Poverty

I think I've had a brief glimpse of how Africa must feel when they look at the UK and America. 

There's me (Africa) eating toast for dinner, for the tenth day running, and dreaming of vegetables because I can't remember the last time I could afford to buy any. Then there's my landlady (UK+US) with so much food she can't physically eat it all and just leaves it stacked up in the fridge, rotting. It would be so easy for her to say, "I can't manage all of this, why don't you have some?" but she doesn't.  

They must be so cross with us.

On the plus side, this level of skint-ness is making me really look at how wasteful I am. I know that several times in my life I've bought too much food and let at least half of it just go off. I particularly remember looking at a bunch of bananas that had started to get brown spots on them and thinking 'I could make banana bread with those', then leaving them until they turned black and became completely inedible. If time travel were possible I would go back there and shake me, and tell her how much I would give to have a few bananas right now.  This feels like the kind of lesson that's gonna stay with me for the rest of my life; I guess that's at least one of the reasons for my being so poor right now.

In other news: I've worked out how to turn the heating on in the flat. 'Ecstatic' doesn't even begin to cover how I feel about this.

xXx

If I get a job.

My entire life seems to be resting on this sentence.  I can stay in Glasgow if I get a job. I can bring my car up if I get a job. I'll be able to buy my own drinks and stop feeling guilty about scrounging off my boyfriend if I get a job. I'll be able to stay with my boyfriend if I get a job. And have my hair cut, and take the subway into town instead of walking for 45 minutes, and buy proper food, and start swing dance lessons, and get boots that won't wear through in two weeks, and stop worrying until I give myself heartburn.

I now have a grand total of £15 to last me til the 1st of July. I haven't yet built up the courage to work out how much that is per day.  The really worrying thing is that now my choice is between having food and going to salsa, and I think I know which one's going to win.

Trying not to panic

I'm back in Glasgow again. Didn't get the clerical assistant job, things still good with my Scottish man, two assignments due in 62 hours. Proper update to follow when they're handed in.

xXx

Update

Okay, I am slightly ashamed that it's now been almost three weeks since I last wrote anything here. But not too ashamed because I've been busily writing things for my masters instead! I'm up to 15,000 words on my novel, I've figured out what to do for my CX assignment and I've even started it. Feeling productive :) 

In other news I've applied for a job that I really, really want to do up here. It's a clerical assistant in a primary school, which may not sound that great, but it's perfect for me. Not only would I get to indulge my OCD by alphebetising and filing things, I'd also get to help out with putting up the wall displays. I've always wanted a go at that! Plus the job's 30 hours a week so I would have enough time to keep writing and having a social life, and it's enough money for me to stay here in Glasgow.

I also have an extra reason for wanting to stay in Scotland now. Namely that I've found that nice Scottish man I was searching for. We've been out a few times and I really like him, I'm actually a bit annoyed that I'm going home soon and won't get to see him for two weeks. But oh well, he'll still be here when I come back.

I'm so happy right now it's probably obnoxious :p

xXx

It's finally happened

After 7 months Scottish has finally battered its way through my English barrier and begun to take over. I can no longer say 'yes', it's always 'aye'. And the other day I actually came out with 'nae bothar' in the middle of a conversation. 

I'm going native!

xXx

I've noticed something

Male-led dancing is a thing of extremes. When it's bad it's boring, confusing, painful and sometimes downright disgusting (sweaty neck. That's all I'm saying).  

But when it's good it feels like flying.

I've never had a dance that was anywhere in between the two, it's always one or the other. 

xXx

Productivity

At the beginning of this year an assignment was due that included a synopsis and blurb of my novel. One result of doing this assignment was that the planned ending of my book was changed entirely, and since then I haven't written a single new word of it. 

But after a tutorial I realised the problem wasn't that I had changed the ending, it was the fact that I was thinking about the ending at all. I had figured out that it was over 60,000 words away and I had no idea how to fill that much writing space. So yesterday I sat down and spent a good two hours working out what could and should happen between the start and the end. Here's the result:

Isn't it pretty. The colours represent the importance of the event, so I made sure I had at least one amber or red event for each day. Friday looks a bit frantic doesn't it! 

 And this prettiful chart helps in two ways. Firstly I can start writing again because I know exactly what's going to happen next, and after that, and after that and so on. Secondly the entire 80,000ish words have been broken down into 16 little chunks. I can think about it as writing 16 short stories, which I already know I can do because I have around that number of short stories to my name. Even better is the fact that I've already written a few of the chunks so I only have 10 or 11 to go. 

Suddenly writing a whole novel doesn't seem like such an impossible task.

xXx