Changes.

For two years I've been going through changes. Maybe moving to London on my own was the gateway into adulthood, I don't know. So now it's time for some more.

I've been going through something, I'm not sure what, but now I occasionally get anxiety attacks, hyperventilation and all. Not fun. And I can't deal with stressful situations the way I once could.

So I figure, hey, you've got to deal with how things are now, not how they were, so I'm looking into different coping mechanisms, and things to do that help. A lot of them seem to involve leaving the stressful situation for 10 mins or until you calm down.

Well, one stressful situation proved to need more than 10 mins away from, so I have quit stage managing at Questors. Hopefully not forever, but definitely for the forseeable future.

It's time to take a back seat and just go and see shows for a while. Then I'll hopefully start helping again, do bar shifts, the tour, help in wardrobe and props. Work that is still, well, work, but is only in one area, instead of having to worry about all the areas.

I just need to take it easier for a while.

And hey, I just moved into a great flat with my boyfriend, it's nice to have some time now to be able to focus more on that, instead of us both hardly seeing each other. That wasn't fun.

Trouble is, I don't do well sitting around indoors not doing anything. Feels like I'm wasting my time off.

So I've gone for a couple more bike rides and I've emailed cycle training for a bike lesson. Hopefully I'll hear from them next week. I'm also looking for a fiddle teacher in ealing, although that is proving harder, and I must admit to feeling nervous. Finding a good teacher where we are right for each other and can work together might be hard, but then I might find the right teacher right away, who knows?

And I've also realised that there is something creative I can do all the time, and work as well.

Writing!

I had the urge to start this blog to record my experiences in london, and I often create short poems, often pretty random ones, and usually love poems. Men are my muse ;-)

And I have been writing a play on and off (mostly off) for a while now. Got hit by one of Terry Pratchetts inspiration particles and that was it. It's always stayed with me and has pretty much wrtten itself in my head already. Makes it difficult to write down actually, as it feels like I'm writing it twice which is really boring.

And mis-guides :-) one of my lecturers at uni really inspired me, he wrote 2 books of mis-guides (ways of seeing the world differently, or at least that's what they made me do), and it's great fun making up those. They should be appearing elsewhere on my blog. I'm going to put my attempts at writing all together, any comments appreciated.

So now i'm here, at my living room table, incense burning, alanis playing, notebook and textbook next to me.

It's just like being back at uni :-)

Learning to cycle.

It was probably going out with a guy who's been cycling since he was like 5 that did it, but some point last year I realised I wanted to relearn how to ride a bike. It makes sense, London is lovely and flat, I don't want to drive a car, and this way I'll have some form of transport.

Thanks to my grandparents generosity I was able to buy myself a bike last November. She's a lovely blue Dawes bike I christened Wings. The first time I took her to the park by myself, and it made me laugh, as I put one foot on the pedal and then froze, as I realised I couldn't lift my other foot off the ground! So there was a certain amount of me sitting on the bike and pushing myself along the ground.

Things have definitely improved since then. I can now cycle around the park pretty confidently. I have dodged two suicidal dogs and several pedestrians, small children and people with pushchairs.

Starting and stopping is still sometimes tricky, and if I wear my purple vans they sometimes slip off the pedals which is a little scary, but I've found if I just let myself coast along I have time to put my feet back on the pedals.

The aim is to do the sky ride in September. I think that should be enough time for me to get better at cycling.

Today I tried cycling on the roads. I have tried it before, but on my own. I managed to get to the corner of my road, turned the corner, saw a car which made me panic, and i fell over. Luckily not in front of the car or into a parked car. I just fell sideways. It was more embarrassing than painful. The driver stopped and was asking me if I was ok and if it was her fault, and I was trying to assure her I was ok, and that it wasn't her fault, but I was embarrassed, and in a bit of shock, and so tearing up. Needless to say I limped home, walking the bike.

So this time was somewhat more successful at least.

I had asked Francois to take me for a ride to the park, going via the roads.

It's really quiet on the roads round where we live, but even so it was still terrifying. It was like I'd totally forgotten how to ride, I was wobbling all over the place. Francois made me feel somewhat better about that, he pointed out that I was focusing so much on the roads and the cars that I wasn't focusing on riding. I guess it isn't quite second nature yet. So the wobbling around was freaking me out, as were the parked cars, the moving cars, and the fact that most of the time I couldn't see the moving ones. And trying to keep my speed down so I didn't crash into the back of Francois, and so I could stop quickly if I had to, all of which was surprisingly hard.

All of these combined left me with an annoying weak and shaky feeling which wasn't condusive to successful bike riding. Still, I made it most of the way to the park, stopping and starting, and occasionally walking my bike parts of the way. Unfortunately the weak and shaky feeling persisted after got to the park. I had to sit down for a few minutes and persuade myself that I did know how to ride, it was just a very different experience on the roads.

So I did a lap around the park, and was coming up behind this old woman. I was a little nervous as there wasn't that much gap between her and the edge of the pavement, but there was enough. And then, just when I was almost right behind her she starts walking sideways really quickly. I had to swerve a bit to avoid her, and I called out to her to watch out.