2009 resolutions.
I feel like this year is going to be a crucial time for me. 2008 opened with me desperate to leave St Albans, where I no longer feel at home, depressed and confused. Despite some major money issues this year, I've spent most of it in London, living with Bethan and no matter how unhappy my work situation (or lack thereof) has made me, I love living here. I don't want to leave. Now my mother has started to guilt trip me about my apparent failure to find gainful employment, and is suggesting heavily that she expects me to move back home, broke and unemployable, at the beginning of this year.
For a while I thought she might be right. Sometimes I still do.
This year I can clearly see the two paths I can take. I can fail to find work, to scrape together my rent, and I can go back to my parents and be sad, and broken, and fail. Or, I can not. I can find work. I can do something, anything to avoid that fate. I drunkenly told a friend that I would rather, if it came to it, if I'd exhausted every possible option, throw myself off Tower Bridge rather than admit defeat. Too much pride, you see? And this is very melodramatic, I know, but I need to remind myself to be determined. To try other options. Hell, if I have to, I'll start over somewhere completely new. I'll run away to sea. Or something.
Perhaps my mum is being really clever here, actually, because nothing has ever motivated me more than her casual assumption that I will fail.
So that's resolution number one for 2009. Keep living my life. No one elses. Everything else is just a bonus.
But because "earn enough to pay the rent" is a little bit dull as resolutions go, I have at least one more so far:
I think I'm going to actually start running this year. I need to exercise, and it's cheaper than gym membership. I'll get some cheap running shoes to start with, and a sports bra, and I'll give it a go. It would be nice to be healthier, and my solid little beer belly would worry me less. I'm thin, but I'm not fit. And I think an exercised me might be a happier me, too.
For a while I thought she might be right. Sometimes I still do.
This year I can clearly see the two paths I can take. I can fail to find work, to scrape together my rent, and I can go back to my parents and be sad, and broken, and fail. Or, I can not. I can find work. I can do something, anything to avoid that fate. I drunkenly told a friend that I would rather, if it came to it, if I'd exhausted every possible option, throw myself off Tower Bridge rather than admit defeat. Too much pride, you see? And this is very melodramatic, I know, but I need to remind myself to be determined. To try other options. Hell, if I have to, I'll start over somewhere completely new. I'll run away to sea. Or something.
Perhaps my mum is being really clever here, actually, because nothing has ever motivated me more than her casual assumption that I will fail.
So that's resolution number one for 2009. Keep living my life. No one elses. Everything else is just a bonus.
But because "earn enough to pay the rent" is a little bit dull as resolutions go, I have at least one more so far:
I think I'm going to actually start running this year. I need to exercise, and it's cheaper than gym membership. I'll get some cheap running shoes to start with, and a sports bra, and I'll give it a go. It would be nice to be healthier, and my solid little beer belly would worry me less. I'm thin, but I'm not fit. And I think an exercised me might be a happier me, too.