starting this blog

i've always quite fancied the idea of writing a blog.

(when i say that, obviously i'm a child of the 80's, so "always" is a bit of an exaggeration. in my teenage years i certainly quite fancied myself as a bit of a creative and entertaining writer, but there weren't really the same opportunities that there are now for the average joe. in the mid 90's, as a 14 year old in Dorset, the internet was still very far away from being in every home and the full extent of the outlet for any of my creative writing only really entailed poetry or stories at school, and the odd piece written for the school magazine. my obsession with making every line rhyme took the joy out of poetry, 'stories' were forced upon us in english language which ultimately took the thrill from those, and there is a limit to the number of articles one child can write for the school magazine without drawing unnecessary attention to themselves. no one likes a square!)

since then, i have toyed with the idea of starting up a blog a few times, mainly whilst i've been in unstimulating jobs with hours to kill and a computer in front of me, but i've always stopped myself. because really, unless you are doing something pretty interesting, its a fairly self-indulgent thing to do. who (other than perhaps my mother, who has always been fantastically enthusiastic and supportive of everything i do in a wonderful motherly way!) would be interested in hearing the day to day ramblings of my little brain? the whinges about work; the commute; and the pret store running out of the sandwich i've been thinking about since 11am. the challenge of tracking down a kate moss maxi dress from last season (there has to be one, somewhere, in one of the many topshop stores in london... there MUST be!); my opinion on the trainee barista in cafe nero (painfully slow, and still my chai latte tastes like shit); and how i totally wiped out and landed on my face on my doorstep this morning on my way to work. these fantastic little pieces of my life are of very little interest to anyone..... that is why i save them for facebook status updates, and the 256 of my closest friends who will really care about them!

but to start a blog i personally feel that you have to be doing something intrinsically interesting and of worth- something that other people would genuinely be interested to hear about. which is why now seems like a good time to start one up. in a month and a half i will be turning 29 years of age. my final year of 'twenty-dom'. and many people may (sensibly) regard this as a good time to settle down, really push on in their career, think about buying a bigger house or start trying for kids.

instead, i'm taking a different path.

i handed in my notice at the job i've been in for the past 3 and a half years last week.

my husband and i put our house up for rent, and found tenants (actually this happened in less than a week- what can i say? either we have a wonderfully lovely desirable house, or the rent is way too cheap!).

and in what, all of a sudden, seems to be a very short period of time, my husband and i are flying out of london (the place that has been my home for the past 7 years, and him 6) to zambia, via new zealand, then australia and briefly south africa.

its certainly not a unique thing to do- people have been fecking off on 'gap years' left, right and centre for many moons- but i do hope that it will be an intrinsically interesting few months, and therefore worth recording online, perhaps for a few people to read about, and be entertained by.

so that, is why im starting this blog.