Home Is Where The ……. Is?

Day 11’s prompt is to write about where you lived when you were 12, using varied sentence lengths. A teacher once commented years ago that I was the ‘queen of complex sentences’, so with any luck that shouldn’t be a problem! However, I am going to change the prompt a bit and write a bit about homes in general.

I moved into the house I currently live in 11 years ago, when I was 14. I live with my mum and my two cats, Topaz and Ludo, in the town that I grew up in. I have very itchy feet.

I am very lucky, I know this, yet at the same time I don’t feel it. Mum and I get on well for the most part, there was a time when I was a teenager that I remember thinking ‘we have nothing in common’ and feeling that we would never be close- luckily I was wrong. When I went to university (touched on in my ‘Losing Direction’ post) I found it very difficult and Mum was a rock for me during that time- I called her a lot at first and she helped me just to get through each day to start with. Gradually I ended up calling home once a week or so, visiting home once every month or two. Home was a place I felt safe when I was studying in Portsmouth; all the difficulties of adult life could be forgotten- a bit like when you’re ill and you just need someone to look after you. Coming home at the weekend meant I didn’t have to decide what to do with my day, I could just do what Mum was doing. I had constant company and a great distraction from my worries and work.

Now I’m back home from uni and having been back for three and a half years now it’s the things that once comforted me that bother me. I come home from work and Mum’s here. I get up in the morning and she’s there. I have the weekend ahead of me and she’s got the radio on in the kitchen and is on her laptop at the table; the only way I can get my own space is in my room, which I can’t spend every waking minute in, or in the bathroom (go figure). When I went to uni she scrapped my car to get some money off a new one, so we share the car too- if she goes out I don’t have my own transport and given that I get on the train to go to work or to visit my boyfriend I get rather sick of trains. I love her, don’t get me wrong. As I say, I am very lucky that I am able to live at home and therefore the rent and bills I pay are nowhere near as expensive as they would be if I lived on my own. It has allowed me to take my time finding a job that I really love and to do work to get experience that I might not have if I’d just had to take anything full time to pay the bills. It means I have home comforts, company (including the cats) and access to a car sometimes. Yet I crave my own space, my own home. Somewhere I can choose myself, in a town I have picked, working a job that I enjoy and that challenges me. A home I can come back to at the end of the day and know that is mine because I pay the rent or mortgage. I can choose what I eat that evening because I bought the food. I can decide what to put on the TV and what music to listen to; I can decide what colour I want the walls to be and when to put the dish washer on or do the washing up, when I want to have a bath, when I want to do some washing. I can bring a box of ciders into the house without thinking I am being judged, I don’t have to let her know if I decide to meet a friend after work… etc.

The thing is, there is the issue of what makes a house a home. Being able to choose all of the above helps, but I feel like people are a big part of creating a home. I crave the things I’ve listed above but they are also things that aren’t always going to be applicable. I realise that living with a significant other (which I hope to do in the not so distant future) also means having to consider their food, music and television tastes etc, quite aside from money issues and all kinds of other decisions… but I do feel like it would be different. Plus, as much as I feel my mum is my friend as well as my mother, living with someone who is not immediately related to you by blood is your choice and is new and different.

I don’t think I would want to live completely alone. At uni I lived with others, yet I still felt alone a lot of the time. I don’t want that to happen again, but I can’t grow and be an adult if I am constantly returning home to where my mum is.

I don’t really have a conclusion for this array of thoughts- it’s just some things that have been circling my brain for a while now in different ways. A couple of weeks ago an exciting chance to move out presented itself and I did all I could to grab it- on Friday I found out it had slipped through my fingers, so that has moved these thoughts to the forefront of my mind again.

I feel like it’s a bit like anything for a creative person; I love my home… I just want to be able to make my own.

Losing Direction (and a Blog Post!)

Day Four’s writing101 topic is about loss- something or something you have lost, how it made you feel and how you are now without it. I wrote a post this morning on the train again, though this time I spent a lot longer on it, approx 45 mins of writing. Ironically for this task I then lost it.

I was writing the post on my phone in the WordPress app, changed the post to a draft and pressed save- it registered as saved but perhaps I clicked out too soon or maybe it wasn’t connected to the Internet properly at the time but it has unfortunately disappeared. As for how I feel now, I’m pretty gutted because I put a lot of myself in to that post. It’s always frustrating to lose something that you’ve created- not just annoying about the time now wasted but it’s so hard, often pretty much impossible to make it again in just the same way! 

Talking about losing something or someone is never particularly easy. Rather than a person or belonging, I chose to write about less of a tangible object and more of a ‘thing’- a loss of direction. I explained how when I was at secondary school I was always in the art department making, doodling, painting, but that I wasn’t sure if being forced to create everyday by doing an art degree was for me. Instead I chose to study psychology, and while I enjoyed it and the insights it brought, I struggled a lot with home sickness, a lack of feeling like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing and other personal issues. Because I am stubborn, I refused to give up and I competed the degree, and I’m proud of myself for that! But the counselling or cognitive behavioural therapy side of psychology that I am most interested in are careers I would only want to come back to once I have more life experience, to feel I could give the roles a better shot and be the best I could be. 

As I don’t want to be a psychologist as such (at least not yet) finishing my degree has left me with a multitude of choices- and I’ve had a lot of difficulty figuring out quite what I want to or should do next, which has been very upsetting and frustrating at times. Suffering from a lack of direction or sense of belonging can leave you feeling pretty lost. 

However, in the words of Baz Luhrman- Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)- ‘Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t’. 

I’m slowly learning that it’s ok not to have a specific end goal, as long as your goal is to keep trying and improving. It’s not the destination but the journey that counts and it’s ok to start on that journey without knowing where you’ll end up. Maybe that’s actually part of the fun of it. 

A New Adventure: Writing101 and Thoughts on Happiness

About a week ago, a post from the WordPress staff popped up on my reader, talking about a blogging course they were running called Writing101. Intrigued, I read on and saw the course means each participant receives a prompt by email every weekday for 4 weeks, and the aim of the course is to get bloggers writing every day. My inital reaction was that there’s no way I’d have time to blog EVERY DAY, but then I thought about the time I spend on the train on the way to and from work, and the fact that I really quite enjoy writing… ‘I’ll like it, and come back to it later’ I thought, closed the tab and looked at something else. But a quote somewhere about there never being a ‘right time’ brought me back to thinking about it. ‘You know what? I’ll sign up to it right now!’ So I did.

And this brings me to today- the first day of the course! The first prompt today is to freely write about whatever enters my head for 20 minutes. So here I am, kneeling on my bed with my timer on my phone and a Keane album (‘Night train’) playing in the background.

Today has been the first lovely sunny day that I’ve spent mostly at home this year and I have tried to make the most of it- I baked an Easter cake this morning, then sat outside with the cats, reading a book on my Ipad. The book I’m reading at the moment is called ‘The Happiness Project’ by Gretchen Rubin. I haven’t been completely nose in book constantly, preferring to read maybe a chapter at a time in the bath etc, but I’m rather enjoying it. The Author decided to embark on her own ‘Happiness Project’ because she felt that although she had plenty of things in her life that she was very happy with and lots that she wanted, she didn’t feel as happy on a day to day basis as she thought she should. This is something I have previously felt about myself- that it’s important to be grateful for what we have and to be happy and in the moment more often. It can be difficult sometimes, as if there are difficulties in your every day life or simply things that are ‘fine’ it can be easy to focus on looking forward to things or remembering past events.

The chapter I’ve just finished has just mentioned about the phenomenon of looking forward to something and thinking ‘I’ll be happy when this happens’ but then when the something actually happens, a lot of the time there are other things going on that detract from the happiness, and you almost get more happiness by thinking about looking forward to it than the thing itself! That’s why living in the moment is important. Right now I am happy that my cat, Topaz, is sat next to me on my bed, and that the sun is just starting to go down so it’s still light at 18:48. I’m listening to music I want to sing along to, and my dinner (something I like) is in the oven. They are simple little things, but recognizing that these make me happy is a distraction from the big over arching things that it’s oh to easy to pin your hopes on – a dream career or job, even knowing what that job you want to do is, your relationships with friends, family or significant other, holidays etc. ‘When I get that job, I’ll be happy.’ The way I see it, things will be different, maybe you will get happiness from the actual job, maybe from the fact that you can afford certain things, maybe your lifestyle will change. And that’s great! But there will also be stresses (I can afford to move out! But where will I live?!) and soon, that lifestyle will become the norm too. So I’d like to appreciate the little things that happen every day more.

That’s actually why I’ve been trying to make more of an effort with blogging and Instagram. The little feeling of happiness I get from taking a really good picture is a boost for the day, so I want to share it with others. And the same feeling from having created something- baking or craft… and actually writing. I get a sense of achievement from writing something I am proud of- that I feel flows well. We will see how I feel about this when I’m finished! The ‘twist’ with this email prompt from WordPress today is to bite the bullet and publish what I’ve written.

Funnily enough the timer’s just stopped… I think I’ll be brave and hit publish.

Note: I did proofread and edit this a tiny bit, but less than 5 minutes worth, honest! 

Topaz- one of my gorgeous cats!