This blog has kind of fallen into disrepair. I used to update it as a way of encouraging myself to sketch, or to log my recent travel adventures. Now I feel the need to write so I can free a few thoughts that have been running around in my head.
For the last couple of nights I haven't been sleeping properly. Partly that's because of the hyperactive, nocturnal kitten my flatmate and I are taking care of over the christmas break, but mostly I've been in a mild state of anxiety about something I can't quite put my finger on.
After countless hours ranting and complaining to myself about some of the things my boyfriend has been doing to drive me nuts I realised I've just been diverting my anxiety onto him. Really, it's me. I've moved to a foreign country less than four months ago ( which despite outward similarities has a whole bag of fun culture shocks to stumble over ), I've been working my arse off in a low-wage job that's completely new to me and in a couple of weeks I start a full-time job at a high-profile company located a 2 hour journey away.
Throw in the usual tension and mania that the enforced Christmas jollity and consumerism brings and you have one stressed out kitty ( and not just the one who spent all last night leaping onto my bed at AM intervals ).
Being in such a new situation has brought up a whole swathe of issues, neurosis and baggage I thought I'd left long behind, several months and 2000 km ago. Turns out; wherever you go, there you are. I can travel to the other end of the earth and all the baggage I didn't think I'd checked in has been forwarded along with me. Plus a new bunch of fun cultural adaptations and resettling issues that international relocation brings with it.
So, the skinny. I'm dating a guy who's like me in a bunch of strange little ways, but who brings to the table some emotional baggage of his own and a personal history I have as little success dealing with as he apparently does. I'm living in a city whose grim, grey facade hides a multitude of fascinating wonders but none of the comfort of the familiar. However, despite having fallen into the deep end with a series of hospitality-type jobs of the sort normally staffed by polish immigrants I managed to keep my head above water and even enjoy myself.
I'm about to start a job at a very nice company who head-hunted me from a games convention I attended a couple of months back. To rub it in a bit more I managed to get this job without the help of the 3 ( count them, 3 ) recruitment agencies who're supposedly supposed to be doing this for me.
Add to that the fact that I live in a cute, cheap apartment in the funky East End of London, with a sweet flatmate who's part of a big artist community who populate our building and the surrounding tower-blocks.
Jeez. What the heck have I been complaining about.
So I'm a bit overwhelmed by the big commute out to the countryside that I'll have to do every morning and evening to get to my new job. And I'm nervous about starting my new position. And London is big and impersonal and unforgiving.
I made it this far. London's not so bad, the thrift store shopping is to die for and I'm finally feeling free to dress as silly as I like and not worry about people thinking I'm odd ( provided I stay within a 2 mile radius of Shoreditch of course ). The job's nothing to sweat about, I've done harder stuff than this before and lord knows games developers aren't exactly uptight or hard to get along with. I'll have 2 relaxing hours to draw, write and watch the pretty english countryside go by as I commute and come home to, perhaps, a hot dinner cooked by my lovely flatmate and a call from my boyfriend who, despite anything else I might gripe about, misses me and thinks I'm the best thing since skinny jeans for guys.
Pretty lucky I guess. So, emotional baggage begone. What is the use of traveling 2000 kilometres across the globe if you can't lose some unwanted baggage along the way. So there goes years of not feeling like I fit in, not being confident about my body, not trusting anyone enough to just let myself be loved...circling forlornly around a baggage carousel in Hungary, a million miles from where I am today.
