Saturday, September 26, 2009

...seriously, where does the time go?

Yet again another year goes by - almost to the day - without an update. Maybe this is how its meant to be? Maybe its an annual diary? Heaven knows, when i've kept diaries in the past they rarely get updated after February 12th...

The credit crunch has come and gone, but its affects are well and truly still with us. Dearest Gordon has just come back from the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, straight into the Labour party conference. He's fighting to keep his job within the party and to keep leading the country - ironic that overseas he's seen as a great statesman and was this week given and award in relation to such. I've no great affection for the man, but I think the Labour governments since 1997 have been good for the UK and don't have much confidence that a Conservative government would improve on what the current administration are doing. The public generally have no interest in politics and he'll be judged on what he does in the few weeks leading up to the general election. Again though, maybe that's how it should be - the past is already past. Should a party be given another 5 years in power on the basis of what they have done? or should it be purely on what they 'say' they're going to do in the next?

Anyway, what about me? Well I think as of the date of my last update i'd just returned from Ibiza after a strange summer considering buying a bar. I'd lain on the beach during September trying to decide what my next move should be. The decision was to come back to the UK for the winter, move to Manchester and work in a bar .This would give me the option and the experience to return to Ibiza this summer and work the season. I moved to Manchester and got a job in the Rembrandt Hotel - the top 'men's bar' on Canal Street. It was a good move and I settled into a life in Manchester really quickly. Unfortunately, this created a problem. When April came and it was time to decide whether to return to Ibiza for the summer, the decision was a difficult one. In the end, as the offer of work in Ibiza did not seem secure and I had a heap of my own insecurities about the move, I decided not to go. I continued to work at the Pub during the summer, but by mid August decided it was time to move on...but to what?

I sit here now, after six weeks of travels to Ibiza, Mallorca and Barcelona, still without any sense of direction. There is no great ambition, just a very long list of things I don't want to do. I've been served with a possession notice for my apartment and I have until the end of November to get out. This is naturally focusing my mind and may turn out to be a blessing in disguise - who knows! Current fave option is to throw more money at the situation and take an apt in Barcelona in January. The focus would be language studies, to give me some confidence in my use of the Spanish language, which may in turn provide me with the confidence to tackle finally working in the country. The last two years have spelt out to me that from a work perspective, i want to integrate, at least partially. I don't want to work only serving the ex-pat crowd.

Come back again next year and we'll see what another year in my life has served up.