The difference eight years makes!
Over the past months, I’ve been distracted by the idea of writing a blog. I decided to just do it; I grabbed my phone, typed ‘blog’ into Google, and was transported into my own account of an old blog website that all but Google had forgotten existed. Upon the page, I found a post uploaded by 14-year-old me on the 3rd of April 2016, 8 years ago. Entitled ‘Introducing Me!’ it stands as a pretty meta comparison to the 22-year-old me that uploads this post. Here I am, reintroducing me.
As this is a travel blog, reading the words of little me writing “I really love travelling and going on holidays I know that I want to take a gap year in Uni and travel (yes I’m already saving up) I really want to visit Bora Bora and the Phi Phi Islands in Thailand” kinda gave me goosebumps on first read. 8 years later I’ve inadvertently taken a gap year that I hadn’t wanted to take by switching courses; but what this gifted me was the opportunity to save to travel (as I hadn’t saved up anything like I’d claimed). I started working full-time that year and the day my housing contract ran out, a friends mum helped me move everything I owned, bar my backpack into storage. The following morning I flew to Prague to start interrailling Europe – a month truly did change my life. I embarked on a interrailling-but-flix-bus trip of Europe the following year, going back to Budapest which served as my anchor when elements of the trip were difficult, but exploring places in Europe I hadn’t even heard of. I flew to Faro, Portugal at the start of this year, visted Barcelona for a few days in April and I’m about to embark on my first ever Workaway in Tirana, Albania. It’s reassuring to know that I have always wanted to do this, especially when facing the scares of solo travel. I am yet to make it to Bora Bora, or the Phi Phi Islands, but I can’t wait to see where I end up.
Next of importance to disclose was my love for music, “I love music, like so much,” doesn’t everyone? Followed by “I sing quite a lot, and I’m also learning to play guitar“. Partly still fits too – I sing all the time and I’m a part of a ladies barbershop chorus in my hometown that placed 4th in the country and I couldn’t be prouder to be a member of the Red Rosettes. In what I assume is an attempt to appear quirky, I labelled myself as “such a geek” which however, was probably true and said I wanted to have a career in forensic science. The dream of a career in science carried me to 2022, I took Biology and Chemistry A-Levels, and applied for Medicine in 2020. We all know what happened next. COVID struck and my A-Levels were cancelled, we got given predicted grades. A blessing for some, a nightmare for me, who had a conditional offer to study Medicine on the provision I bettered my Chemistry prediction by a grade. Obviously with exams cancelled, I couldn’t better the grade, and on results day I ended up accepting an offer to study Biomedical Sciences at the University of Liverpool starting in the September. I worked pretty hard that year, but realised that this was so much more Maths and Chemistry than I was prepared to do. This, mixed with a yearning to continue the study of my third A-Level, Sociology, led me to drop out and enrol on that course starting in September. I adore Sociology, but I don’t regret the time I spent in biomed, none of the information has retained in my brain at all, but the experience of living in halls that year gave me some of the strangest memories and brought me some truly amazing people.
And with a bit of a self-demeaning ending, stating theres “nothing really much interesting about me” that was the end of my first blog post. In aid, this is also the end of my second. I send thanks to my past self for providing me with this stunning template to base my first post off, love you for that girl!
Catch you soon, Lil 🙂