Crawling Back Into The Nest

Leaving home for the first time is empowering, it feels like the beginning of something amazing, a new you. That being said, it’s pretty much inevitable that at some point in your life (probably sooner than you think) you’ll find yourself living back under your parents’ roof.

Writing a blog about being sassy and independent isn’t quite as easy when you’re sitting in the same room as your Mum watching Newsnight and your Dad playing Farmville behind you with the threat of being grounded if you don’t clean your room. Your previously nocturnal life has become lights-out by 11 and “don’t forget to have a shower this week”.

Since my temporary Christmas job ended, I’d been half-heartedly rifling the internet for further employment. After six weeks of sleepless nights scraping the bottom of the barrel watching endless discontinued series using my friend’s Netflix account I finally found another job. One of the best things about said job was that it’s a mere 7½ minute walk from the flat I’d been staying in since November. The same flat I left two days after starting my job. So now I get out of my bed four hours before my shift begins, and embark on a two hour journey to make it into an environment that one might describe as “hell on earth”.  They might do, but that might only be me who carries that opinion. I should also come right out and tell you that I’ve committed the cardinal sin of allotting myself a pair of commuting shoes. And those commuting shoes might happen to be a pair of Nike trainers.  We’re all friends here. And as long as we are being honest I’ll confess that one day I listened to One Direction’s Comic Relief Single (a mash-up cover of Blondie’s One Way or Another and The Undertones’ Teenage Kicks) on repeat the entire way there, throughout my breaks, and the whole journey back.

 My fashion faux pas - I've swapped my high-heels for a pair of old trainers to journey to work in.

May I just add that since starting to write this entry two weeks ago, I’ve actually lost my job. Having been reassured time and time again that it was nothing personal, naturally I took it as personally as you could get. Until, that is, the majority of the other temps were sent packing too just days after me, only then did I begin to stop feeling sorry for myself (something I have been informed is one of my specialities).  I must admit, it is pretty difficult not to feel sorry for yourself when six weeks of job hunting is rewarded with only two weeks of employment. At this point it is vital to start to think about your next steps, as not only are you back under the clean-cut roof of your parents’ home, you are also no longer provided with distractions in the form of working. Perhaps that is why I finally dusted off my keyboard and continued writing this shambolic blog.

“What happens next?!” I hear you heckle at the computer screen. The reality is I do not know. I’m trying to pick one of my slightly radical life-plans out and put it into practice, but the result is probably not too dissimilar to if you were to attempt to play hook-a-duck after a litre of vodka. Until then, it’s back to episode after episode of Daria, and flicking through that girl-from-school-I-never-really-liked’s boyfriend’s sister’s best-friend’s Facebook page. I can imagine you didn’t expect anything more of me.