Steps.
Life at the moment is one of those situations where you seem to never have the time to do anything, yet time flies and you can’t remember having done anything of worth.
I think the majority is due to my exhaustion. Working evenings/nights in a restaurant and bar gets tiring when you’re still not adjusted – despite the fact that it’s been four months now. I’ll wake up early, spend the day yawning, then suddenly it’s 3pm and i should probably cook dinner and have a shower before heading in to start my shift at 5.
To combat this, I – like all bloggers everywhere – have decided to start a “101 in 1001″ project. I figure, having a list of things that I can see and check off will help motivate me to do them. And it gives me stuff to do with myself during the daytime. It’s still under construction at the moment, but I’ll create a separate page for it later. Things to do will range from “read x amount of books” or “learn to snowboard”, all the way to “move to Vancouver” – so it’s a pretty hefty list.
My latest purchase arrived today, from Amazon. I bought Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”, and John Christopher’s “The Death of Grass” to fuel my current craving for post-apocalyptic fiction. Hopefully once I’m done with those, I’ll be on a roll and so can read the other six novels I’ve yet to touch.
Oh, and I also watched American Psycho for the first time a couple of days ago. Very good film. Inspired me to pick up the book, actually. People tell me it’s better than the film – I guess that’s true in every case, but most film adaptations of novels manage to fail completely.
Hopefully getting my MSc application sent off by the end of the weekend. Then I’ve just got to wait and see.
I’m about 1/4 of the way to getting my overdraft completely paid off. Only £1500 more to go… then I can save up for a nice black Macbook… sure, I’ll have to eBay it, but I can’t stand the white one and I won’t be able to afford a Pro so it makes sense.
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1/12.
It’s the end of January 2010.
January’s been very below-the-radar for me. Other than work, I haven’t really done much that’s in your face. But I have taken the first steps to accomplishing my new year’s resolution.
Normally, I don’t make resolutions. I can never think of anything worthwhile. Until this year. Since leaving University, I spent a month winding down after all the stress of finals, then began the jobhunt. With no success. I was on benefits for a month (worst experience EVER), and agencies wouldn’t let me register because I had no admin or catering experience. I hold a University degree and they thought I wouldn’t be able to handel office clerk work. There’s something messed up with that.
I eventually ended up with a job in a Chinese Restaurant/Bar. I’m both a bartender and a waiter. It’s not great, though. It’s minimum wage, the boss doesn’t make us feel appreciated for the hard work we do, he sends people home early because no-one’s been given a contract, and he refuses to set a scheduled rota. That’s alright for the part-timers, but for a full-timer like myself, it’s infuriating that I don’t get to find out when I’m working until the last night of the week.
I’ve set a plan in motion, though.
One thing I’d really like to accomplish is to obtain a MSc in Environmental Science. I can’t afford to really travel elsewhere in the country to do this, so it’s pretty fortunate that my hometown has one of the best Universities in the country for that course. It’ll make me vastly more employable and also qualify me for better pay. However, a drawback is that I still have no idea what I want to achieve in life, career-wise. I mean, I can think of jobs x, y and z that I’d find really interesting to take on, but I can’t think of anything I’d love to do for at least a significant portion of my life. Then again, maybe the MSc will help me find that. Applications are pretty tough though.
Despite this, I won’t actually be that disappointed if I don’t make it. You see, something pretty big has taken my fancy for the past few months.
Vancouver.
Courtesy of vancityallie.com
I’ve had a big dream of upping and moving. I love England but I just feel so stagnant. I love the thought of living in Vancouver. It’s a beautiful city, Canadians are known for being friendly, and it’s the prime location for three sports I enjoy: mountain biking, surfing, and snowboarding. BUNAC will make this easy to get a 12 month visa, which will let me travel and work in Canada for a whole year. It’ll give me the opportunity to travel to places like Toronto and Montreal, but at the end of the day, every time I think about it – on a daily basis – it all comes back to Vancouver. Seems to me like it’s a good sign.
Plus, I’ll get to see the Canucks play ;].
I have other parts of my plan as well. I’m starting to spread out my taste in books – currently on my to-read list are The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells. I also want to pick up more classics such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
Getting regular physical activity (other than running around at work) is also pretty key. One of my best friends and I are pretty into mountain biking – despite the fact that there are no hills where we live (let alone mountains), there’s a forest with some singletrack trails that makes for good fun and good exercise. We’ve only been a few times over the past couple of years as bike rental plus parking gets pretty steep, but now he’s insured on the Scenic, we can whack our own bikes on the rack which automatically takes £20 off the price of an excursion. So hopefully, we’ll be able to get a day’s biking in every two weeks or so. In addition to that, I aim to do 40-45 minutes a morning on the cross-trainer, about three days a week. I’d do it on an exercise bike but we don’t have one, ah well.
For the first time in years, I feel like I finally have some direction.
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It’s a landmark occasion.
Okay, so maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement. This is, after all, the very first post on a blog that currently – to my knowledge – no-one else even knows about, let alone reads. I guess every blogger aspires to author a blog garnering a decent number of regular readers, but at this stage who knows what the future holds.
Whilst I’ve attempted a few blogs in the past – on various platforms ranging from livejournal to wordpress – and even had my own domain and custom-coded theme for a period of about eight months – my efforts had always been… sporadic. And clunky. So I see this as a fresh start, rather than just another re-iteration.
The reason for this is I’m just starting to discover bits of what I want to achieve from my life. I’m becoming more productive, despite the fact that I’m stuck in a dull “full-time” job in an industry I never had any interest in. I have vague notions of what I want to do. Funnily enough, there’s nothing particularly relating to my career, but that can come to me when it wants to.
So I intend for this to act as an account of my journey. Along the way I imagine there’ll be stories of work and studies (hopefully – more on that at a later date). Rants of things I disagree with and things that get me down. Moments of travelling and adventures and my friends. Tales of dating and that quest for the girl of my dreams. It’ll have its ups and its downs.
But I’m ready for the ride.
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