A Gap Year in Review: Change is Good.

I’ve been sitting in my new (and temporary) bedroom all day thinking how to put a post together talking about my time out of education. How do I summarise 20 months of working and travelling and adventures into one post? I can’t, realistically. So we’ll just talk about something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

My time out of education has taught me a lot and changed me as a person without a doubt. My stepmum even today commented on how different I was to the girl I was 2 years ago, about to go to University thinking it would be the best years of my life and would make everything better.

Well. It didn’t exactly go like that.

One Term. That’s how long I managed before all of the mental health crap I had been burying and burying throughout my GCSEs and A Levels came bubbling to the surface. It started off with bouts of sadness and self-hatred amongst other things. As I was leaving University, the crippling anxiety started that took over my life for six months. I was seeing a therapist for my grief at the time but we ended up mostly talking about my panic attacks.

And then I went to America. Three whole months of sun, summer and camping. Sounds great right? Well it was those things. But there were also tears, work reports, fighting and a lot of soul searching. My time at Camp was something I am eternally grateful for because it was what I needed, but it wasn’t all fun and games. And it was only after camp that I realised what it was that had been bothering me for so long.

I was completely stuck in the past. Long story short, and I’m sure I will make a more in depth post about this at some point, my mum died of cancer when I was 15 years old. She was my best friend. And I wanted to make her proud, even if she wasn’t here anymore to physically witness it. I wanted to be the girl I was when she was alive; bubbly, outgoing, lots of friends and very active. Since she passed away I had become more introverted and started staying in more talking to my friends online than going out on hikes and horse riding and all sorts.

I went to camp with all these expectations of making her proud, being a specialist counsellor who knew her stuff. It became apparent very quickly that after 4 years of barely being around horses, my knowledge was lacklustre and not up to scratch. They were pretty okay about it to be honest, offering me to change positions and when I look back on it I was rather rude. And it was because I felt like a failure, like I’d let her down and couldn’t be the person I was.

I know now that people grow. We change and develop and it’s just a part of life. Growing away from old friends, old hobbies and haunts is natural and perfectly okay. Yes there are things I miss about my old self and life, but things now aren’t so bad. I’m definitely not as ignorant as I once was, I’m far more confident and happy to spend time with myself too, and I’m also part of an awesome bookish community. I’m far more laid back than I was at the start of my time off (probably because I haven’t had a ridiculous essay deadline in 20 months!) and I like to think I’m a lot less judgemental of people than I was. Personal growth isn’t always something I’ve been able to deal with very well, constantly nostalgic for the past and my life before my mum died. But I know now that change is good, even if it doesn’t seem like it at the time, and I’m proud of who I am today.

The next time I write a post on here, I’ll be in a dorm room in a small city in the middle of the country I’ve visited approximately once. I know now that University isn’t going to be the best thing ever, that all those wild expectations I used to have won’t necessarily come true. But it’s a new chapter and I’m excited to see where it takes me.

Read More

What are you even doing with your life?

A question I got asked by most people who saw me on my last day at work was "So what are you doing next?", "What are your plans?" I cannot begin to tell you how much those questions fill me with dread and anxiety. Every day I wonder if my mother is going to ring me and ask if I've thought about applying for jobs with that tone of "Why haven't you already got a career sorted out?"

I'm going to be 26 in just under five months and in the 9 years that I have been an employable human I have had four jobs which I did for over a year, and only one of those was for over two years (my first job as a part-time cashier at Somerfield/Co-op). Compare that to my other half who got a job with a company when he was 18/19, switched departments a couple of years later and is still working there as he is about to turn 30 at the end of this month.

He has got his career pretty much figured out. I don't have a fucking clue.

Here is where I feel I ought to mention the career that I'd *like* to have - it's one that 7yr old Rachel wanted to have and it's the one that has kind of being ticking away in some quiet corner of my brain ever since. It's the one that I will never admit to people outside of my friendship group, not even to my family although they will themselves occasionally reference it as the thing I wanted to do when I was younger.

I want to be an author. There, I said it.

I want to be able to walk into a bookshop one day and see a book on a shelf with *my* name on it. I want that so much I do often think about it before I go to sleep, imagining weird little scenarios that would make you side-eye me in the street. I don't necessarily want to be some international best-seller (although seriously who'd bitch at that?) but just to know that someone other than my close friends had read my book and felt something would be so incredible.

But there's a large part of me that believes that it won't ever happen. For a number of reasons; my writing is not good enough and never will be, I don't have enough ideas, I'm scared that no one would ever want to read my stories, I'm scared no agent will ever want to represent me, and on and on ad. nauseum.

I had this ambitious hope to spend the summer after my current OU module ended working wholly on my book (which I talked about recently here on my writing blog & I waffle about it all the time on my Twitter) trying to get it a good deal closer to a point at which I wouldn't feel utterly appalled at the idea of querying an agent with it. Between the start of June and the start of October when I'd need to start my next module I'd have over 150 days to just *write* without worrying that I'm neglecting my studies.

However the closer I get to June the more I feel the pressure to get a job instead (even though I have no ideas what kind of job I'd want to get) and not be a sponge on my other half's goodwill and income. To be very clear that statement is not directed at *anyone* other than me, there are multitudes of reasons why someone might not be working and that doesn't make them a burden or a sponge IN THE SLIGHTEST. 

Of course my brain doesn't make that exception for me. Even though Le Boyf has said explicitly on multiple occasions that he supports my writing and will not mind if I spend the summer working on the book, my mind is still throwing bricks of guilt at me for having the audacity to want to be so selfish with my time. How dare I dream to do such a thing?

I don't know yet if my plans will go how I'd like them to go. I don't know if my mother will amplify my own guilt and fear of being a burden by asking "Have you looked at any jobs?" until I finally relent to just to stop the feelings of self-loathing for a while. I just don't know.

I'd really like to figure out what I'm doing with my life before I go totally fucking bananas.

Read More