TAKING THE LONG WAY





**My friends from High School marry their High School Boyfriends**

This week I learned that an old friend from Secondary School was getting married this July in Dublin, this closely followed news from another friend, Shari in London, that she’d been recently proposed to and had accepted her suitor’s offer.
To further add to the marriage commotion, one of my best friends who lives in Belgium, was inquiring about music bands to play at her own wedding in four years time. Talk about taking it slow.

It had begun. I can’t help but feel nostalgic upon learning that close friends my age or people I know or barely know begin to marry their sweethearts. There comes a point when we realize that we need to start growing up and that we should begin to take life perhaps more seriously by settling or by settling down.

I began to imagine my settled life and didn’t quite get the vision I was hoping for. Maybe someday I’ll settle down with someone. I really can’t say how this would work in the future. However, I do know that there is someone out there for me. Depending on how I style my hair, either curled or straight, there are days when I like the idea of being attached to that someone special. But then again I get sceptical and frightened; like I’m sure many other people out there do, who ask themselves, “Is this it? Is this the person I’m going to be with for the rest of my life?”

It’s a tough decision to make, and we should also be aware that we don’t necessarily have to be attached to them all the time. That happiness doesn’t ultimately come from a wedding and a baby and a house in the suburbs. Our own happiness is not dependant on other people or material things, although they alter that ‘happy effect’.
Many people think that married life is the end of it all, that you are suddenly cut of from the rest of the world. But it doesn’t have to be like that. We each make our life how we want it to be. I’m sure a marriage will work just as well in a city under whatever circumstances, like it would by settling down in the suburbs.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that, we shouldn’t be put off settling down, to welcome that opportunity when it comes to us, other wise it will be lost forever, but to do it our own way, even if it’s the long way.


**I met the Queen of whatever, drank with the Irish spoke with the hippies, moved with the Shakers, wouldn’t kiss all the asses that they told me to**

I did meet the Queen of England once, only from afar at Royal Ascot (Horse Races).
I have worked at a Palace before, not a royal one unfortunately, where I worked my ass off, but didn’t kiss anybody’s ass. Most of the jobs I’ve had have been demanding on my part. Mainly being a bitch for people and doing what is asked. I guess that is how one starts off. To make our way up we must start at the bottom, its only logical and the way we learn.

Since arriving in New York, this has been so. It’s a sacrifice I was willing to put up with if I’m going to get where I want to be.

I have drunk with the Irish, and they can hold their drink. I’m slowly learning to hold my drink too and make it to work the following day after being out the previous night until 4am and have no hang over.

I haven’t spoken to hippies, but I have spoken to people from all walks of live. Living in Europe, gives you the opportunity to meet people from different cultures and get a chance to experience that at the rate of a low cost air flight.
Here in America, although New York City is very multicultural, one doesn’t get that opportunity for ‘escapism’ into other cultures. Sure you can take the train to ‘Canal Street’ and believe you are in the middle of Beijing itself, or take a ride uptown to ‘East Harlem’ and believe you are in Puerto Rico. But there remains a fact; you are still in New York City and everyone is out for them selves and you are not always guaranteed the same warm welcome one would expect in the original country.

**It’s been two long years now since the world came crashing down, and I’m getting it back on the road, but I’m taking the long way**

Yes, it’s been two years since my own world came crashing down on me. I was dating someone for almost 3 years and I thought that this would be it, that he was the ‘one’. I was very much in love and believed in the ‘always an forever’. How wrong was I when it crashed on me. My future hopes and dreams with this person went with it. It was a pretty miserable time, that lead to my depression and a severe attack of acne that at times had me wishing I were someone else. I was sure that I could have settled down with him, but now I look at the world and relationships differently. I tend to hold back and almost create a barrier to stop giving all my feelings away so I don’t get hurt again. If you read the last passage of the first chapter of “my book”, (on this website) you’ll get an idea of how terrible a time this was, wanting a solution, a way out; escapism.

This time round I’m almost jumping up and down with joy as I’m slowly realising my dreams, one of them to live here in New York City. Yes of all places I chose NYC! I guess the sacrifices I’ve made in the past are paying off as I’m seeing, this week alone, dreams do come true. I could say that I’ve signed a three-year contract with the U.S.A. But I don’t hold a limit as to how long I’ll be here for. I’ve managed to turn things round for me and I find myself on top of the world, my world that is.

When other people want to move out of the city I ask myself why? I know it’s tough, expensive, lonely, claustrophobic, too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer, grimy, dirty, rats chasing people off the sidewalk, tourists falling into potholes, friends come and go like a Marc Jacobs bag. But it is a city that doesn’t sleep, ever, not even during 9/11, so we shouldn’t take the winter off to hibernate. The city is still awake in the winter so why should you be fast asleep during this period?

I’m not saying that the way to beat the city is to join it and never sleep, but to make it our own. Over the last few years, I learned that we each have the power of contentment in any situation we find ourselves in.

I was sold on the ‘American Dream’ and I’m here, realizing that potential. It is my home for the next foreseeable future and I plan to make it my own and take advantage of its true potential, of what New York really has to offer. Yes I came here for career potential, and the prospect of filmmaking, that doesn’t mean I’m coming to milk the city of all it has and get the fuck off back to pretty old England, hell no. (I love New York, but I love London better by the way) If I’m going to remain here, I plan to see beyond what other people think of this city.

New York is not for pussies who scream about “the rats on the subway”, about “there is no place to go”, or “I have no money to go there” about “I hate going to Brooklyn” about “The drug dealers on the corner” or those who moan about, “The mice in my apartment”. I plan to make it my own, like I am right now, by not being a pussy and sticking to my gut feelings and enjoy the city come snow, rain or shine, even if I take the long way round.

Next Blog: April 1st.