Coming up for air? Existential crisis? Or just plain old spoilt? The boring details out of the way

I have often fantasised about how I would start my blog. I imagined that it would be punchy, witty and insightful. Instead, i imagine that what i have to offer is the stuff of after school specials and terrible books geared at the women's market. Derivative, tired, old (just to stress the point!).

Excuse me while i introduce myself and get all the tragic details out of the way.

I am a girl coming up for air. I have taken a few months off my life to try to figure it all out. I went to a Chinese restaurant a few nights ago here in Manhattan and my fortune cookie read "only you can decide what is important to you". Fittingly, i am far from home, on the move, trying to figure out what everyone else figured out years ago while my head was buried in a book and my heart was invested in the wrong person.

I spent too much time being earnest and expecting so much from life. Every facet of my life was supposed to be extraordinary - I wanted to excel at everything and i expected to have everything- a fulfilling career, beautiful love and a pretty life filled with Global knives and Kosta Boda housewares. I am starting to understand that perhaps my life is not destined to be extraordinary but a rather a never ending cycle of average days interspersed with brief moments of brilliance. Can i accept this? Will I accept this?

I packed my bag, closed up my cozy and comfortable apartment, left behind my books and have been travelling for almost 3 weeks (so much more interesting material to follow after this tragic post, I promise). I left behind my family and friends. I left behind a "great job" - one that i spent 5 years at university studying for (while racking up a considerable debt) only to feel unfulfilled every morning and to leave every day more and more convinced that the world is full of arseholes. Strangely enough my work is supporting me taking time off to travel the world and have my existential crisis. I am doing my best not to construe this as an admission of guilt on their part.

I also left behind someone new who was crazy about me but entirely unsuitable - I felt guilty for not being able to reciprocate his feelings and for knowing that being with him would be equivocal to contracting into a lifetime of boredom and unwelcome compromise. At what point do I give in and just say "fuck it"? When does the revolving door stop at the same time for two people who can tolerate each other? Barely a week passed and I met someone who I feel that i could be crazy about but am entirely geographically incompatible with. Karma biting me in the butt. I deserve it.

Soundtrack for the day:
Josh Pyke - Memories & Dust
Fionn Regan- The Underwood Typewriter
Fionn Regan - Hotel Room
Augie March - One Crowded Hour
The Shins - Kissing the Lipless