Summing up...

This year seems to have been the longest year that I can bring to mind. Obviously it hasn't been longer than any other year - but perhaps the drastic changes that have swept me out of my skin have contributed to this feeling.

Many people say they will do it and do not; many people plan to do it and do not; so many people start, only to fall when presented with a hurdle of difficulty. I, personally, have been guilty of planning to completely change my life and not doing so through lack of belief in myself on a number of occasions.

But not this time.

No longer am I stuck in a job that I hate. I mean, I really hated it there at the best of times. No more do I have to sit in the rusty chair of regret and ask myself what I could have made of myself. No. Now I am answering that question for myself. It is time to find out what I can be.

So I gave up my job, a well paid job by my standards, in exchange for a life of student poverty. Despite my lack of qualifications at college level, I am now studying for a degree in Journalism at Staffordshire University.

Sticking with my policy of honesty in my blogs, I can honestly say that I have never ventured so far out of my comfort zone. I am living on my own with strangers, I am in a town that I have almost no knowledge of and so it is needless to say that I never know where I am or where I'm going!
I am writing essays, learning referencing styles and having to hand work in by deadlines. It's all just as scary as I thought it was going to be.
I could not be happier.

There have been times this year when I have contemplated giving up; I have been seconds away from throwing my pencil to the table and leaving the room during shorthand lessons. But I am anything but stupid. I know how lucky I am to have been given this opportunity and I am more than aware that thousands of students, with perfectly acceptable grades, failed to get their place at university this year.

I am not quitting.

Obviously getting my chance to study at such a high level is the highlight of my year and will probably add to my life-time highlight reel. But 2010 has been about so much more for me.

Throughout this year I have gained many friends, but a couple of people have decided they don't want to be associated with me anymore, people who I previously considered close friends. I cannot hide the fact that I was distraught at the prospect of losing them. But if something is going to happen, it will just happen.

I am a little raft floating along the big beautiful stream of friendship; at some point I was bound to shed some dead wood.

But months ago I made a statement that I stand by to this day; my door is always ajar. For anyone.

I will have been single for exactly one year on new year's eve. Since the age of seventeen I have never really spent such a period of time on my own. It has probably done me the world of good. I have had chance to reacquaint myself with certain friends, address my own insecurities and, most importantly, make the decision to go to university. It is not a choice I would have made wearing rose-tinted glasses.

So to the girl who left me one year ago: Thank you, I hope you are happy and whoever you find love with can give you everything that I could not.

To summarise this year; I am growing into a person that I am comfortable being.

And that is pretty amazing...