Roots. or, The Approach of 30

I haven't been writing, mainly because there has been SO MUCH up in the air and back and forth, and most of my thoughts have been about things I couldn't really put out there for the world to see, but I think (and really really hope) that this version of what happens in the next six months is true.

Some history: there for a while, I was going to be moving to India in February or March with my job, which would have been an AMAZING experience I'm sure, but the timing was wrong, and the more I learned about the kind of work I'd be doing, the less I felt suited for it. Five years ago, or even two, I would have gone for it anyway. But at 29, the idea of re-learning a whole new skill set, starting totally over, re-creating a life yet again...no longer filled me with absolute excitement like it would have at 25 or 27. I'm doing well with what I'm doing in my career at the moment, and in my mind I either want to build on that more or drop it all and go after something I really care about, like music, or non-profit work in Africa. This move would have been neither. I'm sure I will end up on some other exciting adventure, but I've never had a problem finding those - and I tend to know when they are right, and when they just aren't. Things go a lot better for me when I listen to myself, and the amount of hesitation I had about this really cool opportunity was a huge red flag.

So then I spent several days worried that if I turned down the opportunity, after expressing interest and starting work on it for a few weeks, they might wish to part ways with me and I'd be frantically looking for a new job or packing up to move back to NC. But (fingers crossed!) it looks like there's a great position still available in London, so provided that all goes as planned, I'll be here indefinitely, which is just amazing. This really has become my home - I'm building up my life, my friends, my neighborhood...and it's so freeing not to have an expiration date on it. Even better, it's nice not to NEED an expiration date.

The best part of the whole story is that I found a piano shop that needed help, while looking for jobs 'just in case.' I can help out there on the weekends, and on days I don't want to work from home I can go there and work from the office and be surrounded by pianos all day :) It's great!

I've been here a full 18months now - crazy how time flies!

commercialism live and well

So apparently Harrods (massive and massively expensive dept store in london) has already pre-booked all available time slots for kids to sit on Santa's knee. Besides the fact that this means there are 70,000 parents who actually plan out their child's knee-wishing appointment, it's only November 2nd!!! Although with no Thanksgiving, there is really nothing to slow down the ever earlier arrival of the Christmas season. Their parade was yesterday, and I missed it, mainly because I as I said before, IT'S ONLY NOVEMBER 2ND!! I love how it's called Christmas here - you never say Happy Holidays or holiday shopping or any of that. The day is Christmas, it has even less to do with the Christian tradition than in the US, but they don't mind calling it that. I think that may be why they don't mind it, there is no debate about the real meaning or attempt to put Jesus back in Christmas - it's way too far gone for that now! Plus, 'holiday' is most commonly used as the word for vacation, so it wouldn't really make sense. I have trouble getting over my American PC training though, I keep stumbling as I ask people what they are doing for "the hol...um...over brea...um...Chri...Christmas?"

Anyway, it will be interesting to see what this year is like. I kinda liked shopping in the hub of activity last year, with the decorations and elaborate lighting on the stores, and Oxford Street just looks cool. But with the economy being a big, fat, gloomy cloud, I'm guessing there will be sales sooner, and a little less cheer from the retailers.

My voice

I lost my voice today, in the literal sense (icky flu/cold) and found it, figuratively, online in debates about politics on facebook. In general, I don't really know what I think until I can articulate it well in a discussion. Which is why I so rarely offer my opinion in real life debates, because until I can express myself clearly and know both the facts and feelings, I tend to remain very much in the middle. I think and mull and ponder and inwardly question, try on different sides of an argument, and then if I do end up on one side, I'm very passionate about what I believe or think. Historically, there's always been a really small percentage of things that end up in that category, although I think as I get older I'm a little more willing to risk speaking out before I get to the 100% sure stage. And of course I'm talking about things that hit close to home. I love sparking up a discussion about whether coincidences are meaningful, or criticizing/praising the musical talent on the X Factor (which, by the way, I think is so much more interesting than American Idol!). But on things that do matter to me, it takes a while for me to get to the point where I will confront someone, or argue a point, and I got there this week (and especially today) with the election. I even surprised myself to find I was actually enjoying the confrontation.

I went to see Quantom Solace today - yay Bond! It was fun to go with my flatmate, and I absolutely love walking to the movies, there's a great theater just around the corner. Did not love paying £9.60 for a ticket...but this has been a weekend of excess. I went with my flatmates to a really nice pub for dinner last night, taking taxi there and back (it's really cold and I'm sick, alright?) and forgetting the reason I can afford to live in my amazing flat is precisely because I do not spend money like that. :)

The place was very much a meat market, or whatever the London equivalent is. I find the raw singles scene so fascinating, we were in a popular spot in Notting Hill, so the girls were polished and well dressed, and the men basically the same. The looks by the women sussing up the competition are followed by the men evaluating the options, it's all so sophisticated and creepy. The adult crowd is much more separate from the university crowd, which makes a huge difference from the icky feeling places I remember in Raleigh. We were only stuck passively ignoring the two oddly tall and skinny men chatting us up for the one drink, then we had our booking at 9:30 and retreated upstairs to enjoy the yummy food.

I found this site on techcrunch called "memiary.com" which lets you say 5 things you did that day and tracks it for you. Which is so cool, because that's a small part of why I journal, to take notice of what I'm doing every day...so this way I can just journal my thoughts, not mindlessly record events. Also, I can look back over events and start taking stock of just how pointless some things are, or repetitive, or destructive, or good...who knows!

Happy Birthday Dad!

If my father were alive today, he'd be 65. Crazy! I sometimes wonder what he would look like, now with graying (or totally gray) hair, more wrinkles, maybe thinning or maybe with a little more weight on him. I wonder if we'd see this election the same, or if he would still be pretty conservative. I wonder what it would be like to tell him about playing golf over here and going to the football game, or ask his advice for what I do next in my career. I wonder what it would be like to talk to him about how I'm now the age he was when he and mom got married, or get his opinion on guys that I date. I wonder if we would even talk about that kind of thing! I wonder if he would be spending all his time playing golf now that he's retired, or still drawing out the sketches for the 'dream home' on his engineering paper. After over 17 years, I don't think that saying I still miss him occasionally is the right expression - I've lived several more years without him in my life than I did with him, and it doesn't usually happen that you miss something so far removed from your present life - but I have a bittersweet connection to the idea of him, the memory of him, that comes up on days like today...and I'm letting myself indulge in it and savor the chance to fill my head and heart with imaginations of my daddy.

um, sleet? snow?

Well, this is what I get for saying to my mom and some friends how London is just chilly and dreary longer than NC, not necessarily REALLY cold, except for the heart of January/February. Wrong! It was snowing in north London in last night, and sleeting when I was walking home from the tube last night after work! It's October, what's going on? My roof terrace was iced over this morning, if that keeps up we'll be able to have slip n' slide across the roof parties in December.

And as a consequence of this frigid temperature drop, and probably also due to the long hours outside in the cold on Sunday, I feel like doodoo today. So I'm home sick from work, although still worked pretty much all morning, was a good time to clear through the backlog of my emails.

It's nice though, I'm getting to listing to last.fm instead of the crappy pop radio we have on at work, and find some new bands. I've started using all the social ways you can listen to friends' stations, partly because it's fun, and partly in my ever-increasing attempt to be a web 2.0 geek to be better at my job :)

I haven't posted much about politics on this blog, and I'll probably keep it that way after this until the election is over. But I will say that it is really freaking me out how crazy people are. When I see video clips of people who honestly believe that Obama is a Muslim, and thus a terrorist, it's scary to think that the battle has only just begun if he wins. People are so passionately divided, and I don't really see either side having any intention of fixing that. Obama's platform at least says he wants to, and I hope that if he wins that wasn't just lip service, but if the Republicans only want to have it their way and don't do anything to help bridge the divide, it won't matter.

Football, football, rah rah rah!

That's what my dad used to say all the time when it was Saturday and time for college ball games to start - after fixing the popcorn in our old-fashioned popcorn maker, where you melted the butter on the top while the kernels exploaded below, pelting them into the bowl and drizzling the butter all over it. Oh I love fall - football, pretty leaves, crisp weather...

Anyway, so I was complaining loudly Friday and Saturday about not finding anyone or way to go to the football game that was at Wembley stadium Sunday. Saints and Chargers, second year the NFL has been here. And then I thought, why am I choosing to complain instead of doing something about this? So I shut up, started searching for spare tickets and found a guy looking for a girl to go with him, since his mate couldn't go, and I said, what the hell, I'm doing it! It was slightly like responding to a personal ad, but when it comes to a chance to see a pro football game at a cool venue like Wembley in London, I have no shame. Plus, the guy was Irish, and it's built into my American girl genes to find Irish guys unreasonably attractive. :)

It was SOOO much fun! I had my Steelers jersey on, and probably 70% of the crowd had on some NFL team jersey, it was unlike any sporting event I've ever been to, b/c everyone was a fan of the game, not really the two teams that were playing. The weather even behaved, it had been raining, but stopped an hour or so before the game so it was chilly but clear. The game was great, and the "home" team was the Saints, so most people were routing for them, and it was almost like a home environment, which was fun.

The funniest part for me was the beginning, when the cheerleaders came out and the whole crowd went WILD - probably the biggest reception I've ever heard for the girls. Two reasons - A) being a minor sport over here, there were MAYBE 10,000 out of the 83,000 people there that were female. Actually that's generous, I was the only woman out of the 25 people I could see around me. B) none of the sports here have cheerleaders, it's a phenomenon for them.

Then there were the funny spellings - people with DEFENCE signs, instead of defense. And of course I loved being the local expert on the rules :) Even the game was good, lots of 'offence' and it had an exciting fourth quarter with the Chargers almost coming back from well behind. And my Irish date turned out to be pretty funny and we hit it off well, so it couldn't have been a better day, really.

Nesting

I have always balked at any suggestion of 'settling down' or even admitting I would rather stay in my current location than go somewhere exotic or just plain different - but I officially crossed over the line this week. I put up curtains in my flat, which coordinate with my duvet, and hung the mirror on the wall, bought flowers and placed them in two vases in the room, got the keyboard I ordered all set up, fixed the internet so I can sit here in my room and type before going to sleep...and I'm really freakin' happy with it all. :) Maybe there is something to that theory that people (esp. women) have that urge to 'nest' and create the sense of 'home'...I do pretty well at running from that notion, but it's kinda nice to let my guard down a little. I haven't felt this connected to the place where I'm living and the life I have there since 2001-3, the years after college in Columbia, SC, when I had my first apartment, my piano studio, and worked as the organist at a church. The part about this that scares me is that when I did leave, I knew it wasn't quite the right time, but did it anyway, and it resulted in 2 horrible years...financially, emotionally, and career-wise. So I'm really hoping I can avoid a repeat!

Last night I went out for drinks and then dinner at a Spanish restaurant with some friends - I was feeling so continental! Not just because we ate at 9:30pm, but it was an Italian girl, French girl, and Spanish guy, so I was surrounded. And that is yet another reason I love London. People here ask me all the time why I like living here and if it's for the city, wouldn't I prefer New York or something? My answer to that is that not only am I more likely to have last night's dinner scenario here than in NYC, but it's a heck of a lot easier for me to GO to Italy, France and Spain from London! Along that train of thought, I'm trying to plan a trip to Germany for December to visit a couple friends, and see the Christmas markets :)