Do Something That Scares You (very, very slowly)
DO SOMETHING THAT SCARES YOU
I'm at a bit of a loose end this year. I am right now, anyway- hopefully I won't be bored and unemployed all year. I'm not actually unemployed; I'm still working part time at the same small shop I've been working at for the past four years. The thing is, though, I feel unemployed, because it's not what I want to be doing anymore (as nice as it is, in case my boss is reading!).
What I would really like to be doing right now is getting started on my Master's degree. But, since my university is quite new, their English MA course won't be up and running until September 2019. Since I loved my old university so much, I decided that I could stand to wait a year, and spend this unwanted gap year to get some 'real life experience', finding a better job or a few different work placements.
The only trouble is, I haven't been able to find anything yet. So far, it seems like my blind cat has probably got more opportunities coming his way than I have. I've had failed interviews, rejected applications, and somewhere that listed the wrong number on their website so I spent two hours on the phone trying to get through to a paperclip factory.
So, until something turns up (and it's got to, goddammit) I'm working on myself, because I'm so painfully 2018 that way. #SelfLove, #SelfWorth, #BLESSED. I'm going to work my way through all the things that scare me this year, and I shouldn't run out because I am scared of almost everything. Up until last year (when a uni friend pointed out I was being ridiculous and laughed so hard that she had to reapply her eye-makeup) one of my biggest terrors was that somehow, somewhere, I would wind up working somewhere where scanning things was the bulk of my duties. That's right, scanning. This was mainly because I'd never done it, and it sounded tricky. In my terror-fantasy, I would be stuck having to scan all day, but with no idea how to do it, trying to copy everything by hand as fast as I could, before the Big Boss discovered me, a quivering wreck covered in ink, and would loudly tell me that I was the most incompetent human being he'd ever met and that I was to leave the building immediately.
Now, I've decided, they would probably show me how to scan when they hired me. And if they didn't, I'd just run away before they could fire me.
Top of the list has always been driving. I'm twenty-two, and the last of my friends to learn to drive. Even my younger sister has her licence, and when she drives me about I feel very proud of her, and quietly embarrassed. When I was seventeen, even thinking about booking lessons was something that would bring me out in cold sweats, but then, when I was eighteen, someone I knew was killed in a horrible accident. After that, I developed a mental block on driving. If anyone mentioned it, I would smile demurely, and tell them I was saving up enough money (it's frigging expensive, after all), or that I was planning to start when I'd finished my A-levels, and then my first year of uni, my second, my third...
And here I am, a twenty-two-year-old looking for a job, crossing her fingers that when she finds something, it will happen to be on the bus route. I realised how stupid I was being just before I was rejected for the first job I applied for, when I was frantically trying to work out the route I'd take on Google Maps if I got the job and was to arrive by 9am. Basically, it was like trying to make 2+2=5.
So, today I've had my fourth lesson, and I won't sit here all smug and say 'I don't know what all the fuss was about!' because it's still scary as hell for me. I hate traffic lights, I hate roundabouts, I hate pedestrians, I hate pedestrians' children, I hate pedestrians with children and dogs. But, strangely enough, I don't hate driving. I might prefer to go at a respectable 10mph, I might be doing it five years after most of my friends did it, but I'm doing it.
Thanks for reading my blog. I'm uploading a short story soon called 'Alex', about a boy who is obsessed with marshmallows, so stay tuned if you fancy reading that.
~ Aby xxx
What I would really like to be doing right now is getting started on my Master's degree. But, since my university is quite new, their English MA course won't be up and running until September 2019. Since I loved my old university so much, I decided that I could stand to wait a year, and spend this unwanted gap year to get some 'real life experience', finding a better job or a few different work placements.
The only trouble is, I haven't been able to find anything yet. So far, it seems like my blind cat has probably got more opportunities coming his way than I have. I've had failed interviews, rejected applications, and somewhere that listed the wrong number on their website so I spent two hours on the phone trying to get through to a paperclip factory.
So, until something turns up (and it's got to, goddammit) I'm working on myself, because I'm so painfully 2018 that way. #SelfLove, #SelfWorth, #BLESSED. I'm going to work my way through all the things that scare me this year, and I shouldn't run out because I am scared of almost everything. Up until last year (when a uni friend pointed out I was being ridiculous and laughed so hard that she had to reapply her eye-makeup) one of my biggest terrors was that somehow, somewhere, I would wind up working somewhere where scanning things was the bulk of my duties. That's right, scanning. This was mainly because I'd never done it, and it sounded tricky. In my terror-fantasy, I would be stuck having to scan all day, but with no idea how to do it, trying to copy everything by hand as fast as I could, before the Big Boss discovered me, a quivering wreck covered in ink, and would loudly tell me that I was the most incompetent human being he'd ever met and that I was to leave the building immediately.
Now, I've decided, they would probably show me how to scan when they hired me. And if they didn't, I'd just run away before they could fire me.
Top of the list has always been driving. I'm twenty-two, and the last of my friends to learn to drive. Even my younger sister has her licence, and when she drives me about I feel very proud of her, and quietly embarrassed. When I was seventeen, even thinking about booking lessons was something that would bring me out in cold sweats, but then, when I was eighteen, someone I knew was killed in a horrible accident. After that, I developed a mental block on driving. If anyone mentioned it, I would smile demurely, and tell them I was saving up enough money (it's frigging expensive, after all), or that I was planning to start when I'd finished my A-levels, and then my first year of uni, my second, my third...
And here I am, a twenty-two-year-old looking for a job, crossing her fingers that when she finds something, it will happen to be on the bus route. I realised how stupid I was being just before I was rejected for the first job I applied for, when I was frantically trying to work out the route I'd take on Google Maps if I got the job and was to arrive by 9am. Basically, it was like trying to make 2+2=5.
So, today I've had my fourth lesson, and I won't sit here all smug and say 'I don't know what all the fuss was about!' because it's still scary as hell for me. I hate traffic lights, I hate roundabouts, I hate pedestrians, I hate pedestrians' children, I hate pedestrians with children and dogs. But, strangely enough, I don't hate driving. I might prefer to go at a respectable 10mph, I might be doing it five years after most of my friends did it, but I'm doing it.
Thanks for reading my blog. I'm uploading a short story soon called 'Alex', about a boy who is obsessed with marshmallows, so stay tuned if you fancy reading that.
~ Aby xxx
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