It's now the end of 2014 and I'm posting because I happened to meet Melissa yesterday. Melissa is/was such a good friend from afar who used to always read this diary when I was posting almost daily. She lives in Utah and used to call me often while she was at work to keep me company and try and cheer me up. I can't say it always worked, but just the fact that she was willing to be there for me is something that I've always appreciated.
Luckily, despite it being thirteen years since we've known each other, we've managed to keep it touch fairly often. First via Diaryland, then MSN, then Skype and Facebook.
A few weeks ago, she got told by her workplace that she needed to come to the UK for a project and finally, after a long long time of saying that we should meet up, we did! I headed to Birmingham to meet her and it was great. She only had two hours to spare before she had to get back to work, but we spent them well, talking about all sorts of stuff over lunch. It's really nice being able to talk to someone who already knows you pretty well and yet you've never even met them before.
Meeting Melissa prompted me to find this diary again. I'm so thankful that I actually remembered the password! I'm also thankful that for the longest time, it's been passworded away from prying eyes, but as it's been so long that anyone who knows me will have forgotten about it, I feel like I can reopen it again.
My profile page says that I have 1,217 entries and I know that most of those entries have a good few words in them each. It equates to roughly 1.2 million words! More than enough for a few novels, if ever my life is or had been interesting enough to turn it into one.
I couldn't possibly go into enough detail over the last six years to do everything justice. A fair amount has happened of course, but this entry would turn into 1.2 million words all on its own if I started typing everything out! So instead, I'm going to bulletpoint things that I can remember off the top of my head and by checking my Facebook statuses from a few years ago.
* Firstly, I graduated! I got a 2.1 diploma in graphic design. I feel like I was cheated a little by going to university because most of the stuff they were teaching me, I knew already. Looking back on it now, it may well have been better to simply look for somewhere that would have hired me as an intern and get experience. I don't regret going though as I made friends, had great life experiences and I believe that university made me a more confident person.
* Secondly, I got hired pretty quickly after university and I'm still with the same company. When they first hired me, I was so excited and appreciative of being with them. They didn't have to hire me, unknown, untested, but they did and over the years, I've definitely grown as a designer with them. The downside is that five years on after being with them, I now don't feel as if I'm going anywhere with them. I've pretty much been part time for five years and when most of that work is extremely basic and doesn't involve much creativity, it's just draining. For the last two years, I've wanted to quit, but to quit, I need another job and that's always proved hard to find. Until I do find another job, I have to stay with them.
* I had a relationship with a girl from Baltimore who I met online. We talked for just a month before somehow we decided that it would be awesome if she came to Liverpool for a week. It was amazing. We fell in love and for the next three months, we talked daily. I got my first passport sorted out with the intention of going to see her in Baltimore. Unfortunately, by the time I had done that, she had found someone else to be with and eventually, we broke up. I was heartbroken. We tried to continue talking after that, but it just didn't work and like most relationships to friendships, it fizzled out.
* I've still yet to make it big with my career as a designer. My idea has always been to be full time freelance, but it's not happened. I survive on the money I get from the company I work for, along with money from a long-standing client I've had for two years. I'm very grateful for the fact that they use me for all of their design work. It helps me keep afloat.
* I had a relationship with a girl from Arizona. Yes, another American girl! I don't really know why I end up going for people who live thousands of miles away, but somehow it happened. I started talking to her in August of 2011 and by October of that year, I had decided that I wanted an adventure and went to go see her in Arizona. It was fantastic. I was there a week and we had a great time together. Fast forward to 2014 and we're still actually together. In fact, in three weeks, I'll be going to visit her again in San Francisco, which is where she's originally from.
* I'm desperate to move out and get my own place. Technically, I could do it right now, but I could only afford to rent and I want to buy somewhere. I don't like the idea of renting somewhere and in ten years, having nothing to show for it. I want to be able to have a deposit and afford mortgage repayments so that in twenty years, I can say that I own a house.
There are undoubtedly important things that I've missed in this little recap of the last six years, but if I decide to write more entries again, maybe I'll go into more detail. For now, this serves as a nice way to continue such a long-running journal of my life. It's incredible that it's still going.
