Sunday 6 November 2016

Two months later...

This blog is now in its 7th year. Don't ask where that time has gone... I haven't a clue. I decided to start this blog, coincidently, when I started my undergraduate degree and I began getting to know York a little better. I was 21. Life consisted of Evil Eye cocktails (the amaretto cherry one - sickly sweet - couldn't drink it now!), a few select friends in York, none of whom I studied with just yet, These were non-YSJ friends. I started volunteering with some young people and I definitely didn't turn up to some of my lectures. Life was spent 'on the road' as I called it. Really, I was on trains, in cars, taxis, crossing borders, travelling to various places... I was sort of this elusive person and I don't really think even my tutors thought I cared about my degree until they realised that actually I did pretty well even though I kept rather quiet and would often send late apologies for missing lectures. I was 'that' student at the beginning. I'd miss lectures because of the late calls to be at a location HOURS away at 6am the following morning. I kid you not... But I did this partly because I loved it and also because the jobs paid the rent and I escaped university not having a student overdraft and for that, I was pretty pleased. 

Modelling served a purpose. Anyway, that was life. Lots of connections, rarely actually connected. Impossible to pin down. I don't know how I kept grounded really - perhaps that was partly why I did it. The ground keeps you still. It is holding. But if stillness isn't comfortable, it isn't surprising that it would be avoided. So, that's when I started writing this blog - maybe the week I started my undergrad. I love reading it back - I feel sort of fond of those few years, but they did change, and of course, inevitably I changed too. Somehow things changed and here we are now. I used to write in this blog multiple times a week. Then last year I probably wrote once a month. Now it has been two months and I haven't written a word. Well, I've written ALL the words everywhere else, mainly my MSc thesis, but none on here. There's something so public about writing here that I've realised it has silenced me. I'm not silenced in other places, but I am on here. So I am going to work out what I can write again, because I read a friend's blog this afternoon and realised I miss mine.

Things really have shifted, and now life is all about the connections. I'm probably writing because I'm sat at home on my own feeling pretty disconnected so I am finding a way of doing something that helps me to connect. Watched a bit of Strictly, read and provided feedback on probably 60 student abstracts, drank a small gin and now I think my thinking capacity is done for a Sunday evening.

I didn't think I would pack up and move on my own to a new place, but I did. I'm doing some teaching, starting my PhD (WHEN I eventually get my head around to the fact that I should start it now) and I have found a wonderful place to continue with my therapeutic practice. I didn’t think any of those things would happen, but they have. Things are OK - I packed up my stuff and didn't fall to pieces and I am finding that there are some really good people around. It's funny how you think leaving is going to be so bad, but then once you're gone, it is OK. Once you give space to the newness, the space that didn't exist before can be filled. Now my challenge is to find some more space because I am rapidly running out of it. Time, space, energy, coffee.... I am running out. That might also be something to do with why I haven't written in here at all.. Sort of surviving day by day, hoping that soon enough it'll be week by week and soon I will actually feel on top of things.

Anyway, so much for not having anything to write. I have written things, but at the same time, written not very much at all. I do really feel like I'd like to work out how to use this blog now, or I'll have to always turn to my anonymous one, which would feel like a waste of something that's been a good few years in the making....