After Stonehenge

Oh golly I'm just going to crack on with it.

I got job, I started uni; basically I increased busyness by 500%. It's great. It took its toll on Sunday evening though (about halfway through the church service, thank you) when I hit the Peopled Out Point, but I went home and did the comfort food thing but instead of food it was music (I'm not a foodie). Months of nothing into double full time is a big shift to make and it's been fine other than that. My job is a temporary stint in an office. A huuuge office. I never, ever thought I would be doing a 75 minute rush hour commute by train and bus to a 12 story building to do numbers and money and spreadsheets all day. But hey! It's kinda cool to have landed it. When I say 'kinda cool,' I mean flipping awesome. This job couldn't have come any sooner - I was feeling pretty desperate about having no income - and I'm really grateful for it! It's the best pay I've ever had, too. When I say 'landed it,' I mean it fell into my lap. Housito (that's my housemate, the male one, in case you missed that explanation - Housita is my other housemate and she is female) needed a temp at work so I was the man. Girl. OK, so the work is dead boring, and totally not what I want to do with the rest of my life, but I will not complain!

There's a blow fly in my room. I didn't even know they existed in this country.. On that note, though, the weather is finally warming up. The other day I was outside and I rolled my sleeves up. It was amazing. I like the cold, to be sure, but winter is a lot longer here than in Armidale. And a LOT colder. The daffodils are out and daisies too - soon it will look like what it did when I first arrived! Now THAT'S a crazy thought.

Uni is good. I dropped a unit, which I'm not too fussed about. The workload was a bit much and sourcing textbooks hasn't been that easy. The content, however, I'm finding interesting and it's making more and more excited to be a teacher. Phew!

One thing coming up in my life is this conference, church is taking a group, and I'm well excited: http://wordaliveevent.org/

Another thing is... WEDDINGS! So many weddings. I think it's up to 10 engagements since I left. I started a list. Anyway, I'm coming back in November for at least three of them (!!) and at this point I'm thinking I will move back to Armidale (indefinitely) then, too. It's exciting and sad and homesickening all at once. I don't want to leave all my lovely friends here! But I do want to come home soon.

Anyhow, there is a lot to be done before I say goodbye to the UK. Like see Stonehenge.

Without the Rave

Well, I've seen the end of boredom. It's here. My course content is now available online so I can get cracking with it! Hooray!

I really miss my family at the moment. And I often wish I was at home so I could be with my Aussie friends. But I realised today that I'm scared that their lives will go forward and in a year or so too much will have changed. So many getting married! So many moving away! I want to be there now, and enjoy it how it is now, but I definitely also want to be here now, with these people, and sometimes I feel like I have to decide who I love more. How silly. But it's hard.

Oh and the money-from-the-government thing is a no-go. Ah well. At least my computer is working!

I'm stressed about being jobless and I'm losing faith on that front. What can I do? I need a job. Stress is rotten. I don't feel it all that much (usually my body deals with pressure by exerting it through an allergenic/infectious reaction), but even when I do it's not all that bad. So I really feel for people who have super stressful jobs or lives because it's so encumbering. When I was deciding whether or not to leave my last "job" I literally couldn't go a minute without the weight of the decision pressing down on me. Oh, you say, wait till you're a teacher... Hmm yeah. We'll cross that bridge after we've had a bit of a picnic.

I listened to some Mark Driscoll sermons. I never thought I would say that, because a) I never did like Mark Driscoll (until now), and b) I never listen to sermons online; but I found them really, really intriguing. I had a prejudiced and ill-informed opinion of Driscoll: that he was pompous and aggressive, but I really took to his frankness and his funniness. He doesn't mess about. I think that sometimes he gets carried away with being so avant-guarde but I appreciated what he had to say. Here's the link http://marshill.com/media/vintagejesus

And thanks to a wise woman who told me to watch the one on the resurrection - when was it - this time last year? Or earlier? I never did until now. But I'm glad I have. Thanks.

I get annoyed when people worship preachers like Driscoll or Piper or [drop another name here] as though it's their amazing wisdom that is saving the world. Yes, some people have brilliant brains and a unique knack for explaining things, but they're only human and they still do a poo. (I stole that from a lady who gave one of the many inspirational talks you're fed in high school. She was talking about 'the cool kids' and she said "when you're thinking about how great they are, just remember that they still do a poo." Cracked me up then, and I still use the technique sometimes. Never fails to entertain.)

And another thing: this one I stole from a good friend. She said to me "I think it's terrible how people [in church] feel that they have to leave... in order to step down from positions in the church" and I said "Who in particular?" and she said "Well, you..."
It's the truth. I know people who have got so busy with ministry, they burnt out, then left; and if they were anything like me, it was partly because you felt like people knew you as Jess-the-very-involved and now that you were just a shell of a person and couldn't be everything people expected of you, you had to go. I think that coming to London has been really, really good for me, and I'm so lucky I've fallen into a great church community, (well luck has nothing to do with it if there's a God), but it's a shame about the circumstances that lead me here. I believe I was in leadership too young. Too young as a Christian and too young as a person. I loved it, and I learnt a lot from it - more than that, I wouldn't be who I am if I had never been on the youth group team - but in hindsight I can see that I needed a lot more maturity and life experience than I had before I could take on that role.
Anyway, they're just my thoughts and I'd be happy to talk to anyone who has any ideas or opinions of their own. I've had a good life so far and I'm not suggesting that anyone ever did me wrong. I just have a different view as to when I was a teenager. All those many years ago...

Thoughts From My Head

I still have no job. I had a pretty low moment last week after four local recruitment agencies turned me away on account of my lack of experience in office work which is apparently all they offer. But these things take time, people say, and I guess whatever needs to happen will happen when it's meant to.

Uni starts in less than three weeks! I have one textbook so far. I wrote my name in the front.

It's raining here.

I have moved into the newly decorated room of the house, and it is just divine. I'm in a brand new bed with swish squidgy carpet and whimsical wallpaper. I'm so spoiled.

I'm trying to get Centrelink to give me some money for studying, but it's never that simple, is it?

My computer is having issues. If you're a Mac user you'll know how important it is for the Finder application to work. Yeah, mine isn't responding. We'll see if a restart helps after this.

I have good friends. I have quite a number of wonderful friends who I can easily talk to all day about anything and everything. And I have lodged myself (pun intended) into the lives of such fantastic people here in London - not just my housies but everyone at my church.

Speaking of church, I've started reading Romans and I'm using a book called Search the Scriptures for an accompanying study. I didn't feel I was in the right place to go to the Sharing Jesus course that's being held at my church, but it's about time I got stuck into what God is about instead of farting around with my issues. I'm sick of fighting and moping and I just wanna come back. I'm reading Pilgrim's Progress which I'm thoroughly enjoying - I recommend it! But I don't think I would have understood it much earlier in my life. It requires a way of thinking that I probably wasn't open to as a legalistic and narrow-minded teenager. I think anyone could still benefit from it, though.

I think about next year quite often, but I never think beyond that. I think I'd like to move back to Armidale, but I can't really envisage anything further. I still want to go to South America some day to see a culture that's so different to rural New South Wales and my pocket of north west London, and I want to visit lots of other places besides, so I hope I won't do anything to prevent that opportunity. At the same time I don't want to get bored or restless or too comfortable when I'm back home. I say "when" intentionally, because despite what some of you may have said before I left, my heart has not been whisked away by an Englishman and though it makes me so, so sad to think I'll have to leave one day, it was only ever a two-year visa.

It does make me sad, though. I will miss catching the tube - I love the bit where everyone alights from the train together and walks towards the ticket barriers, I will miss the look of the houses and the ever-green grass, I will miss all the different accents. But most of all my friends who are almost a surrogate family. I love them.

Australia Day

It was a very unaustralian day, but I was never more excited about being an Aussie. I made sure everybody I spoke to knew it was a BIG DEAL..

I don't know why my face looks so pink, but my parents are always nagging me to put selfies up. Here you go! Your bogan daughter!

Went to lunch after church, and someone decided to be ironic. It was appreciated.

True Blue Bru

It's one week until Australia Day, and I'm going to make an even bigger thing of it than I usually would (ok so I don't usually make a very big thing about it but I'm very excited this year). British people don't have the equivalent (obviously) and so I plan to go all out with flag tattoos and face paint, perhaps without the face paint. But definitely need to have some of the triple j hottest 100 and there may even be a BBQ (British people don't know what rissoles are). I'll miss the inflatable pool and the sweltering heat, and of course ALL THE AUSTRALIANS (British people are not Australian), but maybe it will snow and then it will be awesome.

Out West

A village called Chipping Sodbury, frost not snow, a chapel near where Tyndale went to church, Bristol - a suspension bridge with a lovely view, and a genuine steam train ride. Good times.

Standing on the tip of the rabbit's fur, while doing not very much

Is anybody really that shocked to realise I've failed miserably at my one and only New Year's Resolution? Hey, it's alright. I only make goals with a short term benefit in mind so when my momentum fizzles out it usually means I've done enough.

I don't have a job yet. I'm going mad with boredom (but hanging around middle class British people makes me feel like I'm mad already by comparison). I guess I don't want to start anything else or commit to anything until I've got an income and a bit more of a routine (at the moment it's: eat, sleep, doddle around, repeat), but it would probably help to fill some time if I have another month or so. But by then...

I'm enrolled in the University of New England to study a Bachelor of Education (Primary) off-campus starting February 24th. All I need is to sort out my textbooks and I'm set to go! It's very exciting.

In the last few days I've picked up Housito's bass guitar and taught m'self some riiiiffffs. That's been fun. I listen to a lot of music all day which is nice. My week is full of Saturdays, and so I look forward to the weekend not because it's a time to relax, but because it's a time to get out and see people and do stuff. Having said that, I often leave my washing till Real Saturday anyway. Oh well.
I do make myself somewhat useful during the week. The post office folk must think I run a shop on eBay for how often I'm in there. I'm an unofficial PA, and I love it because it makes me feel helpful.

Where am I at with life thoughts? I wish I knew. I get myself into knots over my questions and I've been trying to figure it all out thinking that if I did that I'd be able to have faith again, but I guess that makes me God, doesn't it. I'm a principled and proud person, so I could never push all my issues aside and "be Christian" again just to be at peace. It wouldn't be true peace, and it would be for the wrong reasons. At the moment I don't love God because I find it hard to believe that he is good, and I couldn't pretend to love him until I got stuff sorted. I don't know if that makes sense in words.
But as I go along and put together my minipiphanies (mini epiphanies), things become better. I realise that that's giving myself credit for understanding the world - oh clever me - so maybe it's God revealing stuff to me and allowing me to learn things. An example would be, for instance, that if God isn't real then love and evil are arbitrary and what does it matter if I'm doing something with selfish or false motivation. So I may as well hope that God is real, and is good. And the other day I thought to myself "if God isn't loving, where does love come from?" Our pastor talked about being a slave last Sunday, and I wondered what my master is at the moment. Broadly speaking it's my sinful nature, but more specifically, is one of them philosophy? Yes, that sounds pretentious, but perhaps the devil has me wrapped up in obsessing over how to make sense of God and the world so as to blind me from the simple message of the gospel (well maybe not simple, but sufficient). Even as I write this I feel detached from it all. For ages I blamed it on the meds (not long till I'm finished! hanging out for a normal metabolism again..!), but it's people like my dad who bring me down to the earth again and basically say - in kinder words - "you don't want to accept that you need God." I guess that's why I'm trying to understand everything on my own. How many times have I contradicted myself? My entire life is a contradiction I guess. One could say "at least you're honest" - but it has been too long. Is it God holding out on me, or is it me hesitating because of my pride? Does it matter? I don't want to live like this forever.

That's all I'm going to write for now.