When Life Throws You Lemons...

...you say 'Fuck the lemons and bail' right? Well no, not exactly.

It's now about 2 weeks until I make the big move from sleepy Devon up to even sleepier Staffordshire. I've realised that instead of being super excited for the next chapter of my life, leaving my seaside existence to create a little life with Dan in the countryside, i've been in a constant state of utter panic, anxiety and I've just generally been feeling a bit sorry for myself. Don't get me wrong, I can't wait to get up there permanently and i'm excited for mine and Dans new adventure but anxious me has reigned supreme and all of that excitement has well and truly been popped on a shelf. After weeks and weeks of feeling totally crappy, applying for approximately 17 million jobs (I did say approximately...) and hearing nothing back, feeling like I wanted to sack off the rest of my Masters and feeling like i'd wasted a grand total of 4 years and a few more thousands of pounds than i'd care to remember, it's hit me that all this needs to stop. Now, this perhaps isn't the most orthodox thing to blog about, but this blog has always been my little online headspace. It's my life online, warts and all and sometimes, life isn't all about cupcakes, sun soaked day trips and pastel coloured everything, sometimes, it's just a bit rubbish.

Tom, my lovely housemate,  friend of about 14 years (thats a scary thought) and all around cool ginger cat, had never seen me cry until these last few weeks, and the poor sod has had to deal with me hysterically weeping every time I click on the jobs pages. Similarly my lovely dad has had teary phone calls on an almost nightly basis and i'm fairly sure at one point was concerned that I was on the brink of a Sylvia Plath oven incident, until it dawned on him that A. it was just the frustrated outpouring of an overtired, over emotional daughter  and B. that the oven is electric anyway so all i'd have ended up with was a relatively warm head...What i've realised is I need to stop dwelling on what has happened and think of what could, if I actually let it. I'm fed up of being a sad bunny and i'm fed up of trying to bail. So I figured that what I need right now is a good old talking to. Not from my dad, my constant source of wisdom, or from Tom, equally wise, or from Dan, who i'm sure is starting to seriously re-think all this moving in business - but from myself.  A personal pep-talk if you will, because seemingly, despite everyones best efforts, it's only me that i'll listen to...

My sad bunny head has told me that my degree's don't matter in the world of employment and it's all about experience and we have the age old catch 22 situation of 'how can I have gained industry experience when i've been at uni for the past 4 solid years', I've wasted my life, i've wasted so much money and I should have just gone against all of my instincts and become a teacher. What my non sad-bunny head tells me? 'You've worked too bloody hard and spent too long doing it all to chuck it all in now. Yes, a lot of your uni friends have gone into teaching, they're going to make incredible teachers. You wouldn't have. You'd have made a horrendous teacher because it's not your passion. Nobody ever left school saying they were eternally inspired by that teacher that did it because she didn't believe in herself enough to do what she really wanted to do. A job will come and it will be a job that you love, but it's not going to materialise overnight. Your degree's do matter, they're just not the golden ticket into your dream job that they're made out to be. All that hard work isn't for nothing, it just needs to carry on for a bit longer.

So you're leaving your entire life in a county that you adore, leaving your family, leaving your friends, and maybe you are just quite simply not cut out for all this countryside, climbing over stiles, open fields, middle of nowhere stuff when you're much more at home in flip flops, with the noise of seagulls and a glittering horizon in front of you. You're going to end up depressed, lonely and it's going to be like making friends on the first day of school all over again. In actual fact, you're finally going to be permanently with the one person that you've wanted to be with more than anything for the past 6 years. Theres not going to be 250 miles or a 5 hour drive between you both and you can finally start the life that you've been planning together for all that time. The place you're moving to is beautiful and if you stopped being so insular and realised that despite your perceived social awkwardness, you're not actually that awkward at all, you might actually make some friends up there. The sea will always be there, so will your family and your friends, you're moving to Staffordshire, not outer space. Take a second, get over your Southern stubbornness and embrace it, oatcake and all.

You think that theres not enough time to get everything done. you only have two weeks to get all of your stuff packed, get it all up there and do it all on your own before the tenancy on your house runs out, it's nigh on impossible and you're just going to go for a nap. Reality is, you have plenty of time to do all of those things. If you got out of your pyjamas, stopped spending two hours a day watching This Morning and actually got stuff moving, you wouldn't be in such a panic about it all. Make a to-do list and actually do it. Organisation is your thing. Go at it with your sticky labels and your sharpie marker and just do it. You have handfuls of people willing to help you get it all done, now stop being such a martyr and let them bloody help you. In two weeks time when you're settled, you'll be looking back thinking what a drama queen you've been about it all.'

So from now on, i'm embracing life's lemons. I'm not bailing, i'm saying goodbye to the sad bunny and getting on with things and hey, who knows,  I might even make lemonade...

So now, it's over to you. If you could give yourself a little pep talk, to snap you out of a bit of a mental rut, what would you tell yourself?