Greek Week Two

Week two is already over, which seems impossible because that means this is week three and that is halfway. Six weeks seemed like such an intimidating amount of time to spend somewhere when you know no one and have no sense of routine. Then just like that I’m already thinking about how I’ll feel when I leave and planning the next journey.

That I’ve settled so easily I hope is a sign of finally finding a way of life that suits me, and meets my need to have time away from a desk that I hope I can maintain for the rest of my career. Here we are, writing weekly for the first time in a long time, so something must be working. Something must be working because I am being more productive than ever before but also I feel calmer than ever before, even though really, the future has never been more uncertain.

I’ve also been very appreciative of everyone in my life who supported this move, and the next ones, because they know that none of this is exactly the path I had planned for myself. Even so they stick with me and seem to have complete faith in my success, which is something I cannot explain myself but I’ve long since stopped questioning why people think what they think of me. I will happily take it.

In more practical news I have found my own small supermarket in which prices seem to vary on the daily, and when I visit larger supermarkets some sort of argument about something always seems to be going on. I’ve spent as much time as possible on the waterfront and more time eating very good Greek food. I’ve had lots of good, meaningful conversations with the people I’m sharing this experience with - I’m blown away by how different and yet fundamentally similar we all are. I’m even more amazed that I get to spend so much time with people who are doing so much good, and I know will continue to do so whether it’s here or anywhere else. Lots more posts inspired by those conversations are on the way.

By the end of week two - I am covered in bruises and bites and I’ve never been happier.

Let’s end with a corrections corner - the heat, it’s not as wonderful as I implied. We sleep with our doors open so the air con from the kitchen can cool our seemingly perpetually hot apartment down. It’s also worth noting that, in light of comparisons about surviving 30 degree heat back in the UK vs. anywhere else, not everyone in places where it is hot can afford to have or switch on air con. Nor does the public transport here does not universally have air con. Everyone is hot and everyone is sweating the only difference is that it is mostly expected.

What is the point of this correction? Just to express that we should stop complaining about the heat when it lasts a pathetic two days, but also do something about global warming.

*****

I’m on Twitter - @clairegillesp - where I’m being regularly updated on Love Island despite never watching it or even really understanding who these people are.

I’m on Instagram - clairegillesp - which includes no Love Island related content but who knows what the future will hold.

I’m listening to the new Lorde album because it’s pop music excellence. I’m also listening to a podcast called My Favorite Murder, which I have to recommend because I stole the concept of ‘corrections corner’ from them, but also because it’s very, very funny and  good.

xx

One Week in Greece

I don’t need to tell you how warm it is, I hear you’ve been having a very real and very humid heatwave back in the UK. You’re not making it up, even 25 degrees at home feels unbearable whereas 34 degrees here feels pretty wonderful. I’m convinced walking along the waterfront on a daily basis has increased my life expectancy by at least ten years.

I’m surprised by how instantly at home I’ve felt, I’ve only been here a week but everything feels so familiar and comfortable. Greece reminds me a lot of Jordan, in aesthetic and in feel, so maybe I’ve just found the way I should live; bathed in sunlight and surrounded by falafel. I’m also similarly surprised by how happy I was spending so much time on my own, especially because working from home at home drives me to the brink pretty much daily. Here though, the first few days before I met anyone, it was just me and the seafront and the one coffee chain I found that stocks soy milk. You could speculate that the only words I’ve learnt to say in Greek are ‘soy milk’, I could not possibly confirm.

I’ve already met so many great people, been made to feel so welcome, and had the opportunity to do things I never thought I would do in such a short space of time. I’m happy, and excited and actually kinda proud - because I’ve worked hard, volunteering and language learning, for the past few years, and it really feels like I can see it in action. That’s all I’m going to say about that for now, because one week in who knows what the next month is going to bring, but I don’t think I’ll ever regret taking this decision.

If you were wondering then yes, everything is very much in Greek, and no, I do not understand any of it. I don’t anticipate learning to read anything in the next four weeks, because adding another alphabet into my arsenal just isn’t on the agenda right now. I want to have basic polite phrases down but I’m also relying on my favourite combination of lots of smiling, and some pointing.

Thessaloniki is truly beautiful, I’m not here because it’s beautiful, but what a wonderful coincidence. It satisfies the need I was starting to feel to get out and explore somewhere new, because so much of what is here doesn’t take any hunting out. Everywhere I turn there seems to be another church or Roman ruin to discover. It’s already taken years to build the city metro because they keep finding a new layer of some civilisation or other which used to live here.

The plan for the next month is more Greek food, more sun, and hopefully finding time to get to a beach.

Did I mention I love the sea?

*****

I’m on Twitter -  @clairegillesp - where I can’t really use the new layout properly so I keep going to my DMs instead of my profile. It is less going down in the DMs than it is I am trapped in the DMs.

I’m on Instagram - clairegillesp - what can I say, it’s still all about Greece with a bit of self-promo thrown in.

There is a Facebook page - Mots de Claire - for this blog now! So if you do not follow me on Twitter (even if you do) but still wish to be updated on the goings-on over here then please ‘like’ it and I swear these will be more regular now because it will be horribly obvious if they’re not.

This week I’m listening to Stormzy and nothing else (like every other week) - Cigarettes & Cush, Blinded By Your Grace Pt. 2, Velet/Jenny Francis - and the rest of the album.

xx

Do Your Best

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about failure. About the way we decide what constitutes a failure, about my own failures and what I should take from them. Should I even call them failures? I mean they almost certainly are, I did fail to keep my job, I did fail to maintain this relationship or that, I have failed to be earning £100,000 a year and own my own home by age 25. There are lots of things I’m still waiting to see the results of, will they be more failures? Or are they just things that were not meant for me or things that just didn’t come to pass?

I failed to get into Oxford. That is a fact and no amount of ‘I wouldn’t have liked it anyway’ disputes the fact that that decision was out of my hands and did not go in my favour. Seven years after this event though, it doesn’t feel like a failure in the emotional sense, just something that did not happen. Knowing I feel this sense of distance, and indeed, that I felt it as early as when I went to a university that did accept me nine months later, gives me a lot of comfort.

I was lucky enough to be surrounded by people who did not make me feel like this was a failure. Shout out to my parents who tell me at least once a year that all I need to do to make them proud is to make sure I’m happy. It’s definitely their way of telling me to chill the fuck out.  Another huge thank you to everyone who has ever taught me for being incredible mentors and continuing their support long after it was their job to do so. Except my Year 10 maths teacher, who openly hated me, no thanks for you hun.

The thing about trying your best is that it’s terrifically boring. Having to sit down at make myself write this blog every week will be an enjoyable chore. Learning Arabic, using a new development platform at work, trying to figure out how the hell to format these blog posts - all of that gives me at least a couple of hours a week of just wanting to pack it all in and lay face down on my bed. I’ll talk about social media at some point but I quite obviously do not post photos of me sending messages to my boss which read ‘kill me I’m so confused’ but they are numerous and props to her for sticking with me through those moments. I have been very blessed to have a situation where I can roam and be in beautiful places but that would mean nothing to me if I wasn’t being challenged.

No challenges = no doing my best.

It would be easy for me to characterise the last few years as a cacophony of failures. Sometimes I do, like when I’m surrounded by the contents of my suitcase and clinically tired because I’ve been up at 4am to catch a flight to Greece and it feels like even being here is just a way to kill time because how could I even hope to make this work? Then I went for a walk by the sea that I’d been so excited to be near, and I unpacked, and slept for ten hours, I sat at my new desk and got back to work. I feel better now, combined with new place nerves, there is an underlying excitement at what the next six weeks will bring to me.

I’m a huge fan of these failures (sometimes, and only ever in retrospect), not only because they taught me to calm the hell down because no matter what you do, things can and will go wrong. Also because they have, over the course of time, shown me that what I want to be is someone who tries and then just keeps on trying. Giving everything a bloody good go is literally all I can do and I hope I always live my life like that. It also makes the failures easier to take because I know that if I gave something everything I had, and still didn’t get the result I wanted, it was never for me to have.

You might not subscribe to ‘everything happens for a reason’ and to be honest, neither do I on a general scale. In the words of S Club 7 though - it is helpful for me to feel like ‘things are sent to try you and that how you respond and get up and try again is the actual definition of who you are. In accordance with this, I listen to a lot of interviews with people who do many different things - and a lot of podcasts in general. I will list recommendations below but this helps give me perspective on how long the road to where I want to be could be and also how no one ever feels ‘done’ so I should calm the hell down.

My second top tip for remembering that I should focus on the trying and not obsess over the result, is to take part in something so much bigger than myself that I can only do a very minimal amount but that I am not in any way responsible for the outcome. Volunteer! Campaign! Do shit like that because oh gosh is it life-affirming to care about something that doesn’t always benefit you directly but you can still have an impact on.

In the wake of the election I will definitely feel better for having spent rainy mornings and evenings handing out leaflets and knocking on doors. Knowing that at least I did the best by what I believed and went out there and talked to proper people about it - proper people who did not agree with me but who I want the best for anyway.

EDIT: and it looks like, in a lot of ways, this actually worked. I think? Who is even forming the government? No one knows!

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I’m on Twitter - @clairegillesp - it’s just Labour party memes pals, and it’s gonna stay that way for a while.

I’m on Instagram - clairegillesp - which will be heavily populated with photos exploring my new home for the forseeable future.

I’m listening to Hello Friend with Bethany Rutter, The High Low, and also Our Man in the Middle East with Jeremy Bowen which is very good & episodes come in at a very manageable 15-20 minutes.

xx