Need To Know

Well, I'm out here living in Valencia, Spain, and I've been here for almost exactly one year now...

I graduated from University last July, with a Masters in Music and Hispanic Studies - a degree which, on the List of Courses Least Likely To Get You a Job, falls just underneath Harry Potter Studies and The Design and Marketing of Garden Gnomes... Which is how I came to find myself a job as an English teacher, on the grounds that if I was going to have a job I didn't particularly want, I'd be as well doing it in a sunny climate than in the rainy dreich of Scotland. All very well in principle but it turned out to be much harder than I anticipated. For a start I hated my job more than I can express, and I found it very hard to meet new people and make friends. Still, I stuck it out and saw my teaching contract out to the end and then embarked on a brief but disconcerting period of being unemployed and skint (saving money has never been my strong point), and then found a job in an Irish bar, which I start next week. I've finally started going out more and have made a few more amigos, so things (for now) are looking up.

I do appear to be one of life's Drifters and I tend to float about for varying periods of time until I riccoché off something or someone and go off down a new course. My plan for the rest of this year is to stop drifting and start thinking about what I actualy want, and, more importantly, how to go about getting it. I've toyed with various ideas, including but not limited to: a Postgraduate in Feminist Studies, a Postgrad in Journalism, a Postgrad in Composing Music For Film Scores and (somewhat randomly) a course in professional make-up artistry. I'm not sure if this indicates a lack of focus or direction, or merely a strong urge to cram as much into my life as possible. The irony being, of course, that as I try to decide between so many life courses, I potter about in the same place, not doing very much and moving no closer to anything.

My big dream, really, is to sing, write songs and play my piano. I don't have a piano here in Spain and this is my major problem - pianos are very expensive and I'm not sure I want to buy one if I might move home, or away somewhere else in the near future. Fear of Commitment, thy name is Clara. I'm feeling a bit homesick at the moment, it's been a while since I was home and I don't know when I'll next be going - probably not before Christmas time now, which is still quite a long way away.

The homesickness isn't helped by the problems I've been having with my flatmate, who will go by the moniker Poison Dwarf - an undeniably un-PC name, and yet one which describes her very well. (She isn't an actual dwarf, she's just very short. She is, however, poisonous.) I actually love my wee flat - it's set in a courtayard with a fountain in the middle and lots of flowers and plants, and it's very nice and tranquil (except when the kids of the various blocks of flats are running about being mental), so I don't want to move out, which is why I'm trying to keep things on a fairly even keel and not cause too much trouble. My other two flatmates are cool and we generally get on well, so at least that's something. If the Poison Dwarf would bugger off and move somewhere else everything would be rosy, but I don't see that happening, alas...

I'm loaded with the cold today an I'm sitting right underneath an Air Con unit in the café beside my house, so I'm going to bust a groove and go home for a cup of tea and some vitamin tablets.

Rock & Roll...