The Lemon Life | online magazine offering a fresh perspective on post-grad life.

Whilst my post-university story isn’t exactly a Hollywood blockbuster (mainly because the plot is more transparent than a conservatory door), it is at least a little different than the norm and a good advert for taking a chance and not being afraid to uproot when the time feels right.

After finishing university in a damp sparkle of glory in 2001, I moved back home temporarily with the aim of making the permanent move away as soon as was financially possible.  

The experience of living parent free for three years, added to the university experience itself, had given me my first true lease of life and allowed me to break free from the shell I felt encased within when living with my folks, having to tiptoe around someone else’s house and refrain from stocking the freezer with lovely Iceland frozen chicken curries, not to mention the fact that all this was carried out in a tiny seaside retirement village miles from human civilization.  Some of my contemporaries were happy to stay at home and slave away at the first jobs they came across until they could afford a house deposit, but being of a different mould I only had two thoughts in my mind – to get out and to become a writer. Fortunately two of my former university compatriots were of a similar mind, and so, after three months of supermarket night shifts in order to raise the appropriate funds, the three of us moved back to Bath and prepared to relive the good old days.  Except it didn’t quite work out like that.  

The move itself wasn’t a mistake in the slightest (give me the chance a hundred times again and I’d do it every time), but it was the rationale behind the move that was the problem.  We all assumed it would be like the old days – drinking at all hours, late night Playstation sessions, issues of Nuts magazine littering the bathroom floor – and to a certain extent it was, for the first two weeks.

When the reality of the situation set in however, things began to change.  There were two factors behind this.  The first was that we were living off our own money and not our student loans, and the second was the knock on effect that therefore we had to begin work in order to fund our exploits.  And so we all leapt into the life of the 9-5 which immediately extinguished any appetite for regular late night partying, at which point the quarter-life crisis jumped firmly on our backs and rode us around like a small child on a pet dog for the next eighteen months. 

After two years of temporary jobs and fruitless attempts to get the BBC to see what they were missing, I had begun to feel that my life was going nowhere.  The fun student days of old were now a distant dream and the pressures of work, lack of a social life, change in house atmosphere and the semi-permanent lodging of girlfriends all ensured that, after a lunch time drinking session one Thursday, I made the decision I had long known I would have to make but had equally long put off; I was going to move to London.  And so, a month later, without a job, a flat or knowing a soul I left my safety net and skipped down the M4 with some clothes, a guitar and very little money to start again.  I moved into a house with a female flatmate and a Lithuanian couple and realised very quickly I had landed on my feet (apart from the Lithuanians, but we never spoke to them if we could help it).

I never once felt scared or apprehensive about the move, despite the fact that I had no idea where I was going or what I was going to do, which means I either knew instinctively that everything was going to work out or I was simply in the grip of denial. Either way, two years down the line I am still living in London with two lovely cats and the female flatmate (whom I have now been dating for over a year and a half), my first novel is being published this summer and, most importantly, I no longer have the desire to be back at university – a bridge I had begun to think I would never cross.

Nearly all the important decisions in my life so far have been based on instinct and, one way or another, have all combined to lead me where I am today – to a very happy place indeed.  The years following graduation are difficult, there is no doubt about that, but experience has taught me that if you follow your heart and take the odd risk or two to spice things up then you won’t go far wrong.  And don’t live at home longer than you absolutely have to!