Welcome To Unemployment

Song of the day: Keeping Your Head Up - Birdy

Happy Chinese New Year/ Gong Xi Fa Cai to everyone across the world!

Wow two posts in one week. You lucky people.

From last Friday I have officially declared myself as unemployed. I was working in a job that I did not want. Like most people who live in big never-ending cities, the working world is split in two. The first half are actually doing something they love or are working on the verge of something they love and getting paid for it and the other half are working just to make ends meet. You're content. You're fine. But not really happy.

Image by me - Taupo, New Zealand

Don't get me wrong, I loved working my two jobs last year. It was a fun period in my life. Straight out of uni and off I dived into the world of promo and cloakroom life. Yes they're not the best jobs in the world. I mean I was handing out flyers and free samples with promo majority of the time. However with promo I did get to work at some fun music events from time to time, which made it worth doing. Then in the evening I would be taking peoples coats and bags and dealing with unpleasant drunkards in the cloakroom. Men and women of London who are drunken douchebags, seriously sort yourselves out. I don't care if you're drunk, it is no excuse to turn into horrible human beings to everyone who works within hospitality. You're not Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Anyways, those jobs paid the bills, rent, my debaucherous lifestyle at the time and also my travels. Also to top it off my jobs were incredibly flexible. But I knew I was not ready for a steady 9-5 job. It wasn't the work I enjoyed, it was the people. I have met the most incredible people last year and have made lifelong friendships. They made work tolerable. They made coming to work enjoyable. I couldn't wait to get to work at times. I would not take a damn thing back.

However after the endless drinking, parties, coming home from work at 5 in the morning, getting the first train from work or the night bus and handing out those last flyers. I realised that it's not enough. I was working a promo job the other week. It was a gym campaign. It was pouring down with rain and it just hit me. I am done. I could not do it anymore. The money is easy and it pays pretty well but that was it for me. If I didn't leave now I would be stuck.

So after I declared my unemployment last Friday, I did what had to be done. I went on a 3 day drinking bender. I drank my whole weekend and it was glorious. To be fair there was celebrations all over that weekend, my unemployment, the start of the six nations and my lovely friend's birthday. Now after the weekend I went straight into job-hunting this week.

You what I typed into Google? "Jobs. London." I wanted to see what was out there. I saw jobs for a cake shop assistant, reception work, Uber drivers and much more. The world is my playground and I can do what I want with it.  However I am not asking for stability. I am trying to get back into the thing I loved most. To write. To create. To tell stories. It may take a longer time but I have faith in the universe. I believe that if it's meant to be then it will happen. After all it is the year of the Monkey, my birth year. I'm sure fate has something nice in store for me somewhere. Until then I have to get my ass into gear and try to get there myself. It is my life and nothing can change unless I do something about it. Who knows where it'll take me? I'll keep you posted.

Sending good vibes to you all,

Cheers,
xxx

The Post-Travelling Blues #3

Barcelona PT. II ft. Tea

Song of the day: Flume - Bon Iver

Image by me - Little Streets

Let's pick up from where we left off shall we? Barcelona in the spring time is not too shabby. Its not particularly cold but then it isn't particularly hot either. Think of it as a nice cup of tea. You boil the kettle, stick a teabag in, your sugar (if you do that like I do because I love sweet things and will probably get diabetes), pour your freshly boiled water and then the milk like normal people do. Milk always comes last. I mean how can you see the colour of your tea and determine whether or not your tea is made the way you like it? Okay I realised I'm getting sidetracked here, maybe I'll do a blog post dedicated to tea and the art of tea making across the world or something I don't know.

ANYWAYS. What was my point? I had a really good point about the tea and how it's like Barcelona weather in the spring and it was very beautiful. Like a poem. It'll come back to me.

They say the best things in life are free. Since Debbie and I are low-cost people, we decided to walk around the city and do everything that we can  for free. Barcelona is a very pretty city. Filled with little paths that go into little idyllic narrow streets. It was nice to have a wander around. With artistic buildings with small balconies catered for nice big windows or doors. I kept thinking how much I wanted to live in them. Just picture waking up, sun filtering though, open the door to the balcony, chill with a tea or a cigarette and stare at the view before you start your day. It was bliss for me, and was basically what I did every morning I was there at my friend Jenny's flat.

Image by me - Hospital De Sant Pau, Barcelona

Getting back to the point. We looked up all the major sites that we can walk to and have a gawk at the splendour that awaited us. There are little information booths scattered across the centre of the city, which was handy. We grabbed a map off one them and narrowed down where to go.

We saw many beautiful buildings, a lot were designed by Gaudi of course such as La Perdrera and Parc Guell. Then there were buildings not designed by Gaudi such as Barcelona Cathedral or aka The Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia. I really liked the Barcelona Cathedral. It's a massive gothic structure. I personally love gothic things. Especially gothic literature. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is my favourite book. Go literature! So maybe that's why I was impressed by this cathedral in comparison to the other things we saw that day. The roof is cluttered and draped with little gargoyles and other little animals and creatures. Statues of saints lined across the arches. Something like Notre Dame.

We later strolled down La Rambla, which is a long street in the centre of Barcelona. It's filled with many bars, restaurants and shops. Along the way you can see the Liceu Theatre, a pretty famous opera house in Barcelona. Further down you can also see Barcelona's oldest theatre, Teatre Principal.

Image by me - Barcelona Cathedral

The long street goes towards the harbour. At this point, after a long day of walking around, Debbie and I decided to take this opportunity to find a beach and drink wine. Funnily enough, from the harbour about another 15-20 minute walk depending that you know where you're going, there's Barcelona's well-known beach, Placa de Catalunya. We managed to find the closest corner shop to the beach and bought a few bottles of wine and some crisps. IT'S SO CHEAP AND NICE. We plopped ourselves onto the beach and voila, we got drunk. Drunk on fine cheap wine, the sun and crisps. We attempted cartwheels. Well I attempted and failed like most things in my life while Debbie managed to do them flawlessly. A man was selling mojitos at 5 euros a drink. Let's just say that they looked a bit...off. They were very green in colour. Plus our bottles of wine was cheaper than that one drink. We politely declined and had a little chat with him. The man was nice enough and off he went to sell the remaining drinks he had. He came back about 20 minutes later and gave us the last two he had for free. I think he just wanted to go home. That boy was done with work for the day.

Towards the end of the day, we were drunk on the beach and after many cups of wine, watching the sun go down, rolling in the sand, talks about life and photo sessions... our phone batteries died. We had no clue how to get back. I don't know if it was sheer luck or what, but in our drunken states we managed to walk to an underground station and catch the train back to Jenny's flat.

That was the end of that day. There's more to come. Keep a look out for the next post!

Cheers

xxx