C-C-C-C-Changes

“Turn and face the strange c-c-changes!”

Yes, this is the second post in a row I’ve started with a David Bowie lyric.

I’m sat here at my computer, blogging, whilst drinking tea and watching really awful television. My parents keep walking past and not-so-subtley keep trying to read what I’m typing. I woke up far too late for this to be called an entire ‘day’. I feel lazy. I’ve gone back in time to November 2007.

It makes me realise how much has changed in just a few months. 99% of these changes have been good, I would say. The remaining 1% includes the fact that I’d rather not have to pay for food or rent, mais c’est la vie.

If I were a Buddhist I’d assert that nothing lasts forever. While I’m not sure that this is entirely true for all things, it’s a good rule to live by. There comes a point where you begin to stagnate – change needs to happen or you’ll end up and 80 year old unemployed, uneducated blogger spouting crap that she knows nothing about, whose only friends are the mould which has grown in the 1000s of empty mugs she’s surrounded by. I kid you not – it was a near miss indeed!

I don’t resent having to get a job. I wouldn’t say I enjoy my job, but I enjoy the impact it has on me. I remember a conversation I had with my mum back in November, where she said I was still technically a ‘dependant’. “I’m only a dependant because you made me be”, I told her. She believed that I was how I was because I chose to be, when really it was because I felt restricted into living a certain way, and it was making me feel really crap.

If I were a lazy, mindless, insipid twat, I would have rolled over and agreed to everything my parents have told me to do in the last few years. But I’m not, and maybe that’s a bad thing, I don’t know - maybe it’s just a selfish thing but it’s working so far. A few weeks ago, my mum told me she was, in fact, a bit proud of me for having my own mind.

Here are some things I've learnt:

You don’t have to make decisions, but you bloody well better not moan when you don’t like them. The stress teenagers are under mainly comes from the fact that we have so many options open to us – in theory we can be anything we want to be. In reality, well, not so much. People expect teenagers to decide what they want to do with the rest of their lives in an incredibly short amount of time. It's never going to happen unless you've known what you wanted to do since forever.

Planning is overrated. The way I see it, even if I did have a plan for what I was going to do with my life, there's no guarantee it would happen: the smallest thing could throw it off course - things out of my control. I think it's much better to not know what's going to happen: to make a vague outline but not to follow it if you don't want to, and to take chances as they come along.

People are not defined by their jobs, or their education. This might be hard to believe when your life is based around education and your future career – even social groups are formed from what subject you’re doing. I believe it is entirely possible to have the shittest job ever and be happy. It’s also possible to have the best job ever, but if you’re surrounded by wankers you’ll be unhappy.

People never learn. Including me. And there's a reason cliches such as "Que sera, sera" exist.