Back again and ready to get you up to speed in what SHOULD be the final instalment of the story so far. No promises though, I may forget things! This one may be a little longer as I need to explain a few things in a bit more depth so you have an understanding of what happened!
Lovely weather today, sat out in the garden absorbing the rays! Though so is my laptop judging by how it’s starting to burn my thighs!
We left the last entry with the end of first year. So I’ll pick up from there.
In the closing days of Freshers year and throughout the summer of 2008, I finally settled in to a relationship with a girl called Krissy who I’d had my eyes on for a long time. We had briefly got together in the first few months of Freshers year but it didn’t pan out back then.
It’s in this summer that I decided I need to re-evaluate my life a little bit. I was two stone heavier than when I had left Surrey and not only was I looking it, I felt it too.
Being back in Surrey for a month or so was something I could barely bring myself to think about. I decided I would have to keep myself as busy as possible. With this, and with my eagerness to lose some weight, I began running every day. Fortunately I live very close to some lakes which I would run round, as I was far too self conscious and unfit to run in public! Initially I struggled with even the shortest distance. But eventually, slogging away day after day, inspired by an ever-changing playlist, a sprinkling of self-loathing and a burning male pride which drove me to compete with every runner I came across, I started to see changes. I could run further, longer, faster. I felt good and I could see the changes in my physique. By the time it came round to our lad’s tour visiting Magaluf in September 08, I was in the best shape I’d ever been in.
However, with great body comes great responsibility (ha!), and sacrifices were made to ensure I continued to feel good – namely, alcohol. I had barely touched a drink all summer!
I managed to learn how to enjoy myself without the need for alcohol; epitomised by our trip to the binge-drinking capital Magaluf, where I managed to have a great week spent almost entirely sober. One night was spent at BCM with a free bar, yet I only drank water as I was too busy enjoying myself, ‘raving my face off’ to even consider getting drunk. The way I saw it - If I can do it there, I can do it anywhere!
This was a massive change when compared to the vodka-guzzling-money-burning-near-alcoholic I was just months ago and, as to be expected, my friends had a hard time adapting to this new me. Though I assured and showed them on several occasions that I could enjoy myself without alcohol, they were not of the same mind-set. Every time we went out they, perhaps unknowingly, tried to pressure me into drinking - telling me to just have a couple or making jibes about how I’d changed and so on, and this would occur regularly throughout the night. However, I stood firm and didn’t succumb to the barrage. Eventually the tedium of pressure became too much to tolerate and I gradually withdrew myself from this group of ‘friends’; making my excuses as to why I couldn’t attend nights and so forth. They could just not grip the fact that, whilst I was perfectly capable of enjoying myself without drink, I was unable to do so whilst being constantly besieged and belittled with their incessant nagging.
They were quick to place the blame on my relationship with Krissy and decided that I was forsaking the ‘bro’s over hoes’ commandment, and disliked me for it. On top of this, I was living with a couple of them and we had very different opinions on what was a clean or liveable house – this resulted in them complaining about me to the rest of the gang and furthering the divide. A combination of all the mentioned factors sadly, but inevitably, resulted in me being invited out less and less and losing contact with a lot of people who were my closest friends in my first year.
Though we are all friends today and I seem them occasionally, it certainly isn’t and will never be how it was before.
Even now, a couple of years later, I still do not drink very much and still I get badgered about it when I go out. It infuriates me that people are so dependent on alcohol to have a good time and so quick to denounce people who aren’t. I am very partial to a social drink now and then, though even when sober I am able to have a good time, chat, laugh, dance, meet people and be happy without spending money I’ll never see again, doing something I may regret, acting like an idiot, embarrassing myself, being a cocky loud mouth, waking up with a stinking hangover, wasting the day feeling rough, or any other effects that too much alcohol can have on a person!
However, I am TOLERANT of those who wish to do all of the above and happy to spend my evenings with them, so why are they not tolerant of me?
And that is the story of how it came to be that I am no longer who I was in 2007-2008. And although I’m still comfortable with who I am now, often I find myself willing to give anything to return to that year and be who I was then. Not a care in the world – especially ones that couldn’t be covered up with alcohol, friends and pulling.
After Magaluf I returned to university working in the Events Team for Freshers Week 2008. I was setting up the venues and breaking them down after, working the doors, ticketing, flyering, advertising, getting people involved, looking after the artists, sorting out the riders (things the artist’s wanted in their dressing rooms) and so on. It was a hard job with long hours, working late into the night with lots of heavy lifting and grafting to be done but I absolutely thrived on it. I realised I could be happy doing this for a living!
It was around this time that I also realised that the course I was on (Games Technology) was perhaps not for me. I wasn’t good at it and I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I thought I may have done and thus my motivation to attend the lessons and do well had lapsed. Turns out, making a rushed choice of degree isn’t the wisest thing to do! After several talks with my Mum, who told me to just knuckle down and do it and get a degree even if I didn’t enjoy it, I realised I should give it a good shot. So I attended, I tried, but sadly I just couldn’t do something I didn’t have any passion for.
I attended university for the lifestyle and to escape from home, to become a new person and meet new people and try new things. The degree was secondary in my priorities and it showed.
It’s then that I began looking into changing my course. However, I was told that I had missed the deadline and would need to defer the year and start again as a Fresher in 2009. This meant another three years on top of the two I would have spent at Uni already and it meant not knowing anyone by my final year as everyone else would have graduated. It was a big choice to make and yet somehow I avoided it. I just didn’t make a choice. I continued to be a student but not to study.
I signed up with temp agencies all over Bristol and applied for jobs left, right and centre but in the depths of the recession work was very tight.
I moved into a new house in July 2009 along with my girlfriend Krissy, my great friend Alison and her boyfriend Tom. The house was a vast improvement on last years. Nicer and larger rooms, nicer interior, an amazing garden and a lot cheaper rent!
At this point I had decided I would come to university again in September 2009, and had a possible chance of using the credits from my first year to go straight into second year on a new, relevant course. I was looking to study Media & Cultural Studies with the possibility of doing a joint honours with English or History or something. I spoke with a student advisor about it but was dismayed to hear that as I’d received 2 years finance already, I would have to self finance the first year of my degree. It’s a tactic used by the student’s loan company to see if you are dedicated and committed to attending university. This meant I would have to find over £3000 for the course, and around £4000 in living costs for the year. It was just something that I could not do, no matter how much I wanted it. So disappointingly I was forced out of the university scene. Not obtaining a degree even after getting into student debt remains the biggest regret of my life to date, though coming to Bristol would probably be the best choice I ever made. Conflicting, really.
HOWEVER, on a brighter note, with our success at last year’s Freshers, we were invited back to work Freshers Week 2009 and this time I was taking on a lot more responsibility and more organisational role. I had become one of four senior Event Operators. More on that in a future blog!
Still no jobs on the horizon, my Mum told me I would have to move home but having made a commitment to the house and knowing I would go insane back home, I argued that I needed to stay. However some jobs came up; crappy, meaningless mind-numbing jobs which made me want to drive my face into the desk until I bludgeoned myself to death – but, they paid the bills and put food in the cupboards. But they often only lasted a couple of weeks and then I’d go a month or so without anything on the horizon. I applied for hundreds and hundreds of jobs. Over-qualified, under-qualified and everything in between.
I done week’s here or there, but in January landed a job working in a College Library which lasted a few months. But, as with all temp jobs it came to an end, and here I am again, in Limbo, applying for jobs and hearing nothing back.
And now you have arrived at my present. Feeling like Bristol has lost its charm for me. But, alas, circumstances change and people change and I’ve been in the thick of that for the last few years.
The next post will bring you details of the crossroads I’m at and what the future could hold for me.
I’ll also have posts about my fitness/running and about my events work in a little more detail.
Thanks for reading!
G
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