A return

I am back!

I was on hiatus as i started a travel blog and knew my family would be reading it, so I hid this one from my profile and forgot about it. (!) I've now created a separate profile for the travel blog, so I can return to my true form on this blog.

HURRAH.

An outlet!

I have been in England now for over 70 days and I only know one person besides my husband. One person to talk to, and a husband who is grieved by my constant ear-bashing. So, blog, I have returned to use you for my evil purposes.

I am a little bit lonely, and a little bit disappointed in the UK, and a little bit bored. I have decided I want to be a historian and to spend my days in research, but it is proving difficult to find a job - or work out other ways to make a living - doing that. Sometimes I feel elated, like today when I visited a big Waterstone's book shop that was like a giant geek mecca. Seeing all those books about history inspires me that maybe I could write one. That history does matter, and it makes me feel alive, which a slug like me needs. And other days I just can't be bothered with the hassle of carving a niche for myself, of searching for something different, of trying to be confident enough to try and sell myself.

I haven't been very brave over the past year and a bit. The earthquakes really took a chunk out of my confidence and security and self-belief. At uni in 2010 I almost felt whole - I found where I belong, and, for once, I felt really successful and really clever. It felt good to get A's and to be told "you're good enough". I've spent so much of this last year feeling scared and not good enough and hiding away in my living room where I felt a little more secure than I did in the rest of Christchurch.

And now I'm struggling to recover from that. We've taken on this new adventure to England, and it's not as safe and secure and homely as I expected. It is expensive and dirty and full of people who I'm scared of or who can't understand me (and I, them). And now I have to get back into the swing of earning money, and I really want to do something I love, but the question is - have I got the self-belief to do it?

Life, huh? Many challenges, few easy solutions.