up,up and away

I write to you all from Windsor UK. Windsor is home to the oldest inhabited castle in the world, just so you know ;).

So you want to know what happened last week. I spoke with Paul and TJ and in the end we decided I'd end my job Friday the 30th (yesterday) and they would buy me a plane ticket back to California for August the 26th. They would have happily given me the money for the ticket to use to live in London but I was already planning on coming back in December and it seemed a lot of effort to try and find a job to support myself for three months so Cali bound I am. In addition they give their nannies two weeks paid holiday but TJ said she would do 3 which is great because now I'm able to support myself as I bounce from friend and relative till I leave.

I arrived in windsor yesterday utterly shattered at 5 in the evening but managed to stay awake till 10. Took a wander through town then Louise's friend Mark came by and we played scrabble. All very good fun. Today Louise (yes she is the friend I'm staying with for a week) and I walked through Windsor and went into the various shops. Again I was quite tired around 2 but had some lunch and watched the movie Enchanted so now I feel much revived. My theory for why I've been soo tired is the massive emotional change I've made recently. While working there I believe I was constantly anxious. I became ocd about cleaning the kitchen and keeping the lounges tidying, worrying that when Paul would come home he'd be dissatisfied. Now don't be mislead they are a lovely family but living with them is very different entirely. Now that I'm not there I think my whole body has just breathed this sigh and has become very tired from buzzing like that all the time. Its like having jet lag, which is bizarre but there you go. Sure I'll adjust to relaxing and being on vacation pretty soon :).

Tonight is Taming of the Shrew at The Windsor Globe. Monday I may be getting into Windsor Castle for free to have a look around and Tuesday I get to see my sis again and wonder bout London. Wednesday I'll be sending her back to the states with my massive case (woohoo) and then not much more plans other than moving from place to place.

Well dinner now. Life is good and I am happy. So excited for what is to come and looking forward to all the challenges I have yet to face.
MUWAH

Gotta stop running sometime

Ello, ello its been a little while. I'll start with the most recent event. Earlier today when I got home from being in London Paul asked "Are you going to clean the boys bathrooms?" Which I responded by saying "O, well I have". He then went on to tell me it didn't look like the bathrooms had even been touched and everything was still dirty. This made me rather irritated but I went and cleaned the bathrooms again. Then he came down a little while later and asked again if I was going to clean the bathrooms. To which I said " I have, twice now" he then went on to ask me if I just didn't like house work or if I wasn't good at it etc. I told him I didn't appreciate how he was speaking to me and I didn't think he was being constructive. In the end we were just in a yelling match in which I ended by saying "Don't worry, my contract is up Aug 10th and I'll be gone then" and he said " Well can you you leave next weekend?", "yes", "can you leave tonight?" "fine".

Wow that was intense. I then proceeded to call my lovely cousin Gabrielle and have a panic attack. Fortunately she stayed on the phone with me and got me to breathe regularly and calm down. She reminded me I was an adult and I needed to go and speak to Paul in a calm manner. She also told me it was best to not leave in a hurry tonight.

She was right. I've spent the last year or so running from who knows what, convincing myself it wasn't a problem I needed to face right now. Hm, anxiety is tricky that way, convincing you of things that are completely untrue! Running only led me to feel like a failure. Twice last year I had jobs which ended abruptly. Though in the case of the second job I did have a very good discussion with the boss. Even so I still had a restless uneasy feeling. I couldn't get over the fact that I kept dropping things suddenly; school,work,projects. I would leave it all to the wayside when I got anxious. I'm still unsure as to why this has happened more so in the last year, but there you go it has. Today I stopped that chain. I got myself to calm down and I went down stairs and told Paul "I was trying to do what you asked and when we were speaking earlier I wasn't trying to be defensive I was trying to solve the issue. I'm upset at how this turned out and I would prefer to speak with you and TJ tomorrow and just calm down this evening". Paul apologized for yelling and loosing his temper and said we'd work things out tomorrow and to not feel awkward tonight. So its resolved, we'll have a mature conversation tomorrow to work out the details. Currently I feel too exhausted to feel much of anything other than exhaustion but I know this has been a huge turning point for me and I'm very grateful for the experience.

I have eaten a tasty if not very healthy dinner and will be heading off to see Toy Story Three where I can bawl my eyes out and thus relieve some of this tension. Perhaps I'll stand on my head when I come home, hm.

In other news I have now seen two ballets!! I saw Giselle last weekend and Swan Lake just last Friday. I was more awed by Giselle and pulled into that story than with Swan Lake. While Swan Lake was beautiful I did not feel the same high that I got from watching Giselle which absolutely blew me away. Well next week Spartcus by the Bolshoi which I'm excited to see. Up till now I've been watching the Mikhailovsky troupe perform.

Otherwise I've applied to a few jobs in London, will likely apply to more. Trying to decide if I'll go home to Cali or move into London. Its a decision for another day. At any rate I've begun to make many lovely new friends and if I so choose to come back to London I know I can do it all again.

right, I’m sure I’m leaving some things out but my brains a bit jumbled and its time to go catch that film at the cinema :D
love you all
Bron
x

Thank goodness for July

Ok, so while last post wasn't an exaggeration it was a lot of emotion and in a blog where the people reading this are far away and trying to get a sense of what I am doing here it probably came out sounding more awful than it actually is. No my job isn't terrible, I'm just bored of it and I'd like to try something new. I think when I posted last time I was dumping all my emotions of June on to the page and believe me there was a lot of tangled up messy emotions left over from that mentally exhausting month. As you know though I regret nothing in my life and I value all the difficult lessons I learnt and the energy I forced myself to exert in order to make new friends.

Now it is July and I am putting energy into many positive outlets. I am planning on courses to take for school in January. I am already formulating plans for my STA World Internship application which I won't actually apply for till I am finishing up school, so that gives me about 4 years to figure out why I am the perfect candidate, come up with a brilliant film for the app oh yea and learn how to shoot and edit video along with really polishing up my writing and grammar! All of that is fairly long term. Short term I've done preliminary applications for two catering companies but have not heard back quite yet. If neither of those work or if there isn't enough money in it to support myself I'll go ahead and start looking at Gumtree.com in August for some kind of retail job. I am excited at the possibility of living in London and having a different experience to the one I've currently been in. We shall see how that all pans out.

In other news my sister comes to visit in approximately two weeks!!!!! Can't wait to pick her up at Heathrow airport on the 23rd. She only stays a night but will be back on the 3rd for another night. So I'm really glad to see her. Amy is going off for 10-days by herself to Chile to visit her friend that moved there last December. Her flight leaves from Paris though so TJ has decided to take the kids and do a road trip in France. Hm they said Mandy went with them on vacations but it seems to be more convenient to leave me at home to take care of the dogs. Ho hum, I'll just keep going up to London and enjoying the quite. As much as I love kids I'm so very very very VERY glad I don't have any right now. More and more I'm loving being the age I am. I think your twenties are remarkable and in so many ways its like being a baby. Having all these incredible experiences for the very first time and seeing and feeling things you've haven't before. Its wonderful. The bonus though is you can articulate to yourself what these experiences are and what they mean to you. One of my firsts this month will be seeing Swan Lake, yay. I’m finally excited to go see a ballet, my first professional one. Well first professional classic ballet. I suppose Ballet Forclorico De Bahia is a ballet but that is capoeira so not quite the same. :D

In August I am excited to go to my Great Aunty Mon's 85th birthday, my cousin Frances' wedding AND my friend Guilia and Tenchi's wedding, all in a week of each other! I even have a hat to wear, how very English of me. :).

O yesterday was the village fete (think like 4th of July fair on a very small scale). I helped out a little but mostly got to wonder round looking at the stalls. There was a rowing competition which I competed in. Well sort of a rowing comp, it was on a rowing machine and there was a prize for the fastest female and male doing 500 meters. The first time I tried I did it in 2:15 then I came back toward the end of the fair and tried again. Despite my dress getting caught and loosing me a few seconds I got 2:05, beat my old score by 10secs!! And was bloody tired after that, I can tell you. Sore abs today! Worth it though as I won :D. I got a boat ride with the Clipper Themes for 2adults and up to 3kids. So I thought that a good prize. It also looks like I may have won this City Socialising competition and the prize for that is a spiffy new pair of ray band sunglasses, oooooo. After the fete we went to a festival with a bunch of cover bands. The last cover to go was a cover of U2. I got to shake Bono wannabes hand and I danced up on the big huge speaker that was adjacent to the stage :D. Lots of fun. Not much today, felt sluggish and tired. I woke up in my bedroom at 7am and I was stifling hot. It was very uncomfortable :(. Other than that lazed around today. Looking forward to next weekend, its filled with karaoke, meeting new people, seeing old friends and generally just enjoying life. Woohoo.

Last thing my friend Daryl who took photos of me in the cemetery last December is now compiling a photo book for a competition. Fingers crossed he wins! As excited as I am for him I get to feel all hoity toity because I will be in the book. I have two whole pages, hehe just like the other models but shhhh I'm in a book as a model how awesome is that?! I love life I really feel like I'm going to be able to say I did everything and then some.

well ta
xxB

Square peg, round hole

I am the peg in this case and this job is the round hole. Its like if you asked an actor to be a construction worker. Most likely even if they tried their hardest they would make more mistakes than the other workers because they lack the skills to do the job. For me I like to have to travel to get to my job. I like the separation of work and home. I like the structure of regular hours and having set tasks. I do like variation and don't mind working longer than "normal" hours. With this job though its an odd mix of being part of a family and still being the employee. That just confuses my brain. I'm great with people at work but the relationships I establish with those people are a bit more about them and what I can do for them. I'll tell that other person enough about myself to establish a connection and then I'm more focused on who they are and what they need. This job almost requires you to establish a very personal relationship with those you are working for to make a true connection. But something I've seen about myself is that I struggle with personal relationships. I'm not even sure how to explain that because I don't fully understand it yet myself, I just know that with my friends sometimes I have difficulties but I never have problems with people from work. Now though, I live where I work so I spend all my free time getting out of here which means I've not actually spent much time with the whole family. There is slight disconnect. I like them all, they are lovely people but I've lived here about 5months now and I don't feel all buddy buddy with them. I don't feel like when I leave I'm going to make much of an effort to stay in contact with them. Understanding this though helps me feel less badly about myself. I have made several mistakes while being here. Nothing major but enough to make me feel badly about myself. Just yesterday TJ asked me to ring Jonnie's school to tell them he wasn't going in and to make up any excuse. I said ok but really didn't want to because I felt awkward about telling some women a lie about why Jonnie wasn't in school when its obvious that he didn't go because it was the last day. Then when TJ asked me later if I'd rung I froze and just said yea and no one picked up. So she rang and got an absentee line and told me not to lie to her. So then I felt awful for lying especially because its not in my nature to lie at all. Its things like that that keep happening. I'm just not being myself in this job which is hard because I like me when I'm well ME and I'm not being me here with this family which can be rather self deprecating. Now I could make the struggle to change myself to be someone that could do this job very well. I have the ability to, it isn't a difficult job but I don't feel like making that push. I've already challenged myself to change in so many other ways and I think this journey has always been a lot more about self discovery then it has been about doing a job well. I've worked half my life now and have always excelled at my jobs weather they were in my field or not and you know what, now is the time that I let myself be less than amazing at something and feel that it is ok. I've made more stupid mistakes than I can count in this simple job but I'm going to stop feeling so crappy about that. I'll stick through till December but hopefully will move family's in September to be in the city and I'll just enjoy life. I'm seeing it more as having a place to live and some pocket money to go out and have fun and enjoy a city I love very much. I'm not going to take this nanny period in my life very seriously because like I said its not really about the nannying its about me learning more about my self and life. The job I do is good enough, not spectacular and not poor and for a temporary thing that is just fine.

In other news I'm missing my friends. Its been hard growing so much mentally but not having the support of people you are close to. Sure I get on facebook and IM away but I'm tired of imming its not personal and doesn't make me feel like ive made a connection with them. I've exchanged words and garnered news on their life but there is no emotion or feeling really. I love the friends I'm making here but making a deep personal connection takes lots of time and when I leave I hope I've made at least several new friends. Perhaps not best friends but made enough of a connection with them to miss them when I go and to want to see them when I come back and to stay in contact with them when I'm gone. That is what I hope to do. But its all about setting the ground work and having some of those relationships not work out and fizzle away while others continue to grow. But its lonely with out a best friend or family that you know well. I adore my cousins out here but I've seen them what, all of maybe 3 or 4 times? Some of them more than that but I don't truly know my family out here. Which is part of why I am here in the first place. In the end like I've said I just feel like I'm all by myself and as much as I don't want to leave London it'll be a relief to be in California with people I've known for years. It'll also be nice to be back in a house with people that like food. Can not wait to eat something my mummy has cooked! She could make something as simple as tomato soup and I'd be in heaven because she takes the time to create the right balance of flavours and you just can't appreciate something as delicate as that enough. I love food and I hate the crap I eat here because TJ shops for four kids and every week there are two or so days with no food in the house because she loathes the shopping. There also ends up being too much red meat and fatty sausages. Sigh I'm going to eat so much good food when I come back! I'm going to need to find a job at whatever cc I'm at to foot my food bills. Haha.

Not sure what I'm dong today, finished off the yogurt I bought and hungry and not been paid yet and no one is home. Lame, haha. Basically want to go back to London but yesterday I had a hassle coming home due to my own fault which makes me feel less adventurous today. Hm, we'll see. I'm really feeling like dinner out with a friend but not sure who to ring up.

Right its 2pm and Ive done fuck all so far so I best get a move on or the day will be gone and I'll still be on this silly couch. Love you all.

xxB