I’m fighting for the pennies right now. My purse strings are tighter than ever. A second job helps, not only to add to my trip kitty, but also means that I hardly have the time or energy to do anything social! I think the lack of social activities coupled with the tiredness isn’t helping with my current state of mind.
The littlest of things are making me happy/angry/sad which is pretty mind-boggling. For some reason people are increasingly spelling my name incorrectly. This does stem from my days in school where one teacher persistently called me Daniel. I gave up correcting her in the end! But people do not have an excuse, my name is in the title of my email address! Sheesh. Normally I’d just go “pffft morons” but now I shout expletives at my computer screen. It’s a good job I’m on my own in the office. It’s just me and Radio One. I get a little release when a patronising sales guy calls up. I understand that people have a job to do so when they’re nice, I’m nice, but when they’re sarcastic arses…well it’s only fair I return the gesture!
I used to get a little boost every time I booked something or paid off a part of my trip. Now most of my trip is paid for that feeling has dipped a little. Surprisingly it still doesn’t feel real. I know, ridiculous. I don’t think it will truly sink in until I’m sat on the plane to Japan. Then there will definitely be no going back!
Now that things have settled down it’s hard to get excited about things as it seems like such a long time away. It also means I’ve stopped panicking…for the time being at least! It’s sort of drifted to the back of my mind for now. Until someone reminds me and I’m like “Oh yeah!! I’m leaving!” Sounds stupid but everyday I wake up and my first question is - What day is it? My brain is slowly being drained of its batteries and some days I’m on the ball and I have things in control and other days I can be useless. I feel like I’m in a relationship with my job/s. It’s the last thing I think about before I go to sleep and the first thing that crops into my head when I wake up…after I realise what day it is of course.
There is hope though! One thing I can be proud of is how surprisingly well I’m doing on my photography course despite my decrepit brain. My aim is to take some semi-decent photos whilst I’m away and get the best out of my compact camera. I’m the only one in the class with a compact. I felt embarrassingly inadequate next to everyone else with their beasts (the technical term is digital SLRs). I needn’t worry though as the tutor paid me the ultimate compliment recently: “You’re taking photos on your compact camera that everyone else in the class wants to take with their SLRs”. It’s not all dependent on the equipment, it’s what you do with it that counts. Not everyone sees the same shot and apparently I have “the eye”. I’m not sure how that happened as I always used to take blurry pictures with terrible lighting. I still think that everyone’s just being nice. In the same way as when a child scrawls a picture of a horse that looks more like a turd and you say “aww, that looks beautiful” and pin it on the fridge. I hope my photos aren’t turds but it’s nice to feel that I’m doing something right . As long as I like the photos it doesn’t really matter anyway.
I tell a lie though, things have moved forward slightly. I have officially handed in my notice for my full time job. Not everybody in the office knows yet but it will be interesting to see how everyone reacts. There’s a mixture of personalities in the office so I’m not really sure what people will say. It seems that those who have travelled are really excited and happy for me. I’m listening to them more than the sceptics. They’ve been in the same position I’m going to be in so it’s comforting that they’re being nothing but positive and encouraging. They’re not filling my head with any horror stories which is how I like it! Ignorance is bliss…
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