Gibraltar? WTF?

WTF?!?

So I just found out that a friend of mine has moved to Gibraltar, approximately 5 weeks after he moved.

This is making me think about the effort that I make to connect with people these days. It's certainly true that I'm more likely to @reply or post on someone's facebook wall than I am to send a good old fashioned email. The logical extension of my failure to communicate more broadly is that because my friend uses neither Twitter nor Facebook, I had one of those 'WTF?!?!' moments when I found out. Kudos to him, he's shipped a great job out there and is obviously loving every second of it.

From Gibraltar to Vienna...

Another reason this news is making me think is because I've been wanting to move to Vienna for almost a year now, and had it all set up to move this October; until life kicked me unequivocally in the balls. The plan is now to move either in March, or in October 2010. If you've never been to Vienna - GO! It's the coolest city on the planet, and it's where I feel at home.

What I used to think...

I had always thought that the after University I'd become some sort of hotshot lawyer, but then I realised that I didn't give a shit about most of the issues teetering on the current bleeding edge of the legal world. As a consequence, never wanting form a career in anything that I can't put 100% of myself into, I decided that I couldn't be a lawyer. After 4 years, and a fuckload of student debt, I ended up with a law degree that I didn't want. Excellent.

So what I did instead...

Instead of being a lawyer, or some other corporate suit type, I decided to take some time and think about what I really wanted. When I couldn't decide, but still needed money to buy beer and otherwise support myself, I took a job working in a call centre managing a customer service team. I can say, without a shadow of a doubt that the swings between 'shittiest job ever' and 'the greatest job in the world' are immense. The thing that makes the difference is the people. Some of the people I work with are the funniest, most genuine, compassionate, caring, wonderful and downright fucking fantastic people in the entire world. But they aren't enough to keep me here. More than anything, after 2 years, I'm bored, and as I said previously, I'm stuck.

What I think now...

Right now I think the hope is that getting out of the North East might give my life some traction again. Don't get me wrong, I fucking love the North East, it's where I'm from, it's part of who I am and I'm incredibly proud to be a Geordie; but the sad fact remains that there just aren't the opportunities to develop and grow here like there are in other parts of the country. Before this turns into North vs South or some other bland politico-shite of the form often spouted by the equally uninformed tossers on both Newsnight and Jeremy Kyle; I should say that, for me, I don't think there's any place in England that has the right mix for me to grow and develop. It might well be that I never get to Vienna, maybe. One thing is for certain though, I feel that now is the time to be gaining traction, moving forward and finding that élan which has been gone for so long.