo and I think, after much debate, I am going to commit myself to a project, though exactly what that is going to be I have not quite put my metaphorical finger on.

Catch you later.

A Room of One's Own,

Hello my digital darlings.

I can't believe that it is March already and I haven't actually written anything on here. It seems strange until I remember that life has been such a busy mess the last few months that I've been returning home on a Friday evening, collapsing headlong across my bed and not moving until Monday morning. (This is only a slight exaggeration I assure you).

So, what was it that was on my mind to prompt an exercise of the fingers and thumbs?

Well. Several years ago I was given a book called A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf. It is a combination of essays discussing the needs of a woman in order to write, though it is based in a different era where women were allowed to read but were excluded from particular libraries and, where they could read the same texts, were not allowed to receive degrees at most universities.

Though times have changed dramatically from this, the idea that what women need is a room of their own and money in order to write and create has not changed. In order to have any hope of committing the time which the craft takes as well as the energy and everything else which is demanded by the notebook and pen (other other writing implement at your finger tips) women, well, anyone of any gender or no gender at all needs space, time and independence.

I've picked this up and put it down a few times and I have wondered why, but I think it was an issue of I didn't want to pick it up completely until I knew that I was ready to commit to it again.

I have kind of been the same with dating. I admit to having spent the last year seeing people and thinking about what I wanted, and a lot of times it felt like what I wanted was to go back to what I had before, but recently I realised that I can't.

This last year has not changed me, but I have reacted to the things which were placed before me a little better than I used to, and I can see that I am building parts of the life I have always dreamt of.

So this is it. I'm ready to commit back to the blog, so I'll catch you later.

Priorities,

Christmas and family make you think about your priorities a lot, and with the new year looming people begin to think about New Year's Resolutions. 

I might have mentioned previously that I am taking part in Veganuary. I want to do it to prove to myself that I can, and to explore the different culinary options available. Part of the idea is going to be seeing if I can actually drop the amount of meat products I have in my diet as a long term plan, though the success of that is to be measured later. 

My other "resolution" is to aim, as thoroughly as humanly possible, at getting my own place. 

I don't do overly well living with other humans because I like things to be a certain way. I like to know that when I am planning, on the train home, to cook a meal in a certain way that the knives for cutting things and the board I like are there and ready to be used. I also like to know that no one has eaten any of my ingredients, though that has happened before now. 

As much as I remember the solitude which can be created, because I felt that plenty of times in my little studio flat, it can also be wonderful to be able to come home after a really shitty day and be able to shut the door on everything else. You can shut the door and leave it outside along with anyone that you don't want to invite to cross your threshold. There is a stability and a sense of home which I don't really get from living in a shared house. Granted, I'm going to have to deal with that in case of a significant other, or kids or whatever, but still, it would be nice to have some time and space to myself and it is something I can't wait to create. 

The idea of a home is something really important to me and a lot of the things which are left at my mother's house are actually things I want for my future flat. I would probably have chosen the wall colours by now if I didn't know that it was going to be at least a few years before I was actually able to put paint on my own walls. 

Ah well, onwards and upwards...

Top Bunk,

Part of my issue with attempting to write a post every day is inevitably going to be the question of about what shall I write? Today, I was at work from 9 am until 5.30pm. Yeah, I could moan about work and all the BS that comes with it, but it's a very negative feeling which is unhelpful for creativity and I'm either going to edit tonight or write something, so I need my creativity. The other issue, of course, is that it would be boring to read, and then there is no sense in me writing it because it has no purpose.

Having been at work all day, I'm struggling, so asked hubspot.com/blog-topic-generator for some camp related topics. The only one it gave me was about worst camping advice I had ever received. Hmmm, well, I don't remember the bad ones. The top three though were:

• Don't get changed in your tent with the lantern on, unless you can get changed in your sleeping bag because it's basically like a naked shadow puppet show. It's also freezing, so getting changed in your sleeping bag has the added benefit of not allowing you to freeze your vital bits off. 
• Don't wear jeans. Yes, they're comfortable. Yes, they can be warm. And yes, in a well-fitting pair of jeans, your butt can look fabulass, but Christ on a bike if they get wet, they're staying wet and then you will be cold. Some people need to learn this for themselves, though, and then will swear that they hate camping as a whole because of it...
• Just because you can set it on fire, doesn't mean you should. Around a camp fire you will hear a lot of horror stories (ghost stories, too, but they don't teach you much) of different things which peopel have put onto a campfire from fireworks to the plastic from their new lighter. If you listen to these stories, they give you the best advice of what not to do around fires. My biggest one is scredded paper - it flies around too much and risks spreading. Not good. 

Not all of these are going to be camping related, but hopefully some of them will be and it might keep things a bit more interesting. 

Catch you tomorrow.

Flying,

Just a heads up, this blog is going to have nothing to do with flying what so ever. :) I just couldn't think of a decent title so random word it was.

I've had an intense few days trying to work out the direction that my life is going in, and it's tough to describe the way I'm feeling at the moment. On the one hand, I'm happy to be out of university and be working and doing something, but on the other, I will never have so much time to focus on other things as I did when I was at university. 

My final year I was in 10 hours a week of lectures one term and 6 hours a week the other term. Yes, I had many hours of reading to do aside from that, and assignments and other things, and I had my job as well, but somehow that either didn't take the same level of time or the same level of emotional and physical capacity to deal with as full-time work. I think the monotony of it upsets my brain a little bit. 

The point is that I'm not as free to spend days working on novels and editing and formatting etc. anymore, and it can be quite frustrating, but this weekend has been very productive, and I'm euphoric with that. Working towards a publishing date, but can't set a date yet, because there's still a lot of work to do. Yay. 

So essentially, watch this space.

Indicate the Way to My Abode,

I have this really strange memory of being tipsy with my dad in Greece and him singing the 'Officer's Version' of show me the way to go home. He nearly fell over into a bush so the memory always tickles me a little. 

I woke up this morning to a child screaming outside my flat, and as it was neither ill, injured or in peril (except waking me up) I was more than a little bit peeved and have wanted to go back to bed ever since, but I had this horrendous mountain of laundry to get to and, even more, job applications. I feel like all I do at the moment is fill in my references, qualifications and experience and I'm a bit cheesed off with it all. 

The last time I was properly looking for a job you picked up an application for from everywhere with a sign in the window, you filled them in, you took them back. Simple. Now, I feel like I'm writing a short story with every application as I have to tell each and every company why I want to work for them. Seriously? You'd advertising a vacancy, I want a new job - how are we not a match made in heaven? No, it's all about I have lived and breathed *insert field name* and had a *insert company name* mobile above my cot as a baby. ARE YOU PEOPLE SERIOUS? You're a company! You do not need an ego boost! Oh, you want to make sure I'm researching the company and the job? How about you ask me to do a test based on your job description or company values instead of this verbal and numerical reasoning. I'm not kidding - one job I applied for made me play 20 minutes of spot the frigging difference. I mean, come on. 

Hey, I get it. Technically at the moment, we're in an employers market because jobs are more scarce than the amount of people qualified for them. The recession and all that meant that suddenly people are aiming at jobs that they're overqualified for. Here's a question - if companies know that they're overqualified and that has previously been a reason to reject people (that's what one of my rejections for a Saturday job once said - I was pretty proud, except the whole unemployed thing) tell them that! Instead of saying, wow, you have way too much experience for this and are probably going to just use it to get back on the ladder within a more stable company, you're hired, why can we not get to a stage where employers realise that employing someone who was previously a manager into an admin role, they'll probably stay for maybe six months, someone like me who's trying to get off the bottom rung of the ladder is going to be there longer, because you have to build your experience. 

It physically winds me up that I get rejected from jobs for having less experience than other people, partly because it's a fact of life that people that are older than me exist and there's nothing I can do about that, but also partly because I have worked my ass off to have the experience that I have now. 

I started admin work with the companies my parents work for from my early teens. I worked part time whilst I was at college, I worked through the summer before university and I had, at least, one job the whole way through university. Every time a holiday came around, I was signing up for extra hours and not just for the money. I was doing it so I could leave university not just with a fancy piece of paper, but also with a pretty decent base of experience behind me. 

To put this very simply, I'm 22, have a  2:1 degree, four years of solid work experience, and I self-published a novel, and yet 90% of the companies I apply for don't actually get back to me. I get that I'm often 1 in 100 or more applying, so it's not so much that I'm mad at the companies for not responding, but it is just a thing of asking what the hell more can I do? I was even applying for jobs on Christmas day because it meant I had time to do a bulk of applications. 

I've been for some pretty cool interviews. I got to go up to the 33rd Floor of 1 Canada Square in Canary Wharf and I had two interviews in Buckingham Palace, but even getting that far through the process drives me mad, because I am more than capable of doing those jobs, and more than willing to throw everything I have at them, but 'lack of experience' is getting in my way. 

Ah well. I was brought up believing that everything happens for a reason, so I'm sure that the right thing will find its way into my life. I just wish it would put its bloody skates on and get here.