As they say - hello world.

For the first time in literally ever since I can remember, I have absolutely no idea what is happening in 2018. Life has always seemed to go on without needing any particular steering from me. Each year in secondary school had simply followed one after the other. University was the obvious choice after that, and graduate school after that. And now that I have wrapped up my postgraduate studies and have been job-hunting to no avail... well.

This seems an appropriate time to give a little shout-out to the fact that I have started watching Friends a week ago. Still immensely relatable, as I have recently found out.

Having grown up not celebrating Christmas, today and tomorrow (or today which is already tomorrow) are as good a time as any to do some thinking about how I want the upcoming year to go. A little early new year ruminations, it might be considered.

1. So, this blog thing. It's happening. I've thought for years about doing a blog - at first a beauty one, then a fashion one, or perhaps a lifestyle one, or even a book review or a stationery one. Voila, a combination of all of these. I've always enjoyed reading more personal blogs, those that seem a chronicle of the blogger's life, and so that is the tone mine is going to take. 

2. So many application deadlines in the next couple of months, so little time. In the past few months since I've handed in my dissertation, I've gone through phases of wanting to join at least eight different industries. The time it took to write each cover letter, to do each interview, forced me to reflect on what I really want to commit to doing in the next couple of years. Right now I'm still oscillating between several fields - academia, journalism, policy-making, even more - and I think I might take a step back for a week or so and really, really evaluate. 

3. My visa and other pressures are forcing me to move out of here, but I want to be back eventually. I'm wishing, somewhat pathetically desperately, that it happens soon enough, but not for the wrong reasons. Life has a way of working itself out, I've heard it said. Here's to hoping. 

And now, back to packing.