This is the first time I've come on here since things have changed around blogger... it's different.

Anyway, that's not what I came on here to talk about. What I came on here to talk about is something that I'm pretty sure I've touched on before and I probably will again because it's something that I never feel I've explained well enough to deeply enough.

I was just sat here minding my own business watching Criminal Minds, as you do, when I thought I'd like to watch a film. So I search online for Mélanie Laurent because I love her and I realised that I never watched Beginners even though I remember really wanting to when I first saw adverts for it. I get about half way through when I realise that I'd much rather be watching something actually in French so I go searching around youtube for videos and find some with pictures and some others with actual moving footage and it gets me feeling all homesick. 

It's weird because I'm not sad but I am. I'm sat here thinking "I miss France, I miss my childhood, I miss Rennes and going to the cinema with my dad and just being in Paris" and all I want to do is go back there. But that's really just in this moment here. I know if I give it a couple of hours or at worst maybe a couple of days I'll be fine again. Of course I'll never say no to being in France or going there but it won't be this ache in the pit of my stomach. It makes me unbelievably jealous when I see people from school are living in France and they have absolutely no ties there but they've managed to make it over there.

If I hated my job I'd say screw it, quit and try to find something to do there to make a living and have somewhere to live, but for the first time in about 4 years I actually really like my job and don't want to leave after only being there 4 months. I think there is a possibility of me getting to go to France with this job, maybe, in the very, very distant future so I know for now I just have to suck it up and go there as often as I can on holidays.

It just sucks seeing it on this screen and not being able to be there in real life and experiencing it all myself again.

Without wanting to get all melodramatic on you, sometimes I find it very hard to work out where I belong. When I'm in England I feel that I'm French every single day. I listen to French music (sometimes) and I speak French at work when someone calls in and doesn't speak English or when I'm reading the feedback forms or the latest addition - when I'm speaking to our latest new recruit who will only speak to my in French now that he knows I am. 

However when I'm in France I feel almost painfully English. I don't know if it's because usually I go with my mum and usually we speak English to each other or if I'm with my family we'll usually speak English too because they don't get the chance to too often. 

So it leaves me feeling kind of unsure and way too uncomfortable to not have that sense of belonging. It's stupid things like watching football/rugby games between France and England and not really knowing who to support or feeling vaguely offended but also kind of not when people make French jokes.

I don't know. I don't want to come off all "woe is me" so please if you find yourself feeling absolutely no sympathy for me (which is not what I'm looking for) then feel free to ignore me and move on.

I think I'm just going to end it here because this has already gone on long enough.

Changing the subject, I just saw a few of my stats and was surprised to see the amounts of hits the blog has had. If you've come across this and are reading right now, please say hi! I promise I'm not always writing posts like this!

Wherein Claire Gets Creative

So I made a new header.

Like, made it.

From scratch.

I'm pretty proud of it, actually.

It all started when I left work early because I was sick at work. This sounds like the start of some really elaborate, super interesting story, and I think it's kind of interesting, in a geeky way, but it's really not all that elaborate.

I left work early and apparently my comfort thing today was watching really geeky videos about typography and graphic design. I don't know if you know this about me, but when I was 14 there was nothing I wanted to do more than become a graphic designer. I used to spend a LOT of time on Photoshop and I was really upset when choosing my options for GCSEs because my mum wouldn't let me choose Graphics because it was in the same block as Italian so I had to do Art instead. I'm kind of glad, now, because I probably would have ended up hating it, and it's not like I went on to do A Levels as the teachers had suggested I could anyway.

It's always been in the back of my mind, though, graphic design and typography and brand identity are things that I've always just kind of... got an eye for? I guess? It's always something I think about so watching videos on the history of it and the importance of it is something that I'm all for. It got me really excited and itching to get my computer out and design something.

Cos, you know, that's what you do when you're sick, right?

Except I couldn't really think of anything I could design. Until! I remembered that I've never really been happy with my old header because I basically just stuck it up there so I could have a header and not the weird text thing there was before. And besides, it was a picture of the beach at my Grandma's house so I'm never opposed to seeing that.

So I was thinking about it and I drew up a little something (about 50 times to get it just right... it's still not as perfect as I'd like but I'm sick, give me a break) and decided to break out the Illustrator that I've had installed on my computer pretty much since I got it but have never gotten around to attempting to use it. I think I kind of love it. Once I got over the whole "oh my goodness I have no idea what the heck I'm doing here!" thing. I dropped it over to my familiar and lovely Photoshop and added some colour and some text and presto! Something I'm more or less happy with.

And now, here we are... wasn't that an epic and lovely story?

I may change it again when I'm better and I've got some time to get my head around Illustrator.

No Matter How Long The Winter, Spring Is Sure To Follow

With the weather so cold at the moment, I'm extra excited for spring. 

I was indoors more or less all day today, so if I avoided looking outside to the still-snow-laden garden, I was able to pretend that it was kind of on its way. A while ago my mum bought some white tulips and they're on their way out at the moment but I love them open like this so I took some photos of them and I thought I would share. 

My fourth week at my new job having just finished, I feel like I'm starting to settle into it and getting the rhythm of the team, even though it's all a new structure so even the people who've been there for years also have to get used to it. I understand more and more every day what it is that I'm actually supposed to be doing and I'm really, really enjoying it. This all means that I've got time at the weekends to really relax and settle and think about things that I want to do and plan projects that I want to undertake. 

And there is so much!

Working at the shop, I think I was always so tired and stressed and just... unhappy that I started to lose all passion. For photography, art, reading, life! It feels silly written out like that (I really have to get onto not feeling everything I write or think seems silly) but it's true. I would come home and crash and the rest of the time I'd just be waiting for my days off so I could just sit around doing nothing and then go straight back to the grindstone.

I'm not going to sit here and lie and say that since I started my new job I've hardly spent any of my weekends at home because it's not true, but I at least am thinking about the things I want to be doing and planning how to go about it. There's been a lot of online inspiration happening and I've got a little list on the sticky notes on my computer so I can have it up there reminding me that there's more to life than lying in my bed with my laptop watching films. Although I did spend a large part of last weekend doing that... I can't really be blamed though, I bought Pretty Woman and Fame for £1.99 each at a charity shop!

One of the main things I'm really into at the moment is styling my photography. I feel like it adds a touch of professionalism. While I'm not out there proactively trying to be a photographer at the moment, I still want the things I take photos to look like they could be in a magazine. I never wanted to be in magazines before - like 

when I was at college. Some people wanted to be in all the fashion magazines or National Geographic and it honestly didn't interest me before, but now... I wouldn't say I'd kill to be in National Geographic, but it definitely would be cool. If for nothing else but to travel to somewhere that would warrant being in it. Or to take photos of something that would warrant being in it. 

My plan of action for tomorrow is to deep clean my room. It's always getting messy because I still haven't got to the keeping things in their place part of growing up, but I really need to go through and reorganise things and throw out a lot of stuff that I haven't even looked at in years.

I'll just leave you with two more photos.

That Travelling Girl

picture from flickr

I sometimes get flashes of the woman I will/have become sometimes and it's weird but oddly comforting at the same time. I mean for example, I'm currently sat here at not even 7am on a Sunday listening to Brazillian music (as you do) and reading every inch I can of the National Geographic website.

I don't know if I've spoken about this before – I probably have – but one of the main things I want to do with my life is travel. I want to be able to look back on my life when I'm 95 (if I'm lucky enough to live that long) and say that I saw more than just a tiny little fraction of the world. I know I've already seen at least a little bit more than a lot of the people I went to school with having come from a completely different country but it's nowhere near enough for me.

Watching Eat, Pray, Love again yesterday only really made things worse for me. I just have to see something, anything, set in a different country, or a different part of England to where I am and I automatically want to be there. I have a whole folder of bookmarks in my laptop entitled “wanderlust” and it's filled with pictures and articles of places I want to visit. I kind of want to be Liz Gilbert when I grow up, despite how screwed up she was. I'd love to go to Italy and India and Indonesia. I just want to go there and take pictures. I think that's what's really in my heart, but I don't know if that's because it's “what I'm meant to do” or whatever, it's just because I'm scared of forgetting and I want to be able to have it down in something tangible that I can look back on. And show to my children and grandchildren.

I think I probably got the travel bug ingrained in me when I was little and didn't even realise it. My aunt used to live in Tahiti (I'm pretty sure) and she's been to so many different places and I always thought it was just so cool but I didn't really register what it meant. Now I just want to go out and see and experience different lifystyles and cultures and see what fits.

There's probably some deep psychological reason for my need to search and find and fit somewhere but... I'm not going to go into it here and certainly not at this hour of the morning.

Music Is A Part Of Me

I want to write about music.

I've been thinking about this for a long time and I think it's time for me to write it down, just to be able to look back at it and to point it out to people when I'm trying to explain what I think or feel.

I often find it really difficult to express how much it means to me. I didn't really register until a little while ago that it doesn't mean the same thing or as much to other people as it does to me. I don't want to sound like I'm making it this big dramatic thing – I'm no musician and I'm sure it means the same if not more to a lot of people out there, but I guess I'm talking more specifically about conversations that I've had with people on the subject.

I am always listening to music. Always. 99% of the time you will find me either blasting something in my room or with headphones plugged in. Even as I sit here right now? The Eat, Pray, Love soundtrack is playing. It's not that I'm scared of the quiet or that I don't enjoy it, it's just that music brings me so much that I can't lose a second of it. I'm constantly discovering new things and filling up the music on my iPhone that I have to deselect stuff every time I update it.

I can honestly say I don't understand people that can listen to music just for the sake of listening to it.

Music is such an integeral part of who I am, there are bits of me in every single one of my all time favourite songs. If you took a look at my list of all time favourite songs you would probably think I'm a little bit schizophrenic because there's songs from probably every genre out there on it, but I like it that way. I know I'm not alone in this but I like my music to fit my mood.

There's a quote in Elizabethtown that I can totally agree with which is a voiceover when Drew's on his road trip and Claire says “Some music needs air. Roll down your window.” I mean, Elizabethtown has a lot of good quotes in general but I think that's one of my favourites because it was the first time I really witnessed someone apparently feeling the same way about music as me. I remember saying something similar to my mum once and her just kind of saying “...Riiiight,”

I can see the way I need to listen to some music and it's a very specific thing. It's stronger with some songs than others but it just feels wrong sometimes to listen to a particular piece of music in a different way than I picture it. It seems weird writing it down and seeing it in typed out words but I feel very strongly on the subject. “Last Kiss” by Taylor Swift? Must be listened to wrapped up in the dark in bed. If I'm listening to it walking around into town, I feel like I'm wrapped up in bed because it's so ingrained. I imagine myself with a glass of wine and all done up pinup style when I hear “At Last” by Etta James.

It's so awesome to me that someone other than me can pin down exactly how I feel about something and write it down in a song and make it all just so... perfect. And I think that's really what it comes down to. The fact that you can just point to a part in a song and say “THAT is exactly what I think/feel/meant to say.” And I just love how music can transport you; make you think of a time or a place or a person so clearly, or just comepletely alter your mood in a mere 3 and a half minutes.

That's really all I wanted to say. I don't even mind if it doesn't mean anything to anyone else, I just wanted to get it down in metaphorical pen and paper.

Have a lovely weekend, guys.

"2012 Is The Year"

So I have some pretty exciting news.

This weekend I quit my job.

Finally! It's been a long time coming and I've been hoping and praying for this moment to arrive - the moment I could walk into the shop and hand over my resignation letter. I've been off all this week and it's been a pretty eventful one; I almost feel like I need to take another week off just to recuperate. Or maybe that's just selfish wishful thinking. 

It all started a couple of weeks ago when I was in the office at work and I got an "unknown" phonecall. I gingerly picked up and spoke to a man asking me to tell him what attracted me to their company. "Um... could you please remind me who you are?" I asked, "Only, it's been a few days since I applied for any jobs and I can't quite recall" So he laughed and told me the job title. "Oh! That one! Oh, yes, well, I'm very interested in customer service but I feel like I've learnt all I can learn in my current position so I feel like it's time to move on." We had a nice little conversation when he told me that they were very interested in having me come in for an interview. He told me the HR woman would be in contact and a few hours later she was. 

So I went along to my first interview the following Friday. It was all very fancy and lovely, the office is in a lovely little town about 20 minutes away from where I live (after a half hour walk to the station from my house) and the building was absolutely gorgeous. I managed to get there 25 minutes early because I got a taxi from the station at the other end to save myself a further half hour walk and arriving at the last minute all sweaty and out of breath.

The actual interview was really nice as well - I walk into a room to be faced with three sumptuous couches instead of a desk and two chairs and am told to sit wherever I want. He told me about himself and the company and then asked me a few questions to figure out how I react in certain situations.

Then he tells me there's a test. Oh, great. "It's supposed to take 15 minutes, but you'll probably find it really easy and do it in 5," he says. Well, it's nice to know someone believes in my abilities. 

But it turns out it was actually pretty straight forward, just prioritising tasks. He came back after leaving me to do the test to tell me that they want to see me again next week to meet with someone I'd actually be working with and what day would be good for me? 

We said our last little pleasantries and said goodbye after he'd told me the HR woman would be in touch again. And then they got me a taxi back to the station. Which they paid for! I was very happy about that, especially when it meant I could actually buy myself breakfast with my last fiver instead of paying for said taxi.

I had my next interview with a different man on Wednesday this week just gone and it was a complete polar opposite to my first interview. I felt very young and like I had to defend choices that I made when I was sixteen just because I didn't know what I wanted to do back then and still don't really know now. I knew that it was the man's job to put me on the spot to see if I would defend myself valiantly or completely crumble under the pressure but I just felt like he didn't like me. Which, when you're 21 and desperate for a new job, is not a nice feeling to have about someone who could potentially help change the direction in which your life is going.

Especially when you'd sent a depressed S.O.S. email to your best friend the night before. 

I spent Thursday trying to soothe my bruised ego by doing absolutely nothing but watching Sex and the City and eating junk food (which I'm deeply regretting now, by the way) I felt my affinity to Carrie and her loneliness even more strongly than I had two nights previously. And when I decided to go upstairs with my laptop to try to cheer myself up some more by curling my hair (simple things, you see) is when everything changed.

I came back downstairs to find my phone had a missed call and a voicemail message. The missed call was not from a local number but it was the area code of the company I'm going to work for. The message was from a lovely sounding girl who gave me the office's number and her mobile number in case I got the message out of office hours. I called, even though it had been a good hour since she'd called and it was gone 5 when most offices close. I got through and felt sick with anticipation when the guy who answered said he'd put me through to her, convinced it was going to be a charming "hi, we liked you, but not enough to hire you, sorry!" kind of call.

But, my friends, it was not. It was the most wonderful phone call I've had in a long, long time. She wanted to offer me the job. With some pretty decent benefits. I told her I'd take the evening to think about it (which I later regretted when I woke up at 6am wanting to call her back and accept) and proceeded to jump around my kitchen screaming. And call my mother because she was still out. And then my father because I needed to rave to someone and the last time I'd spoken to him I'd been crying about how awful the second interview had gone. 

So yesterday, after I had the offer in writing and I emailed her back with my potential starting date, I went into the store and handed in my resignation. And it felt good. And I still don't have to go back to work until Tuesday so I got to go in and walk back out again. 

My bestie, when she replied to my S.O.S email said some very wise things, one of them being "your life is never really going to move on until you do" and it really stuck with me. She told me to write a list of all the things I want for 2012 and start to plan on how to get them, and the first thing on my list was to have a new job that is Monday to Friday, 9 to 5... well I guess I can check that one off. 

She also said 2012 is the year, and I want to share that sentiment for everyone who is out there reading, because it can be true of everyone. Forgive my cheese, but if you work hard enough and put all you can into whatever you're doing, 2012 can and will be great for us all.

(If you've read all the way to the end, I want to thank you. I promise not all my posts will be this long, but I guess I just had a lot to say tonight.)

My Favourite Time Of Year

I have a feeling this is going to be rather a long post... please excuse me.

For the longest time I deluded myself into thinking that I didn't have a favourite time of year. I realised this year that I can't keep up the pretence any more. While yes, there is something I get excited about with every season (Summer is my birthday, Spring is Easter, Autumn is Guy Fawkes, Halloween and Victorian Evening and Winter is, maybe obviously, Christmas) my absolute favourite is late Autumn/Winter. I love when the displays in shop windows change, the colours, how snuggly and warm everything is. I love soft textures and muted colours anyway so when winter comes around I really go nuts with it, although admittedly this year is the first year I really feel like an "adult", as I've mentioned before, and I can see my wardrobe changing with that - I wear trousers now instead of jeans all the time, and different colours that I never used to wear when I was younger because they're just not colours that a lot of 16/17 year olds wear, especially when they're a little bit ~alternative~. 

For me, there is nothing better than lighting some candles, turning on some fairy lights and turning off the main lights to wrap up and listen to music. At this time of year, obviously, I listen to Christmassy songs, and my favourite is The Christmas Song by Nat King Cole (which I will never, ever get bored of no matter how many times I listen to it) so that's what I'm planning on doing tonight. And drinking hot chocolate.

Another one of my favourite things about this season is Winter Wonderland! For those of you who don't know (I don't know if there's anybody out there reading that I don't know but if there is - say hi!) Winter Wonderland is a big Christmas market/fairground that comes to Hyde Park every year and lasts from November right through to January and it is absolutely glorious. I went a few weeks ago with my cousin and some of her friends from work on the day that it opened - sadly their Facebook page didn't say that it wasn't opening until 5:30 so we turned up at lunchtime only to be sent away. Marie and I decided to go do a bit of shopping and to have some food while we were waiting for it to open. We went to the covered arcade and then we went to Fortnum and Mason before Starbucks for a nice relaxing hot chocolate (in my case) and a fruit blended drink (in her case)

When we actually got to Winter Wonderland it was just... amazing. There are no words. It was kind of loud and garish cos we went into the fairground side first by accident but we had some food and I took photos (naturally) and we just soaked in the Wintery Christmassy-ness of it all.

So far our house is only decorated with the candles you see at the top of this post and a paper chain but this weekend (or maybe Monday which marks the start of my week off work) we're going to be fully decking out the house - the tree, the lights, the works and I couldn't be more excited! I can foresee plenty of warm nights wrapped up in front of the telly with all the pretty lights twinkling in the house.

Today I'm making cookies and listening to Christmas music very loudly (and annoying the neighbours, I'm sure) I have to go to work in a couple of hours to close up with them because they don't have keys but when I get home I'm going to be cracking out the Christmas movies and hot chocolate to eat with the lovely cookies!

I hope you all have a wonderful winter season, I know I will!