The Final 30 Days

I’m so not ready for this. But then in a lot of ways I so completely am

I’m almost certain it’s harder to be the person getting on the plane than the person waving them off (spoken as someone who is perpetually leaving places, so how would I know). Somebody always has to go first, and sometimes it’s you, and it’s always going to suck.

So this is it, the final 30 days. Some would tell you it’s actually 32 though isn’t it really. I would tell you that this goes up on a Monday and 30 sounds better. 4 more weekends and 4 more working weeks. I have told all my colleagues and all my friends by this point, so we’re inevitably going to spend the next 2 weeks talking about the things we must do before I leave and spending the last 2 inevitably doing only 25% of them.

Maybe you’ve got questions, maybe you haven’t. Here are the answers anyway.

What are you doing about work?

I’m keeping it! I’ll be working remotely from the comfort of my house - so my colleagues will get all the delights of my contributions in meetings, with none of the pain of my weird lighting and temperature requests for the office.

Are you excited to go home?

Guys I’m so excited I can’t even explain it. So excited I’ve accidentally completely booked up the month of December already and I’m already telling everyone exactly what I want to do when I get home. Those are largely mundane things.

I want to say ‘when will I next see you’ and have the answer be a shrug and ‘maybe Wednesday?’ not ‘when do you leave again?’

I want to forget to pay for the coffee you give me like I do every single time I drop by the shop and actually be able to come in the next day and give you the money I owe you.

I want to sit on the edge of that sofa and have a cup of tea and spill it because I always do and pretend it’s not burning through my leg so I don’t interrupt the conversation. I’m sure you’d prefer I didn’t continue to spill tea all over your sofas but you’re nice enough to never say so. I guess you don’t want to interrupt the conversation either.

Will you be sad to leave?

This is a very certain yes. I will concede that there are days when daily life is not so straightforward and home seems like the only place I want to be. Then there are entire weekends like this one where I get to watch the sunset just an hour outside of the city and I wonder why on earth I ever thought it would be a good decision to leave this behind.

Still, better to leave on a high - because I did always have to leave - than be driven to counting down the minutes and the days. Very lucky I am too, to have anything to miss.

What are you going to do with your final month?

At the moment it feels like I might spend this week with my fingers permanently attached to this keyboard. That and gradually introducing more and more layers into my wardrobe as it finally starts to cool down.

In all seriousness though, I’ve done pretty much everything I wanted to in terms of visits and trips. This month will be dedicated to the people have done so much to make this feel like my home; leaving obviously does not mean the end of anything, but being in someone’s actual presence isn’t really comparable to sending them endless texts (don't think I won't).

So why are you leaving again?

I mean when you put it like that. There are things at home that need my attention and things I need to present in the room for, of course all more easily done if I am significantly closer to the room in the first place. I can safely say I can't imagine a lifetime in which I never come back here.

*****

I also want to say a quick thank you to everyone who likes my blog posts when I share them on Facebook and likes my photos on Instagram. Mostly I just hear how inane just ‘liking’ something is when you don’t really speak to the person, but I think it means something that even though we’re not forced into the same proximity by school/university/work you still take an interest. I happen to think there’s something quite nice about our ability to very quietly wish each other well, actually.

Also I need to find something to do with this little space on the internet of mine once I get home so any suggestions are more than welcome.

xx

I’m writing a weekly pop culture feature for Foreword.

You can find Foreword itself on Twitter @AForeword & ‘Foreword’ on Facebook.

I’m on Twitter - @clairegillesp - where apparently this week I’ve just been talking about being on Skype and how impeccably dressed Jidenna is.

I’m on Instagram - clairegillesp - there are pictures of the Dead Sea and sunsets and it’s all very pretty and very nice.

This week there are loads of music recommendations including ‘What You Don’t Do’ by Lianne La Havas, which is the single cutest song in the world. Also ‘Little Bit More’ by Jidenna which takes the title for the sexiest song ever written and ‘Start Again’ by Birdy which has just given me a lot of feelings. 'Gust of Wind' by Pharrell Williams also just came on shuffle and has reminded me of unexpectedly nice memories of a summer spent writing my masters thesis.

I wasn’t kidding guys.

Just a Short One (It's the Legs)

This week was quiet, so this is going to be very brief. I have loved it though to be honest, having spent most of it either writing or in very good company indeed. I’ve spent a lot of it working, on various different things, talking to interesting people on Skype. It always baffles me the things people suggest I could do as I get older. It baffles me even more that I refuse to accept any of this is legitimate even though I would be the first to say I had worked incredibly hard for the past six years to get to this point.

It also never ceases to frustrate me that I can still hear and see the exact moment someone told me they couldn’t imagine me ever giving a lecture, like someone painted those words on the inside of my brain and I can’t remove them. I would say that having a very good memory for conversation is an excellent way to torture yourself. I joke about being old, but thank God I am. 18 year old me had neither the faultless confidence of teenage me or the critical analysis of mid-twenties me. She was pushed and pulled by everyone else’s commentary and when I think of what she did for the sake of other people’s opinions skin feels like it might leave my body.

More actual ‘content’ is coming, it’s just not quite ready to be announced yet and until it’s there or taking place I’m not sure I’ll be convinced I can actually do it. So until then…

Here is something I wrote a while ago about giving credit to that teenage girl with absolutely awful hair and a very questionable dress sense: A Love Letter To My Teenage Self

Also here’s an interview I did with Pretty Green Tea about my MA year, in which I talk about changing subject, and also how important it is to be able to receive love and support. Only I could turn a perfectly standard Q & A into an emotional life-lesson, I know:

Uni Life: Claire - MA Modern History

I could have done a whole post on this breakfast but no one wants that apart from me.

Usually we would describe weeks like this as normal and routine, but that isn’t fair. I still can’t get Facebook Memories, because for some reason I’ve been chosen to be one of the last people on earth to be able to post cute pictures of their friends from that random night out four years ago.  I do have Timehop though, and it’s serving as a very good reminder to exactly how much I would have chopped off my arm to have a week like this a year ago.

Good things I’ve seen this week:

Something I knew already, but still made me very sad, about how your regional accent might affect your career.

Fab.

This about life skills you should learn.

My fourth one would be learn to trust that people love and care about you.

Am I allowed to give advice to do things I can’t do? Well if not it's too late now.

I am behind and listening to them wildly out of order I know, but this week I listened to Emma Gannon’s podcast Ctrl Alt Delete with Cariad Lloyd and it was very, very good.

xx

I’m on Twitter - @clairegillesp -  where I’ve been raving about how much I love Rosie from Made in Chelsea. She just gets more badass and no-nonsense with every series and also she dresses the way I would if I were a willowy jewellery designer from Chelsea and not a slightly out of proportion (it’s the legs) writer/historian/other from Leeds.

I’m on Instagram - clairegillesp - where this week I used the phrase ‘sweetest little egg’ because I felt like trying my hand at being adorable.

This week I’ve been listening to ‘Sunday Morning’ by Maroon 5 because it is my favourite song in the way that something can only be when you loved it when you first heard it at 11 and it remains my only enduring request for music on my wedding day.

I Want To and I Can

I’m sharing things on Facebook again! Shameless self-promo got me here and I’ll be damned if I’m going to stop now. Plus people keep telling me they enjoy this, so if you don’t, please go find those people and tell them to stop encouraging me (more on this later).

In news that surprises absolutely nobody, peacock-baby was an unequivocal social media success:

There’s a pun about ‘peaking’ here somewhere but I’m too lazy to find it.

I’ve met a lot of people since I got here - this is not bragging as much as it is a reflection of how many people have come and gone since I arrived - I seemed to arrive at the perfect time to say goodbye to 99% of my friends from that moment forward. If I were a business I’d be under investigation for staff turnover by now.

I do currently have friends though which is very exciting for me and very satisfying for my extroverted side (there is no other side) which could be driven slowly mad if I didn’t spend my time driving the people around me slowly mad instead.

The thing about meeting a lot of people and also having quite a varied and ‘non-linear’ career trajectory so far, is that I get asked a lot of questions about how I ended up in various places and jobs. I can’t even describe what I do now properly, but once someone described it for me and they did it so well that the reaction I got was not blank stares but appreciative nods and ‘that’s so cool’. The way they said it made me really believe it, I wish I’d heard what he said.

So I wanna talk about it, because you can, actually, do whatever you want. You don’t have to be beholden to your degree subject or your first job for the rest of your life. You can change career, or start a new career, or just do more than one career.

Basically: if you want to you can. It frustrates me endlessly, in the most affectionate way, to hear people say they’d love to do things with that resignation which suggests that doing what you want is meant for other people. It isn’t. The things you want are there for you to have. And maybe you won’t want them, maybe they aren’t what you thought they’d be.

This is not advice, I am the authority on no one’s career, but I am pretty good at giving everything I want to do a bloody good go.

Send the email.

This week I sent all of the emails to everyone I should have emailed in the past few months. The weird thing about not telling people who don’t know you exist that you have an idea or want to be involved in something is that they never find out. Send the email. Send it now. Don’t forget those attachments. Now send it.

There is no good justification for anything on my CV apart from ‘I wanted to, so I asked if I could’. I just said ‘I can do that’ and that is I ended up with about 90% of what I have now. No one has offered me anything without a little of me waving my arms and yelling ‘I am here, and I am capable’.

I know how completely absurd it is to say ‘I just did it because it sounded cool and I wanted to’, but why the hell shouldn’t I? Who says I have to go from my degree into a normal job. Certainly not my parents - thank you endlessly for raising me to think I could be exactly what I wanted even if I didn’t know what that was. It’s also comforting to know we share the same pain of trying to explain to the people around us what it is that I’m actually doing. One day maybe I’ll get a normal job, and small talk will finally be just that, rather than an epic description of my incredibly complex career to date.

I also know it’s not that simple. I have sent a thousand emails and I’ve been ignored more times than I’ve had a response. I’ve applied for about ten times more jobs than I’ve had. I’ve pitched so many things that are still no closer to seeing the light of day than they were a year ago. Just saying ‘I want to and I can’ will not always be enough. Never saying ‘I want to and I can’ will absolutely never be enough.

It’s such a pointless curse to put on yourself to spend more time worry about how qualified you are rather than actually going out and getting it. No one is going to put you on a blacklist because you weren’t quite right for the job, no one is going to mass-forward that pitch you sent just because it wasn’t right for their publication. You will not be for everyone and some things just aren’t for you.

Mostly I’m just surprised it’s taken this long.

Accept praise, no one is doing it for the good of their health. Tell people to fuck off, for the good of yours.

The other answer to ‘how did you end up doing that’ is ‘someone told me I could’. The blog was someone else’s idea, actually, as was working in fashion. The writing career was suggested to me on the back of a ‘feedback postcard’ my Drama teacher sent home when I was 16. Nearly everything I ever thought I could do was someone else’s idea. Basically everyone just suggests things to you and you just have to be ready to hear them.

One exception goes to the career choice quizzes we had to do at school, every time I got my results the careers adviser only ever warned me that the chosen industry was too competitive. Listen girl I didn’t make the quiz, and I’m pretty sure it only has 30 possible outcomes, so please stop telling me I can’t fulfil my automatically generated dream of being a landscape gardener.

Let people tell you what they think you can do. Don’t let them tell you who you are. I let everyone tell me I was too quiet, not creative enough, not the right sort of person to do so many things, for such a long time. What a complete waste of time. People who warn you off your own personal development are not good authorities on who you are. Ignore them and get back to sending all those emails.

One person’s Renaissance Woman is another’s Total Mess, as the saying goes.

Stop living your life like you’re going to school reunion tomorrow when there’s so much you can’t control. You will work really hard at things only to have them thrown back in your face, you will get offered stuff because someone liked your stupid personal Twitter feed.

2015 was an absolute car-crash, I’m not too proud to say so, and it would have been understandable if I’d decided to give myself a bit of a break and stop trying to do the things I really wanted to when they’d pretty much all failed. There is not a week that has gone by that  I haven’t said a little thank you to myself for not doing that. For giving everything a really good go, and then another one just to make sure.

xx

I’m on Twitter - @clairegillesp - it’s really just pictures of Jeff Goldblum this week guys. I also called all men pigs with impressively good-humoured results.

I’m on Instagram - clairegillesp - where there is an actual picture of my actual new hair because I’ve finally made peace with it. We also have a new cat and he’s my fave thing so photos to follow soon.

I’m listening to ‘Shout Out To My Ex’ by Little Mix because there was a complete female Twitter love-in when they performed this on the X-Factor last night, and as we all know, nothing makes me happy like women supporting other women. If you don’t believe women can love one another then go look at the hashtag from this and enjoy being wrong.

Jamal Waheed

When I came out here, the intention was to learn Arabic, of course. It's relevant to what I do and useful generally to be able to communicate with other people in their first language. I was optimistic, I managed a pretty good grasp of French so far, I could do the same again, right? I don't take lessons because I have neither the cash flow nor the time but I do have people willing to teach me (thank you, you are all truly a blessing).

I have had three language partners: one didn't speak at all when we were together, one had one class with me (I paid her) and never spoke to me again. The third called me stupid. You could say we got off to a bad start.

I wasn't prepared for how difficult this would be. Or how hard it would be to convince myself to keep trying when everything felt so impossible to retain. I cannot remember anything in my life being this difficult to learn and simultaneously still wanting to do it day after day. This should tell you something about how beautiful the language is, and how rewarding working really hard at it can be.

Also everyone is very excited whenever I produce so much as a sentence. That I am not expected to be able to do that is heart-breaking from the point of view that English is so dominant, but it does make even basic encounters very fulfilling. Everyone is still so willing to help you and phrase things in a way you understand. Mostly, no one wants to leave you behind, if you're trying then you deserve to be helped to be part of what's going on.

Sometimes you do have to be laughed at first though. Time to resurrect this story again:

'Just when I thought I’d mastered the numbers in Arabic and used them to identify a singular camel on the side of the road, the whole car started laughing at me. The word for ‘one’ is wahad. Waheed means lonely. Close, but not my intention to comment on the emotional state of camels.'

- the lesson to be learnt here is that I tried and it went wrong but that’s all much better for being able to laugh about it. Also I will obviously never, ever, make that mistake again.

Camels are largely awful and resistant to my efforts to bond with them

They bring loneliness on themselves.

Arabic is actually neither a mental rest nor do I find learning languages especially easy - so it fulfils neither purpose and is an endless challenge. Understanding it is one thing, speaking however, completely floors me. This is something I can only compare to my absolute inability to remember dates vs. my actually pretty good maths skills.

Dear future employers, please remember that you don’t actually need to remember dates to be a historian anyway because Google exists and so does writing things down. My PowerPoints will be fab I promise.

The effect of these things is actually pretty similar. If you told me the French Revolution started in 1811 I could so easily be persuaded to believe you - I know it didn’t, I studied that period for over a year, I wrote my thesis on it. But I also know I can’t remember dates, so I presume I’m wrong. Speaking Arabic works the same way, I feel like that’s harder so I’m less sure of myself when I do it. I presumed my mistakes before I'd even made them so for a really long time I avoided speaking more than a couple of words.

Fun fact: If you search ‘French Revolution 2’ you actually do get results for the Second (1848) French Revolution.

A friend of mine heard someone say that Arabic was only difficult for the first ten years. We laughed but actually it feels like that would be pretty accurate. Things should be difficult though, your brain deserves and needs that exercise and it will need it for the rest of your life if it’s going to keep expanding at its current pace. Though when I forgot the word for ‘observing’ last week and could only describe it as ‘they’re being watched’ (we were talking about elections so that description helped approximately no one), I would say it felt less like my brain was expanding and more like a slow deterioration of all of my speaking faculties.

French Revolution 2: More Napoleon, Less Calendars.

True story, I never really got anyone to teach me the numbers above 10 until very recently so once someone told us the bill was 11 JD once and everyone looked at me to know and all I could give them was a ‘oh I have absolutely no idea either’. I know that everyone has blind spots but I didn’t realise I even had that huge gaping one until that moment. Luckily I have long since stopped being too proud to admit I don’t know something.

Here is my one tip, if you’re going to do something new, practice how to say ‘I have absolutely no idea’ with the confidence of someone who can learn, and the humility of someone who can be taught. It will save you a lot of time.

It’s just really fucking difficult. And sometimes it’s just less difficult than others.

There are obviously days where I find all of it nearly impossible and I wonder why I even tried to learn Arabic in the first place because it’s clearly fruitless. There are other days where I feel like I have a grasp of what’s going on and then a taxi driver will blindside me with a question that is not about the direction of the car or my reason for being there and I’m completely lost. They usually follow this with ‘how long have you been here?’ - the implication there is pretty obvious, ‘should you know better by now?’.

I mean yes, probably, but also things are hard and sometimes I am also trying to enjoy myself, I should know lots of things but here we are. Last time I checked you’re meant to enjoy learning, and embracing where you’re at is much nicer than stressing about where you might never be. I would be impressed if someone told me they knew a bit of Arabic, I should try and be equally impressed with myself for trying.

I have no top tips, everyone learns differently, no matter how annoying that is to here. I do know I learn best when I'm relaxed, that I pick up vocab faster than grammar rules. There is no rhyme or reason to the way I learn anything, my brain will take things in when it feels the time is right, it needs regular breaks. I like my language learning the way I write my papers - completely unstructured and without any sort of plan.

A friend once described this method as 'so unbelievably French' - I'll take it.

If you came here for an actual update on how my learning process is going - I know the alphabet, I can understand most of what's being said to me (and about me), I can respond to basic questions about myself and tell people if I want something. I can make jokes in the very rudimentary sense of using tone of voice, I can drop common turns of phrase. I am still in the phase of being so excited by having a full conversation with a cashier that I leave my change behind.

Just 9 more years to go. 

xx

In other news I can’t tell you why all the posts have a different font/size/spacing/text colour. I’ve tried changing it but everything looks different again when I go into edit so overall, I don’t know what’s going on.

I will make the effort to make everything at least readable, if not consistent.

Interestingly, that’s also the by-line on my email signature.

I'm on Twitter - @clairegillesp - and at the moment largely shit-talking Shakespearean women and not shit-talking actual real-life women. 
I'm also on Instagram - clairegillesp - where I may at some point post a picture of my new hair when I decide I don't hate it. 
At the moment I'm listening to Bruno Mars '24K Magic', Galantis 'Love On Me' and I've just re-discovered Will Young. 

6 Months in Amman

Someone is going to need to explain to me where the last 6 months have gone because I don't think they were long enough. This time around I'm going to update you in the form of the questions we devised to help people sum up their time in Jordan. A lot of my friends have come and gone whilst I've been here, this is the best way I've found to work out how everyone feels about their time, no matter how long they were here. 

I also feel the need to prepare for these questions when I get asked them for real when I leave in 2 months time. Call this Answers V.1, if you will. 

She works in tech now she thinks she can talk like that. 

Best moment?

Oh there have been so many. Go to my Instagram feed for the travelling abroad highlights but my favourite moments are the ones I can't quite remember. I remember laughing until I cried a thousand times, and I can only exactly recall what half of those times were about. 

The times I 'got' Arabic and it was like I'd unlocked some secret way to make stuff happen in my daily life. Everyone helping me celebrate my birthday even though I'd only been here a month and they had no obligation to. Meeting the eyes of my colleague on the opposite desk at the perfect time. Waking up to the very first time we had pancakes on a Friday morning. Every Friday morning since then. Spending an entire day by a pool reading Eat Pray Love (look I wrote about that too). The time I left my debit card in an ATM and then the people at the bank said I could have it back even though it should have been destroyed because I'm an idiot. The wedding. Every iftar I got to share with someone. Every time someone asked me to hang out, called me their friend, or part of their family. 

And also, this hat. 

Worst moment? 

The month I went home. Really. 

A disclaimer is necessary here that says of course I had an absolutely wonderful time visiting my friends, and catching up with everyone, and seeing my family. You are all a blessing and I would be nowhere without you. Graduation was also a personal highlight, not just of this year, but of my life.

Here I am trying to work out if I can survive being strangled by my hood for the next 3 hours.

Do not forget safety pins, kids.

I just felt awful though, the entire time. I couldn't enjoy myself and everyone knew it (thank you for having me anyway, and thank you for telling me you love me, anyway). I essentially panicked about how little I'd done, how unsuccessful I was, and then did nothing to remedy it because I was so convinced that it was too late. At the tender age of 24, I was convinced I had completely fucked it, essentially. 

This also might seem strange considering I made the decision to leave in 2 months time to permanently go home after just describing it as the worst part of the last 6 months. There is a difference between something being difficult and it not being right. Going home permanently is also very different to taking a small break and finding that suddenly being at home just reminds you of how much you still have left to work out. Going home for good means having to work all that out, there are things that need to keep moving and plans I need to make and it's near impossible to do most of that from all the way over here (because most of these things require me to be in physical places that are not here). I am prepared for it this time, at least. 

Oh, and the camel ride. 

This is actually a cry for help. I'm saying 'Help, my camel is trying to kill me'.

What did you learn about yourself? 

I'm really, honestly, the luckiest person on earth. 

When is she going to stop talking about how lucky she is?

NEVER. OR when all my friends become sick of me, and I don't have any left and therefore, my luck has run out. 

I once heard someone chat some absolute bollocks about how you can't have a real 'experience' if you talk to your friends from home all the time. 6 months of my life is not an experience. This is not a yoga retreat. This is my life and every moment of it is as much as an 'experience' as it has ever been. Last week I had a migraine for approximately 4 of the 7 days, life doesn't stop and the bad days are just as monotonous and shit as they were anywhere else. My friends have bad days too and they don't want to hear any shit about me 'finding myself' or having an 'authentic experience' - they want me to call them and send them pictures of dogs in clothes. 

True happiness is a dog dressed as a bee.

Source: Etsy

Among that, some other things: The older I get the more able I am to just accept love for what it is, just let the people around me adore me and support me because they want to. I enjoy myself much more readily, I laugh more and I really mean it. I am an extrovert, straight up, and I love that. Denying how much I love being around people and making them laugh is just pointless, and embracing it certainly doesn't make me any less intelligent or worthy of respect. 

Here are some other things that happened:

• I went to a belly-dancing class and I was exactly as good as you would expect me to be. 
• I went on a 3-day break to Aqaba and sent everyone who has me on Snapchat approximately 1000 photos of me sunbathing. 
• It's @clairegillesp and I can't promise that won't happen again.
• I am singnificantly less annoyed by the cats than the last time we did this (See: 1 Month in Amman). 
• Our house cat disappeared while I was at home. This is not linked to the last point I swear.
• I became that person who does yoga, and then does yoga poses in every photo with a nice landscape. 
• Also, that person who dances in their chair and lip syncs to songs while they're working. Who knows if anyone has noticed, they've been good enough not to tell me to stop.
• Unfortunately, also that person who only finds stains on their clothes after they got to work. Adult life is hard y'all. 
• My friends have their own year abroad blog and it's really good. You should read it here.
• And finally, I fell in love with Usher and/or his stylist on the No Limit video.

Confused about whether I want to date him or just steal his clothes.

Source: justjared

Until next time babes. xx