Baby Steps

So over the weekend I had the privilege to watch my boyfriend graduate University. I met him during his Fresher week, he was just starting his first year, I was about to embark on my third and final year and now here we are both graduates, and I can hardly believe we have made it here already. That now, for the first time ever neither of us are students.

Here we are at his graduation!

However I am proud of both of us for following our dreams and getting a degree, I have found it has filled me with a lot of worry and fear now. As a graduate every-ones expectations are so much higher, a simple entry level job simply will not do, and you are expected to have this whole plan in place, and these wonderful jobs with fantastic salary's are meant to be flying at you left right and centre. But they're not. 

I know my family is very proud of me and my boyfriends family are equally chuffed with him, but all weekend the question on every bodies lips is "What next?" they want to know what jobs we have applied for, and when we are going to move into our own place, have we started driving yet ? or thought about where we might move to for work ? any interviews lined ? I know their heart is in the right place but, I don't know the answers ! I wish I knew, but I don't even know what job I want let alone how to go about getting it. 

When you're a child you have this image of your life, as if its a thread that will weave in and out of opportunities and goal, and more threads with join in and twist together as you get married and have children and, in the end your thread has made a beautiful tapestry of all you've done, but the reality isn't quite so smooth, your thread get tangled and knotted and you fray it as you work away at the mess and you carry it round in stomach everyday feeling it getting more knotted and tangled and its just not working out the way you wanted it to, and you feel like such a let down. 

I finished my degree and I still work in retail, and I don't like it at all, and family and friends will joke about me working there when I have a degree to my name, while others point out how they have a better job then me and they never went to uni, and it starts to hurt. 

And here I am watching my boyfriend take these baby steps into the world of work and I am worried for him, worried that he ends up trapped like I am, not knowing what path to take or in which direction, worried that the constant job applications will wear him down, worried that this time next year we are no further forward then we are now. 

You are always told to follow your dreams, to reach for the stars, but no one tells you what to do when you holding it in your hand and it's starting to burn.

Rella Xx