Life September 3, 2008

I’m F(reaked out) I(nsane) N(eurotic) E(motional)…

Alright, I’m not so fine anymore! I’ve been job hunting steadily and hard and have had a great deal of help from some unexpected sources, but today the panic I’ve been holding at bay is howling at the bars of its cage. While I run around going “Lalala! I can’t hear you!”

My problem is this: I know what I want to do, I just literally don’t have the time to do it! I want to be a writer, a novelist if I’m in fact good enough, but I can’t sit around at my laptop all day waiting for the Muses to bless me with inspiration. First of all, my laptop is a cantankerous piece of equipment which hates me and second, a girl has to eat and pay rent. One of those unexpected sources of help has been a freelancing assignment (many thanks, Peregrine) and hopefully more will follow, and another has been an old job where the bosses love me and want to help me out…but it’s not the same thing as a full time job with benefits.

I guess my source of frustration is that I’m more than capable of taking care of myself if given the minimal amount of resources, I just don’t have them at all right now. Which I’m not used to and not enjoying. I hate dependency, but I’m truly dependent for the first time since coming to school. I feel like I have nothing to go on, and I’m already getting exhausted from worry and slamming doors.

Ah well, rant over, back to the grind.

Life August 20, 2008August 21, 2008

The End of the World…and I Feel Fine

“What’s wrong?”
“I’ve just been slapped with inevitability…”
-C., walking home from the graduation ceremony

Well, it’s happened, I’m graduated. Officially completely in charge of taking care of myself, something I’ve always prided myself on being able to do…until about a week ago. I got off the plane from London, spent all the next day and a half cleaning and organizing my flat (there’s a long and infuriating story behind that, but I won’t go into it), and then had to scurry off to my Commencement thursday afternoon, as well as be at my Convocation at 8am on Friday morning. Since then I’ve been moving apartments, picking up a car, dealing with two Meet the Parents situations, and sending off applications and resumes at a furious rate.

A long line of grads, in which I was grateful to find a couple of friends

: Don’t let the enforced smiling fool you, it hides mental anguish and sheer panic

So! I’ve been running on full power for over two months now (because if you think I managed a single full night of sleep the entire time I was in England, you’re nuts) and I have an uncomfortably sneaky suspicion that I’ll be continuing full speed ahead until my sixties when I can retire. And if you think university was tiring, then this strange thing called independent adulthood is downright exhausting!

Initially the plan was to move to England to be closer to my family when I graduated, but the state of the dollar utterly forbids that right now; I graduated debt free (of which I am pretty proud) but without any extra funds at all, to say nothing of what it would take me to move to and job hunt in the UK. So I have to stick around in the US for a while and probably get back to Europe in baby steps. The immediate goal is to save enough to at least move back East in 6 to 8 months since trying to find a job with international scope here in the West is a bit like pulling teeth: painful, inconvenient, and requiring drugs to get through the experience.

There are a ton of good points to my sticking around, however! I have a great network of extraordinary friends, a good place to live, my amazing godfamily a half hour away, and some job opportunities that may not by my life’s vocation, but will keep my in my flat, buy gas and food, and allow me to start putting money away. I’m nervous about this new phase, but the sort of nervous that makes you lower your head and bull on through. I’m not sure exactly where I’m going or positive how to get there, but post-university life isn’t so intimidating, only mildly panic inducing from time to time. In a good way!

Travel August 18, 2008May 18, 2012

Finishing up the Grand Tour

Where did the past two months go?!
-Kells

Finally back where I have internet access and can dish the dirt on my final weeks in Britain. It wasn’t hard to leave, but then again it’s not really hard for me to leave anywhere, a handy psychological byproduct of an extremely mobile lifestyle. Unfortunately for me, this trip represented the last of my traveling for a long time to come, and that was hard to think about, but I have to admit-what a way to go!

My favorite day trip out of London was to Bath, which is a gorgeous little city nestled in forrested hills so prettily it’s a miracle anyone could hate living there, but somehow Austen managed it. There’s no accounting for some people’s behavior (a life lesson re-impressed on this trip: there are in fact people in this world who really do have nothing better to do than be miserable…but I digress).

A millenium of history: Roman, Medieval, Georgian, and Victorian

Bath Abbey is a fascinating building, and it had a motif along the front of Jacob’s Ladder with angels climbing up and down it, a style I’ve never seen before. There were also a million little sights to be seen in the city like the Royal Crescent and even private residences were fun to look at. We finished with a tour of the Roman Baths, and I even decided to “take the waters” a la any fashionable traveler of the last few hundred years. It tasted vile, but remember it’s supposed to be good for you; physicians used to prescribe gallons of the stuff a day. I feel bad for their patients.

Taking the waters, something everyone must try in their life. Once.The old Pump Room, now home to a posh restaurant and the old fountain still in place!

Stylish, traditional, and still tastes disgusting

Hawkshead, a typical village in the Lakes District, of Beatrix Potter fame

The Lakes District was stunning, I could spend many gleeful weeks hiking there, as it was we got one night. Most of our “tasting tour” of England for the last week consisted of us showing up in the new area in the evening, checking into our hostel, wandering around for as long as we could, and then getting up early have given a couple hours to see whatever the major sights in the area were, and then hopping back on the bus to drive to the next destination. Sad if you’re in so many interesting places.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
-Samuel Johnson

London is a fantastic city. There are a million things to do, scores of interesting people to see, museums to lose yourself in, fabulous streets to strut down, food to delight your mouth, sights to delight your eyes, people from around the world to surround yourself with, friends to meet, places to go you’d never heard of before, musicals and plays to go to…you get it. But my favorite parts of London are the quiet places you find almost by accident and almost nobody seems to know exist.

Walking through Temple a few days ago to see Temple Church, we were admiring the read brick Georgian-nessof the area but needed to sit down as we’d just wandered down Chancery Lane after seeing a few other places as well and were dead on our feet. So we found a stone bench to sit down on, but before we did, I happened to peek around the corner…and voila! We found the prettiest garden court with a fountain bubbling, shady trees, and soft grass. We were mere yards away from Fleet Street but here was this entirely quiet place that you can only get to by a single path.

A Secret Garden in the middle of London, perfect for a nap!

Another thing I love about London is the museums. I know that they aren’t as elegant or fancy as some Continental ones, but they have a decidedly “English” charm. The British Museum is one of my favorite (even though I admit the Louvre is my actual favorite place on earth) because it’s one of the first I remember going to as a child. I was in my ancient Egypt phase (which you only would understand once you’ve met my highly intellectual and eclectic family) and the mummies just lying around everywhere made quite the impression. I’ve heard lots of complaints that it’s too stuffy as a building, or the exhibitions are too tightly placed, or it’s too small…but I don’t care. It’s English. And the English have this glorious intellectual habit of just piling things on top of each other like books or 18th century collections…or mummies.