All those who wander are not lost...
I'm in a good mood today. Yesterday I got a letter through from Camberwell College of Art, telling me that I'd got an unconditional offer on the MA course (not unexpected, but still nice), and then today I got an e mail from the curator at the house of the late John Latham, who is looking for volunteers over the summer to help archive and conserve the work he left at his home after his death.
Life is going very very well at the moment. Well, there are minor money woes, and occasional worries about other things, but in general life is going very well.
It's making me pondersome. A long time ago, I remember talking to someone about moving away from Edinburgh, and was told that if I left I'd just be running away from my problems, and wouldn't be able to resolve anything.
(This was conversation was not with anyone who now reads my LJ, by the way)
Anyway, I had this conservation and it has stuck with me, and the older I get, the more I disagree with this statement.
People are not islands, or wholly formed entities which do not change, no matter what. People are squishy, malleable, subjective creatures, and I think people are massively affected by their surroundings. Which means that you can change a lot by changing your surroundings.
I love Edinburgh. I always have done. It's a gorgeous city - big grey buildings carved out of stone and hillside. The air is clean. The people are wonderful. I feel more alive just by going there. Yet I've become so much saner and more relaxed since I moved down south. I don't think that London or Oxford or Reading are better places than Edinburgh intrinsically. I do think that living in Edinburgh had let me build up an odd identity, based heavily on my own past stupid behaviour, which I found very hard to get away from as long as I lived there. I know that Edinburgh also was very bad for prodding me into a professional rut. I could not have done this course here, for a start. Finally, I think my image of myself in a romantic context was massively skewed, again by the dumb stuff I did as a teenager.
Getting away from that, finding something new, starting again was one of the best things I have ever done. Edinburgh makes me feel alive. London, and indeed the south of England, makes me feel calm. It always has done. London is big - it's big enough that I've been able to lose myself and come out a different person. I got to meet new people who didn't see a composite Sally made up of everything I'd done in the past - they just saw the person I was right at that moment, and let me build from there. I found a new career, which has changed me more massively than I can say. I found pierot.
I still love Edinburgh. Maybe one day I'll get to move back there, but I'll get to move back there as a confident, settled adult who knows what she is doing, instead of the slightly bug nutz chick with the shed load of issues, all catalogued in alphabetical order.
That's what happened to me. I think I've seen it with a few other people - they've left Edinburgh, or Birmingham, or wherever they were living (this happens most dramatically with the folk who leave the town they went to university in) and just sort of straighten themselves out. Admittedly, I've also know folk who are incredibly happy in their university town, or the town where they grew up, so I guess this isn't a universal rule.
This is why I will sometimes recommend people to look at moving. Everyone has a place out there which fits them - like a decent pair of jeans. But a lot of folk haven't found that place yet - they are living somewhere which doesn't have the right kind of job opportunities, or the social group they are involved in is pretty straight laced and there isn't much of a local kink scene, or they just get edgy living without greenery. And that doesn't mean that those places are bad - just not right for whoever is living there. Yet, all that could change if you go out wandering and try one some different lives for size, until you get one which fits so well that you don't need to go home again.
Life is going very very well at the moment. Well, there are minor money woes, and occasional worries about other things, but in general life is going very well.
It's making me pondersome. A long time ago, I remember talking to someone about moving away from Edinburgh, and was told that if I left I'd just be running away from my problems, and wouldn't be able to resolve anything.
(This was conversation was not with anyone who now reads my LJ, by the way)
Anyway, I had this conservation and it has stuck with me, and the older I get, the more I disagree with this statement.
People are not islands, or wholly formed entities which do not change, no matter what. People are squishy, malleable, subjective creatures, and I think people are massively affected by their surroundings. Which means that you can change a lot by changing your surroundings.
I love Edinburgh. I always have done. It's a gorgeous city - big grey buildings carved out of stone and hillside. The air is clean. The people are wonderful. I feel more alive just by going there. Yet I've become so much saner and more relaxed since I moved down south. I don't think that London or Oxford or Reading are better places than Edinburgh intrinsically. I do think that living in Edinburgh had let me build up an odd identity, based heavily on my own past stupid behaviour, which I found very hard to get away from as long as I lived there. I know that Edinburgh also was very bad for prodding me into a professional rut. I could not have done this course here, for a start. Finally, I think my image of myself in a romantic context was massively skewed, again by the dumb stuff I did as a teenager.
Getting away from that, finding something new, starting again was one of the best things I have ever done. Edinburgh makes me feel alive. London, and indeed the south of England, makes me feel calm. It always has done. London is big - it's big enough that I've been able to lose myself and come out a different person. I got to meet new people who didn't see a composite Sally made up of everything I'd done in the past - they just saw the person I was right at that moment, and let me build from there. I found a new career, which has changed me more massively than I can say. I found pierot.
I still love Edinburgh. Maybe one day I'll get to move back there, but I'll get to move back there as a confident, settled adult who knows what she is doing, instead of the slightly bug nutz chick with the shed load of issues, all catalogued in alphabetical order.
That's what happened to me. I think I've seen it with a few other people - they've left Edinburgh, or Birmingham, or wherever they were living (this happens most dramatically with the folk who leave the town they went to university in) and just sort of straighten themselves out. Admittedly, I've also know folk who are incredibly happy in their university town, or the town where they grew up, so I guess this isn't a universal rule.
This is why I will sometimes recommend people to look at moving. Everyone has a place out there which fits them - like a decent pair of jeans. But a lot of folk haven't found that place yet - they are living somewhere which doesn't have the right kind of job opportunities, or the social group they are involved in is pretty straight laced and there isn't much of a local kink scene, or they just get edgy living without greenery. And that doesn't mean that those places are bad - just not right for whoever is living there. Yet, all that could change if you go out wandering and try one some different lives for size, until you get one which fits so well that you don't need to go home again.