how_to_realise_what_you_want u24 Me and my partner got our degree_results in June. The world was our oyster. There was such a feeling of potential; I'd never felt anything like that before. We decided to take summer off to travel around the country camping, to de-stress and to be able to relax and decide what we wanted to do. What happened is that two weeks into the holiday, the UK experienced the worst floods for decades. We came home. I spent two and a half months looking for a great job. I turned down three jobs before I decided to take one. We moved town, put a deposit and a month's rent down on a nice flat in a good area. The next week was the second worst of my life. I lost half a stone (3Kg) in weight in 5 days. We tried very hard to convince ourselves that we'd get used to it, that we could move after 6 months, that we would be fine. After 6 days we gave up telling ourselves that and decided to cut out losses and go back home. We'd lost about £1500 ($3000) in the space of a week, and there was a very real prospect that we'd have to keep paying £675 ($1300) a month rent on the place for 6 months, even though we wouldn't be living there. I phoned the job to let them know I'd made a big mistake and wouldn't be working for them after all. We moved back in with my partner's parents. I got my old (pre-uni) job back (remember *that* letter? Yep, that job). We came to an agreement with the landlord that he'd keep his £1500 and we'd not have to pay the rest of the rent. We're getting settled and we're (cautiously) looking forward to spending this year thinking about the future. We knew when we left uni that we needed to time some time out; the English weather got in the way. We forgot what we needed and paid for it. I don't know what the lesson is, but I know I've learned to think hard before I act. Even though I'm doing the same job I was doing before I went to uni, I'm happier than that week in Slough. That's not to say I'm happy, not by any stretch. But I know it was the right choice to come home. In fact I'm pretty lost. I just hope I can work out what I want and follow it through. I hope we can work things out. With all my essence. I hope that this isn't the rest of my life. I hope that, this year, I don't forget to think about what I want. I hope I find out. 071022 ... daxle I've reread this a couple of times, and pardon me if I'm being dense, but what actually happened? What went wrong and how was it solved by moving back? Or would you rather not say? 071022 ... u24 Thanks for reading. The first thing that went wrong was stupid; the flat didn't have a washing machine. But really that just triggered the realisation that we really didn't want to be there. I don't know how we didn't realise before... we just fell into the "move out, get job, get flat" mentality when in fact we hadn't given it enough thought. The town itself was horrible as well. Moving back hasn't solved the problem, but it's removed enough stress and pressure (we hope) to allow us to take a pause and really think things through this time; if we'd carried on at the flat I don't think we'd have been in the right sort of environment to make informed decisions about the future, we'd just be focussed in on an "anything's better than this" mentality.. We'd convinced ourselves that getting jobs and moving out etc was what we wanted, but as soon as we got it it dawned on us that we didn't know why we thought we wanted it, but we were now sure that we didn't. We thought it would make us happy and it didn't. It's hard to explain; the rational decision would have been to stick the flat and job out for 6 months and regroup and move forward then. I don't think we could have physically managed to do that. Perhaps it was so hard just because my mind was telling me to keep the flat while my heart knew it was the wrong thing. I don't know. I am glad I came back but I can't explain why. 071023 ... unhinged sometimes it takes a seemingly irrational decision to make happiness; happiness is pretty irrational after all. i went through kind of a similar thing after i dropped out of grad_school u. i decided to move 8 hours away back to my parents. i was so unhappy in school it was unbelieveable. the profs at the music school here were a nightmare; there was no community within the school like there had been in my undergrad. my boss was a bitch. and to top that off i was eight hours away from my family and in between my first and second years my brother moved 5000 miles away. by the second week of what was supposed to be my last semester i was having incapacitating panic attacks just thinking about all the shit i had to do in the next couple months and the only thing that gave me relief was the thought of just not doing it. it was hard to ditch school, especially in light of the fact that i was the overachieveing bookworm in my family, but i did and then moved back. after five months, i impulsively moved back to the town i went to grad_school in. i ate up all my savings and eventually got a horrible job. and then out of nowhere i got an awesome job at the place i work at now. i had sent them my resume like 7 months before and was completely not expecting to hear from them when i did. school makes it impossible to realize what you actually want. all the hoops they make you jump through.....and sometimes it takes a little longer to figure out what you want than everyone else around you would like. to make a long blathe short, i totally sympathize with you u. totally and completely. i think you did the right thing by making the choice that makes you happy. it's just money, who cares about that ;-) 071023 ... fuffle i want simplicity, clarity, peace, fun and love, how do i realsise that ? because they are the things that have worked or made me happy in the past. How to achieve all of those is kind of like difficult on ones own, however i'll give it my best shot. 071023 ... REAListic optimIST Try, analyze, taste, wait, and weigh. 131103 what's it to you? who go blather from