Good morning, all. It’s 6:30 and I can’t really sleep, so I thought I’d start my mammouth journal of my holidays. Actually, I had started it already last week. I wrote quite a lot too. Unfortuately, I saved it to my flash drive, which for those who don’t know is the convienient little drive the size of a lighter that holds (in my case) 500MB of info. Convienient that is until it crashes and destroys itself, as mine did this week. Erasing permenently the many things I’d created for teaching like worksheets and so on, plus this journal. My fault for not backing that stuff up.
This is just a little extra kick in the pants as I lost all the data on my external hard drive in Australia – 150GB (or 150’000MB) of MP3s that I’d spent years compiling, (luckily, even though I had over 50GB of music, I’ve got 20GB on my MP3 player so all is not lost), all my photos from the last 2 years (luckily I’ve backed up most of the photos, but not the recent trip to Australia, so most of those photos I took of those that I met there are probably gone forever). Plus movies and loads of other stuff. Imagine if 2/3 of your record collection and a couple of photo albums of treasured memories got destroyed – you’d feel a bit peeved, wouldn’t you? Those massive External HDs are a good thing, but unless you buy two and back everything up somwehere else, you’re dicing with danger.
So, not a good month for technology for me. I still have my health and happiness of course, which is much better, but it’s just a bit irritating that something that started with a minor accident ended up with me losing so much virtual possessions. I won’t go on about it though. Oh, I already did.
Anyway, I’m back here in Madrid. Let me try and explain:
WHY I WAS LATE BACK INTO MADRID:
When I arrived back in London, I realised that Malaysia Airlines had put me on a later flight from Kuala Lumpur to Heathrow, without mentioning it to me. This was done at the check-in counter at Sydney and the upshot of it was that I missed my connecting flight from Gatwick to Madrid, (lesson there: always check that your boarding pass(es) correspond(s) to the flight(s) that you booked). Luckily Cam Fry came through for me and offered me a spot on his sofa. As I travelled into London, it dawned on me how much happier I was in London than I was in Madrid. Maybe its because Madrid means returning to work, maybe it’s because I have a lot of friends in London, or maybe it’s just the energy of the town.
I personally think it’s a combination of the last two. I really like the bustling nature of London and Tokyo. Madrid is busy, but more like Bristol or Sydney. I can’t explain it, but anyway I felt so enamoured by London that I decided to stay for 5 days! When I did get back to Madrid I was very confused and panicky and depressed about being here and intially, I was deliberating whether to return to London more or less immediately, or to stay here until Xmas. Here’s the list that I made for each place:
MADRID
Cheaper rent/Bigger flat than I could probably get in London
Less street crime/violence
Better weather
At least in the same country as some half-decent beaches
Close to places I want to visit, ie Bilbao, Cadiz
Less hassle
Helps me to open my mind – supposedly
More exotic, less dreary – you wouldn’t get something like Eastenders in Spain
At least I can’t understand the shitty media in Spanish, no Daily Mail
LONDON
More friends
Better food
Better vibe
Higher salary
Close to relatives
Easier to make friends/communicate
Better parks
Football is better
No accordion players on the tube (actually on the train! I feel like a prisoner having to listen to their shit) or outside restaurants, or street vendors selling those annoying “rattlesnake stones”, plastic roses or useless flashing LEDs, standing there like wankers even though there’s 20 other people selling the same shit about a metre away or coming around annoying you while you’re trying to relax – get a real job or fuck off; I’m not buying your useless shyte
Imagine all this going round your head while you’re going for job interviews! After I started going to those interviews, and walking around the swankier parts of Madrid in my suit, feeling wanted by various companies, I felt a bit more positive about the place and didn’t immediately want to escape. However, after a few of the better offers were withdrawn, due to me having to go away and think about it – they took people who said yes immediately - and I was suddenly faced with either teaching kids at the British Council or the crapper end of the teaching market, with the first week of the Academic Year already underway, that positivity quickly gave way to despair.
I can understand now why unemployment is a hard cycle to get out of, as the depression I experienced in that short time made me pretty unfussed about looking for work and I had a bit of self doubt – after getting knocked back from a few interviews! How thin-skinned am I?! Anyway, I was faced with 3 options: Teach kids at Brit. Council, take a job in a tiny company with crap conditions or leave Madrid immediately and move to London.
In the end, I decided that I didn’t really have enough cash to survive in London for that long and would have had to take any job that came along. Also, there are lots of things that I haven’t done in Spain yet that I would kick myself for not doing if I’d have left next week, such as visit The Basque country and the south coast.
So I ended up getting work with British Council. It’s better and worse than my jobs last year. All my classes are with Young Learners, which is a worry, I have 3 days off a week, which is great, but unfortunately they are Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday; no blocks, unless there’s a public holiday. But the upside is I don’t have to take public transport, as the BC is a 10 minute walk from my house, plus all the hours are blocked and I only work in the morning on Saturdays. Last year I was on the Metro 7 times a day, and my hours were 8:30am-9:30pm with a few hours break in the afternoon. As soon as I accepted the job, it felt right and I realised I’d made the right choice. Not just because of the security of my immediate future, but just because of the vibe of the place.
WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM WITH MADRID ANYWAY?
As I’m sure I’ve told you, Madrid hadn’t really impressed me greatly. It isn’t a bad place, in fact some bits of it are great, and maybe I’m just appreciating how great since I came back. As I’ve been walking around the last week, I think it’s possible that the food and the women here aren’t as bad as I thought. I have a couple of good friends here, like my flatmate Chus and Jamie & Lizzie from the West Country and Rob and the English Centre crew. I had a lovely time last night eating pizza with Chus down at the Plaza d’Espana, looking up towards Gran Via. It’s one of the best views in town.
But it’s not a place that takes my breath away, like Tokyo or London, or somewhere with an emotional attatchment like London, Sydney, Newey or Melbn. When I went on holiday to those places, instead of curing the intense homesickness I’d been feeling probably for the last 9 or 10 months, it made me realise how much I needed to be home at this time in my life. I’m going to try and not go on too much here, because in some cases, you’ve heard all this already, and it’s a bit wishy-washy. Whereas in the last 3 years, I’ve put a premium on Exploration and Experience, now my focus has changed.
The reason that I’ve been so confused lately about where to live is that I feel a strong urge to be with family and friends again. My family in particular, as I’ve been quite distant from them since I left home in 1991, and visiting them a couple of weeks in a year at best. I want to hang out with them without feeling like it’s a special occasion, that we can do this whenever we want, if that makes sense. Really, I just want to get to know them better, and I want them to know me better. I now realise that I won’t always have the option.
Friends too. So many of them in Australia and England are so brilliant and spending time with them has been awesome. Of course I realise that they won’t make yourself available so readily when I’m always around and it’s not such a special occasion, but I feel so lucky that I’ve got so many great friends and I have come to realise just how important that is in my everyday life. Not just having people to communicate with on the internet, but spending time with people. Not having to race around “fitting people in” to my schedule. Not thinking, “I’ve GOT to see this person today, otherwise it will be too late” The one bad aspect of the holiday is that it was over far too quickly and I didn’t get to see some people at all, or only spent an hour with many of them.
So yes, I feel much more inclined towards security, and also career. English teaching is NOT a career for me, or at least I hope not. If it does end up becoming so, it’s because I failed to get something that I wanted to do started. As a good friend told me recently “You need to get your shit together”. He’s not a faecophile or a collector of bodily waste, in this case “get your shit together” means “organise your career/future”. I do believe that he’s right. The problem is I am a bit unqualified and inexperienced to do much else.
My anxiety about my future career does not reflect the sum total of my state of mind, thankfully.
MY FUTURE IS NOT TEACHING ENGLISH
English teaching is NOT a career for me, or at least I hope not. If it does end up becoming so, it’s because I failed to get something that I wanted to do started. It was only a way to work my way around the world. There are things that I have in the back of my head which are far more me, however unlikely they are…
There’s design; I feel like I could do that and so to that end I’m trying to build a portfolio of designs that I’ve done over the years, all the sek posters and so on. I’ll try to get some work doing that in London, but there are a lot of people there who are proper graduates with proper training, so who knows. One idea about my future is eventually running my own small design company with a few others. Whenever I tell people this, the first question they ask is “designing what?” and it’s then that I realise that I don’t really know. Clothes, furniture, logos, posters, advertising, architecture, I have ideas for everything. So unfocused!
Then there’s writing. A friend of mine told me about a creative writing course that you can do by correspondence for around 150pounds that I might check out. I love writing and reading, but I don’t know if technically I know a good story from a bad story. I always thought that “The Beach” was a great book, but yesterday a mate in the industry told me that it was technically terrible, and not even that good a story. Everything I write, I look back at it later, and it stinks. Well, anyhooo, I’d like to get a few stories under my belt and published.
There’s still a dream that I have about acting. When I think of the things in life that I love doing, one is being the centre of attention on stage. That’s why I loved being in the band so much, (besides the music), and I’ve always been on stage, whether it be doing plays as a 5 year old, or playing music as a 28 year old. It’s something that ideally I would love to do. However, the reality is that I’m not a very good actor. I’m not just saying this to be modest. I’ve seen some of the stuff I’ve done. Overacting, monotonal voice, laughing when I’m supposed to be serious. I can’t honestly point to anything that I’ve done as an actor with pride, apart from the accomplishment itself.
I did acting classes a few years ago, but I didn’t really understand what I was supposed to be doing, and whenever I acted, it always sounded like an actor reading a script, not whatever the character was. I could do another course I suppose, and there’s always a dream of doing it in the back of my mind, but the reality is that becoming a good actor is really hard work and very competitive and I doubt myself and my abilities at the moment far too much to really make a go of it.
However all is not lost. I see loopholes. Doing radio is still a possibility, and I recently bought the DVD “John Safran Vs God”, because one of my friends was the producer and because it won an AFI award for best comedy TV series. John Safran isn’t an actor’s arse. In fact, his voice is entirely unsuited to the public arena, but I take my hat off to the man; he is as funny as hell, incredibly intelligent and brave, entertaining and imaginative. I met him once at a party and he seemed a pretty disinterested and shy character, but he is one of the few slim hopes for the future of Australian TV. And if someone who talks like that can make it, then perhaps there’s still hope. I’m in the process of writing a few different scripts, one with a friend, and a couple on my own. When I say “in the process”, what I mean is that I started and wrote about 5 pages, and then moved onto something else and haven’t added to it since.
I tells ya, when I finish all the things that I’ve started, world; look out!! The best chance I have of getting something like that done, is by doing what the guys in The Fast Show did, or some actors like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, who wrote the story and cast themselves. I have a couple of good friends who I reckon would be perfect for this home-made film/TV show, but we need to write it first, and at 5 pages every two years, it could be a while before it’s finished.
STOP MOANING!
This sounds quite negative, but actually I’m generally quite positive about the future. It’s just the opening nerves that you get when you’re about to significantly change your life. I feel strong and am trying to gradually become a bit more driven in life. I have made the decision about my immediate future, which I’m happy about, now I need to start setting up my long-term plans. I do honestly appreciate the freedom that I have in life and have had. I try not to take it for granted and despite my grumbling about life, I am for the most part independent which is something that is important to me.
These last 3 years have been fantastic and have in many ways changed my life. I know that I moaned about Tokyo while I was living there and I’m moaning about Madrid now, they are the petty gripes that I let get on top of me. The reality is that these places have enriched my life permenently in so many ways, not least for the wonderful people I’ve met while I’ve been moving around, and the wild places that I’ve seen. I’m not giving up on travelling yet, in fact I would love to see other places around this world, but it may have to wait a few years. Hopefully the world will still be there then!
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