What moving to NYC has taught me

At the beginning of June, I embarked on a new adventure and moved to New York City. One week in, I've written about my experiences, the highs and the lows, and what moving to the most thriving and sought after city in the world has taught me…

My first intro to NYC was a negative one. I was conned a silly amount of money by a taxi driver who pounced on little unassuming me at the airport, a deer in the headlights obviously lost in the big city. After charging me over three times the amount the journey should have been, said taxi driver then preceded to tell me that the people in NY are the nicest in the world. YEH OK MATE. Thankfully, despite not fitting into the category himself, the people of NY have been really bloody lovely and there's a sense of energy in the air that's almost tangible.

When life gets in the way

So it’s true, my blog has taken a backseat while I’ve been travelling and I haven’t written in far longer than is acceptable if I’m expecting my writing to be taken seriously. Shame on you, Hols. That’s not to say there aren’t tons of half-written posts stashed away on my laptop which didn’t make the cut. Half of said posts are full of exclamations like ‘WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY???’, ‘THIS ISN’T FUNNY’, ‘FGS GET IT TOGETHER’. Evidently, giving in to writers' block and turning to a glass of red is way more fulfilling. If you’re reading this, this post has finally made it further than the ones left to die on my desktop and we’ve experienced a bloody miracle. 

Why everyone should live abroad

It's absolutely no secret that we all love holidaying. Whether it's skiing down the slopes in Val-d'Isère, necking flaming sambucas in Maga, or hiking up mountains in Bali, we all have our favourite holiday destinations. A holiday is that one or two weeks a year, maybe even more if you're a jammy bastard, where we leave all of our woes at home, wave goodbye to any stress or negativity that every day working life brought on us, and for once in our lives, sit back and think 'life is bloody wonderful'. As Brits abroad, we're in that airport terminal sipping pornstar martinis and jumping on that plane quicker than you can say 'más vino por favor'.

Granted, holidays are great. But living abroad isn't just an extended holiday. On holidays you don't have days where you're homesick and don't know the next time you're going to see your friends at home. On holidays you don't have to try and find somewhere to live entirely from scratch. On holidays you don't have to worry about the money you're spending because the fact of the matter is, you're on bloody holiday. Despite the struggles that you might face upping and leaving home behind, moving abroad and living in another country is, I think, the best thing anyone can ever do, and here's why...

How To Be Happy: The Next Chapter

Though it’s easy to scoff at the horribly cliché title of this blog post, I’m hoping that if my life were in book form, the next few months would prove to be the ultimate page-turner. As a literature fiend, a truly sickening book metaphor seems to be the easiest way to shout out to the world that I’m moving to Australia. Cue the dramatic ‘duh, duh, duhhhhh’.

A few months ago, I wrote a blog post that I chose not to publish. The basic tone of such post was I'm soo bored I hate my life woe is meeeee and nobody’s got time to listen to a measly excuse of a blogger waffling on about her sorrows when our lives are often hard enough to manage on their own. I was down in the dumps, unsatisfied, a grumpy grizzly, if you will. After a hefty few months of wallowing, I decided that my slightly unhinged and flat life needed a re-service. After all, do things really need to be 100% broken to warrant the need to be fixed?

In an attempt to bid farewell to the sulk, I culled everything that no longer made me happy because, let's cut to the chase here, it is completely okay to focus on your own happiness. You are allowed to travel and live where you want, spend your money on nice things or sometimes tell friends you just want a night in. To think about your own happiness doesn’t make you selfish, it encourages you to take control of your emotions. It is futile to push on believing that things will fix themselves if you just sit back and watch life pass by.

How to tell fear to do one

Life can be a pretty intimidating and daunting ride.

In our twenties, it’s unlikely we have any sense of direction, we are all pretty broke and we probably spend the majority of our free time crying 'WHY ME WHYYY' having necked about ten tequilas the night before. Ok, so the latter might just be me, but when life’s path isn’t fully laid out for us, anxiety can take over.

Where will we be in five years time? Are we ever going to pay off the debt we owe? Or find that one person who makes nothing else really matter to save us growing old with cats? (Crazy cat lady is my middle name, hi.) Yes, life can be pretty scary and there are many experiences that lie ahead that are bound to make our hearts skip a beat or stomachs turn twice over. But I’m certain that it’s the things that scare us the most, which are the most empowering once overcome.

In my opinion, if you’re not shitting yourself, you’re not experience something new.

The Importance of Being Mindful

So it’s the first day of a fresh new month. The sun is shining more than it’s raining, when we finish work at 5.30pm it’s still light outside and we are one month closer to summer. One might say we have quite a lot to be happy about. However, the reality is that no matter how bloody beautiful it is outside or how swimmingly well our lives are going, the twenty-first century human being has a habit of either dwelling on the past, or worrying about the future. The present ‘now’ doesn’t become a sincerely meaningful thing until tomorrow comes and it’s transformed into the past.

As humans, we are very very bad at appreciating the present moment. Actually, not even appreciating it but merely living it. Everything boils down to yesterday or tomorrow. But what about right now? Like, right this second? How are you feeling? The past has been and gone and you’re never going to create a time-machine, so really, the most important moments of our lives are the ones that we’re drifting straight through whilst our busy minds are set to autopilot.

Why I've deleted all dating apps.

If you know me, or are a regular reader of my blog, you will know that I am partial to a date or two. Sadly, all of these dates are from Tinder/Happn (cry me a river).

If you know me, you will also know that I enjoy being single and am in no way in need of a relationship. I date because it’s entertaining, not because I’m waiting to be whisked away by Prince Charming, because let's face it, he went down with Cindy a long time ago.

On said dating apps, there tend to be three categories of men, and forgive me for stereotyping, but in this instance, it’s plain necessary:

1. Good looking men who are bloody basic and have the intelligence of a pea. They will most likely also be holding a bottle of Grey Goose and have a selfie of them bicep curling in the gym. Vom.
2. Men that are ‘aesthetically challenged’ and have a bio that reads something like ‘Hi, I’m Darren! I’m 5 ft 8 I like keeping fit, going on walks and eating out lol. Message me to find out more!’. Bless you Darren, I hope you find someone equally as lovely but it ‘aint me.
3. Fucking idiots.

Bite the bullet.

Social media = various platforms that enable us to communicate with distant family, take fugly photos of ourselves to send to our best friends or make our selfies look effortlessly 'I woke up like this', all with the help of a nice little X-Pro II filter. Something pretty good for socialising then right? 

Wrong. 

Sure we all love a bit of social media - (I work for a digital social media company goddammit so without it, I'd be pretty screwed, let's be real). However, among the more trivial social media problems (you can read those here) there is a profound issue with the very fact we have become so unbelievably reliant on it, that the most basic human interactions are made more difficult. 

Take how reliant we are on Tinder for meeting people for example. Last night was the first time in a long time that I actually had a face to face conversation with a guy that approached me in a bar. Touche to you my friend. The fact I didn't get his number and then proceeded to stalk and try and find him online is completely besides the point (gimme a break, if you say you haven't done it, you're a liar), but essentially, having a nice chin wag with someone over a glass of wine (maybe it was a jagerbomb, past 12am you can never really tell) is always going to beat reading words from a phone screen. 

People have become so reliant on social media that in ways, it's actually making us more antisocial. I can count on one hand how many people I actually have regular phone conversations with, and I don't even need all five fingers. Rather than actually talking to one another, we hide behind the filters of our Facebook and Instagram profiles trying to prove to everyone around us that my night out was better than yours, my burger is bigger than yours and the view from my room is more beautiful than yours. 

I am completely guilty of all of the above, and I'm definitely not going to stop posting photos or tweets, because essentially, they act as a catalogue of our experiences to look back at with fond nostalgia, especially more so now that the app TimeHop has been created. However, I feel social media is becoming close to an obsession for many people, which in turn, has become detrimental to their abilities to communicate with new people in 'real life'.

When you're out and about with friends, family or the dog, put your phone down and look around you. When you see something inspiring, document it in a photo sure, but use it as a talking point for discussion or as a memory to appreciate in 5 years time. When you meet someone interesting, don't be afraid to continue discussion over a drink, you have nothing to lose.

Stop hiding behind your phone and the mask of social media, bite the bullet, and go and talk to that fitty across the bar. When you get married in five years time you'll probably get a great new profile pic.

Why it's okay to be a bit lost in your twenties.

So this isn't a particularly revolutionary post, or one with controversial views, it's simply an innocent rambling stemmed from the quote below:

‘Nothing will ruin your 20s more than thinking you should already have your life together.’

If there was ever a 'quote to live by', that right there, would be it. I  aways just presumed that by my twenties I would have my shit together and know exactly where I was going with my life. But when I think about where I will be in five years time, I have absolutely no idea, and although this is terrifying, it should be exciting too.

Traditionally, you go through the whirlwind of final year at University, you graduate from the most exciting three years of your life, and then it simply feels like you've been shoved off a plank into the deep end, not knowing what direction is up.

When we look at the instagrams of colleagues, friends and that random girl we just like to stalk, we just assume that everybody's life is so much more glamorous and exciting than our own. When we feel a bit shit or are having a generally down day, we use social media as our point of reference to feel so much worse (that Walden filter on instagram can make anything look worthy of envy). But guess what, it's okay to feel lost and a little bit shit. Stop comparing your life to other people's. We're not supposed to have our shit together and that means that we can get away with so much more.

We're at that wonderful age when we can still get away with lying in bed all day hungover on a Saturday, but we now simultaneously have responsibilities that we dreamt of when we were in our early teens; having your own place, working in an office and being able to wear heels in the day. I'm not one for the cringe factor, but for now I'm going to have to suck it, as your twenties are about exploring, making mistakes, going on awful dates, getting too drunk and learning about yourself.

I realise I'm writing this as if only twenty-somethings are reading, but whether you're nostalgic for the past or desperately clinging to your teen years, know that you can look back on or look forward to your twenties in it's entirety. So I'm just going to sit here in my jammies with a cup of tea on a Sunday afternoon and look forward to next weekend when as routine states, I will be getting pissed as a fart and eating too much unhealthy food. Because I can.