Biting the Bullet

I've always been a dreamer. Not the kind of person that is particularly great at accomplishing things, but the kind of person who is great at thinking of things that she would someday like to accomplish. For example, in sixth form, I, on a whim one evening, ventured into town and dropped $80 on the 'Lonely Planet: Europe on a Shoestring' guide, under the slightly misguided impression that I was going to go backpacking around Europe by myself upon graduation the following year. I spent hours devouring the first 100 pages, earmarking and highlighting and generally telling anyone who would listen about all these wonderful places I was going to go.

Three guesses what happened.

I didn't go. In the end, I succumbed to peer pressure and the overwhelming fear that I didn't know what I was doing with my life, and I did what every authority figure in my life said I should do; I went to university instead. 

Now don't get me wrong, university was brilliant, and I absolutely loved the year I spent there. I have no doubts that had I not moved away from home for that year and met the people I did, I would definitely NOT have been ready to go traveling, especially not by myself. While paying off the student loan I accumulated over that year hasn't exactly been fun, ($8,289 to go!) the experience and insight I gained was invaluable, and I don't regret a single penny. 

But even after that year at university (which I promptly dropped out of in order to go traveling - the beginning of a vicious cycle), I still didn't really have any direction for my life (although I had One Direction in it, but that's another story). I spent six months in my hometown, working at a cinema, and considering my options (read: working part time in a dead end job, wasting my money on frivolous things and generally getting no closer to paying off my student loan). While the whole idea of me moving home had been to save money and find stable employment so that I could get out again as soon as possible, it was very easy to fall into the same monotonous routine I had stuck to in high school, and I could feel myself settling for a very mediocre life. In an attempt to combat this, (and out of a terrible longing for my uni friends), I started making regular trips to Wellington (my uni city) to try and get some variety back into my life. It was on the way back from one of these trips that I had my first bullet-biting moment in a very long time. I decided to move back to Wellington. 

The whole reasoning behind my moving away in the first place had been that Wellington was too expensive, too tempting, and I would undoubtedly spend more than I would save. But New Plymouth (my hometown) had very few job opportunities for unqualified teenagers like me, and the fear of becoming too settled there was suffocating. So I saved some money, sent more CV's out than I dare to think about, and moved to Wellington with no job and a few hundred dollars to my name. 

And things went well. After about three weeks, I found a job that I loved, with really cool people, making pretty good money. But through poor money management, ever poorer rent negotiation, and being a bit too generous, I found that I was still struggling financially. Some weeks I was barely making enough to pay my bills, let alone pay off my student loan. So, once again, I fell back into bad habits, and no progress was made. 

And then, one day, things kind of just started clicking. Over the summer I'd moved into a much cheaper flat that was much more central to where I worked, started buying more cost-efficient food, and working a few more hours each week. In one particularly productive month I managed to pay almost $1000 off my student loan. A few weeks later I took a new job, one that paid better, and met (and said goodbye to) some amazing people who inspired me to bite the bullet once again. 

So I did. 

On the 27th December this year, at 10:45pm, I leave Auckland for London, with no return ticket in sight. I haven't planned further ahead than the 4th January, and while this thought is kind of terrifying, it's also hugely exhilarating. I worried and worried for so long about whether I'd ever make it overseas, because I had so many things that I had to do first - but in the end, giving myself a final date by which all these things have to be accomplished, is the best thing I could have done. 

While clicking that final button was probably the most terrifying thing I've ever done (only just ahead of calling my dad to tell him), it was the push I needed to stop being just a dreamer. It's all very well and good to sit and think and plan for days, weeks, months, even years on end, but when it all comes down to it, sometimes you just need to bite the bullet and do it.