EPT
I have been a bit busy recently - first off I went off into the bush (as per one of my last blogs) for Christmas and then I spent my New Year at a 21st party with a bunch of uni students. I felt so old.
Anyway, this blog is mostly to leave 2014 behind in the dust and to concentrate on the future. My plan was to go and visit my family in Australia last year, but due to being from a country Australia looks down upon, I had to give up my hopes of going there on a working holiday visa and travelling around working for a year. It was suggested that I maybe put down money on a college or university there so as to study part time in order to get a part time job there, but all the courses I am interested in doing are either too short to warrant a study visa, or too expensive for me to attend without financial aid.
The next plan was to go early this year on a visitor visa and see how I felt about the place before committing to anything. That is probably still the plan, I'm not sure. The biggest thing holding me back is that I'll have to quit my job here, and if things don't work out I'm going to find it very very hard to find a job back here that pays nearly as well.
What I really really wanted to do was teach English in Korea for a year or two, and then use my savings to backpack around Europe before preparing myself for a proper career. After a bunch of inquiries it turns out that having a BA (in any field) is a minimum requirement to teach and work in Asia. Unfortunately my uni studies stopped just short of a BA and the uni I attended was horribly incompetent with its paperwork. Not only did they note down my (now old and redundant) passport number as my ID number, they didn't print pictures on student cards, and they didn't bother to document half of my results in their archives, making the three years I attended their courses an almost complete waste of money.
Ideally I'd like to pick up my studies again and do a fourth year as an exchange student, but sadly the field I chose has a very high skill decay, and what I learnt at uni 3 years ago is now pretty much unusable. Oh well, that's what i get for being dumb.
I've sort of just reached a point in my life where I feel stagnant and unmotivated. If at all possible, my sales and graphics position at work has reached a point where it is chaotically busy and I am constantly behind on my work and I'm unable to give customers the time and dedication they deserve, and I would like to give them. The work has become mundane and I am constantly stressed. You might sit there and laugh at me, a lowly salesperson in a retail shop being stressed. But I don't even recall feeling this pressured and exhausted at the end of a day when I did all nighters at uni to get my projects in before their deadlines.
I like working hard, so I don't mind if my next job is just as long and stressful, but at this point I just want to get out, and I have become incredibly frustrated at the lack of opportunities here. Every week is the same - people do the same things every weekend. There is no public transport to just travel to the next city, no beach to spend a weekend at, no festival to celebrate, very few to no hobby groups, extreme sport centres.
Every weekend people drink to get drunk. They do it during the week. We joke that it is because there is nothing else to do here, but it is actually a hard truth.
I'm a little hazy on what plan of action to take. If I take a TEFL course it will have to be online only because there are no TEFL centres in this country, and to be honest my internet probably isn't good enough to do half of the work i need to. That drastically reduces my chances of finding a good job, sadly.
I've spent a lot of time on the internet recently reading up on things and on travelling and working abroad and I still don't know what to do or how to go about making such a huge change.
I just don't know how to proceed from here. I am desperate to get away from this uninspiring lifestyle. Any advice TL?
Sorry, there was supposed to be more glitter and art and poetry in this blog, but I will save it for the next, better (and more positive) blog. I just need to know where to go or who to speak to about getting out.
Thanks guys, so much love. I was going to do shoutouts but that'll happen next blog, promise.
I'll brb
