Let me do my one, two step

Step 1 - Location, Location, Location.

I have spent the week narrowing down where I want to live in Britain.

First, I researched the safest and most dangerous places to live in England, which is how this map came about:

Key: Green=safe and red=dangerous

Then I looked up the location of publishing houses and advertising agencies (where I hope to work one day). Of course that lead to the creation of another map:

Key: I think red symbolizes the publishing houses and yellow symbolizes the advertising agencies but I don't remember exactly . . .

It doesn't really matter because after I put the two maps together - like so:

I discovered that

a. I know oh so little about British geography,

b. I am not a cartographer,

and c. the counties of Kent, Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk (roughly the big green circle) are safe places to live and house publishing houses and advertising agencies.

Once I had these four counties selected, I searched for places to live in these areas. In each county, I found loads of flats and houses that offer a room to rent with prices comparable to what I pay now (many of them included utilities)! Yes, this does mean that I will be sharing a living space with complete strangers. While this idea would bother me if I was looking in the U.S., I find it oddly comforting in the context of Britain. I believe I will have a better chance of making it with other people (especially locals) than on my own. I know absolutely no one across the pond and I am certain to need guidance along the way.

All and all I think it was a very productive week. Granted, I still only have a vague idea of where I plan to settle but that will become clearer other the next 15 months as I search for employment. The important thing is that this whole adventure just became a little more possible.

Now what was step 2 again?

12 Steps to a Better Life

Now to explain the relevance of my previous rambling post about travel and Britain. I have decided to move to England in August 2012. I know it is completely insane and that I am most likely setting myself to fail horribly in a foreign country far away from the people who love me but I have to try. I am terrified of my decision but I am also scared of graduating. In this time of economic crisis, my future is just as uncertain here at home as it would be in England. I am majoring in creative writing. My dream, my passion is to be a novelist. I have chosen a career path that completely depends on strangers' believing in me. If I am going to fail, then I would rather do it in England so at least one of my dreams would have come true. And if I succeed, how much sweeter would that success be in a place I hold so dear. I realize that I am romanticizing a country I know little about and that I will most likely be greatly disillusioned when I get there but I must discover these things for myself. If I never go to England, it will always be this magical fairyland in my head so isn't better that I learn the truth? I must go.

To make this happen I have developed a multi-step plan.

Step 1 - Figure out where the feck I am going to live in England (pretty important). I know I do not want to live in London because the cost of living is too expensive and also because I am simply not a big city girl. I hope to find employment at an advertising firm or a publishing house. Therefore, the first step involves researching regions that offer an affordable safe place to live and that contain an advertising firm or publishing house.

Step 2 - Price flats in the region I am going to live, price airplane tickets, and figure out how much this adventure is going to cost me.

Step 3 - Sell a kidney and do whatever else it takes to afford to move to England.

Step 4 - Make sure my passport hasn't expired and figure out how to get a work visa.

Step 5 - Write, write, and write some more. Try to get as much of my work published in the next 15 months as possible.

Step 6 - Exercise, diet, and otherwise do what I can to lose weight (perhaps it's not essential to my survival in England but I want to look as hot as possible).

Step 7 - Get an internship for Spring 2012.

Step 8 - Try to develop contacts at the businesses where I want to work in England.

Step 9 - Apply to jobs in England and try to arrange to have a place to live waiting on me.

Step 10 - Figure out if it would be more stressful for my anxiety filled dog to be left behind (with a loving person to care for her) or to fly with me to England.

Step 11 - Decide what I'm taking with me, what I'm having shipped to me later, what I can sell, and what to do with everything else that I own.

Step 12 - Kiss my mama goodbye and fly away.

My 12 Step plan is still a work in progress. I will most likely add more steps as this journey progresses and the order of my steps will get switch around. Still this is what I will be working towards for the next 15 months and I will definitely keep posting as I move forward.

My plan, humor, and romanticized prose is hiding the fact that I am oh so scared of the path I have chosen so please feel free to comment with advice, encouragement, even criticism (I am hard headed and nothing makes me more determined to do something than being told that I can't do it). Also, should a British reader stumble across my little blog, I accept any and all mockery of my ignorant American beliefs but I do ask that with your mockery you will include tips on places to live and work and any other knowledge I will need to make it in England. Thank you.

Dream Big

I graduate from college in a year (very scary) and my apartment lease will be up a few months after. My roommate and I have agreed that it would be for the best if we go our separate ways at that time (not so much the end of the friendship, more like the end of us living together for the sake of our friendship). All of these changes have led me to come up with a pretty insane plan but, before I explain my plan, I must tell you my dream.

I love to travel. I believe this world is too vast and wondrous for you to spend your entire life in your hometown. Personally, I want to experience EVERYTHING this world has to offer. I want to wander down every path and then create my own. Still, there has always been one place in particular in which I have always longed to lose and to find myself.

For those of you who are not anglophiles like myself, this a map of Britain and Britain is where I have always wanted to be.

"Why Britain" is a bit difficult to put into words. For as long as I can remember, I felt drawn to Britain. It is a strange thing to yearn for a country you have never called home. Still I cannot deny feeling as if my life cannot begin until I get to Britain. Perhaps it can be explained by the recent discovery that my ancestors hale from England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. Not that the discovery itself made me interested in Britain-my fascination began long before this information came to light-but maybe the homeland calls to me. Or it could simply be the literary nut in me; the one who cannot get enough of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, the Bronte sisters, Spencer, etc. Or maybe it is my sensibilities as a writer, which makes me pursue a country so bursting with history that the very bricks and stones must sing about the adventures they have witnessed. Whatever the reason-be it all of these or none of them-the fact is that I have spent a good part of my life feeling like a misfit, like no one understood me, and somewhere along the way I came to the (possibly foolish) conclusion that Britain is where I will find my fit.

Which leads to the plan and my next post . . .