A year in the life of..
Me! And boy, what a year it was.
First of all, I think I may have said in the past that I would never be ‘’one of those people that would blog about themselves all the time’’ and yet here I am, writing a blog about no one but myself.
So, on the 12th of July, 2015, I decided to throw my life around completely. I had lived in a small village in The Netherlands (Holland, to make it easier for you) for all of my life. But you know, sometimes you fall head over heels in love with someone when you’re 18 years old, and that person happens to live overseas and you decide that you want to move in with this guy and so you pack your bags, go on a 10 hour long bus trip (with a 2 hour delay in London) and you do exactly that.
Day to day life
There I was, about to start my life in a then strange country for me, moving from a house to a flat, from living with my family to living far away from them and from being a fresh high school graduate who had never worked a proper job in her life, to now having to find a proper job to be able to afford this new way of living.
I guess it was a good thing that I moved to England in summer, because there were a lot of things going on at the time. I went to explore the city centre multiple times, to my first Street Food Festival, my first English pub, backstage on a Swami tour.. etc. I even went to a service station in the middle of the night because all of the restaurants were closed and we were SO hungry.
Over the autumn months and in the winter I worked my first job and I had my first Christmas away from home.. which is very strange when you’ve spent all of your Christmases with your family in Holland. And then after Christmas came New Year’s, which I spent in London, having a fantastic time, but also missing my family back in Holland quite a lot. I think spending holidays without my own family will always be a bit hard for me, so from now on I’m gonna try to spend my holidays in two different countries. (Can I please win the lottery already?!)
Worked my second job in the springtime and went to some awesome gigs during that period of time. In the past year I’ve seen The Jacksons, Zapp, The 1975, The Time, George Clinton.. most people on that list are legends in their own ways, I’m telling you. I really wanted to see Prince as well, as he was supposed to do a European leg of his Piano And A Microphone Tour, but sadly that never happened.. and then he left us on the 21st of April.. I still miss him every day.
Music
The second reason why I moved to England is because I want to pursue a career in music. Now, I’ve always been very fond of singing, but the people who know me through and through know that I’ve never been that confident about my ability to actually be able to be a singer/songwriter.
In the past year, I’ve been writing a lot more than I used to do back in Holland and I’m starting to overcome my stage fright step by step. The first impression you’ll get of my voice will be put out there soon (in video form) and a handful of people know I’m involved in a new project called The Violet Reality.
The Violet Reality will be more than just a band, we’re striving to become a collective, full of creative individuals that are willing to put their content out there for the world to see. Within that collective, there’s a band and that band is our main focus at the moment, working hard to release our first EP by hopefully the end of this year. You better keep an eye out for us!
Food
Last but definitely not least, I wanna talk to you about a whole new world of types of food I discovered in the past year. I never knew how much I missed some of these types of food in my life after my first time of actually trying them.
My most favorite of these discoveries is definitely Indian food. Where I used to live, we had next to no places around that knew how to properly cook Indian food so when I tasted some proper dal, aloo gobi, onion bhaji, dosa etc for the first time, a whole new world of delicious food opened it’s doors for me and I’ve been enjoying (a bit too much of) it ever since.
Another thing is that I used to dislike pizza (I know..), I didn’t understand the hype about it at all. But then I discovered vegan pizza’s, without ‘’actual’’ cheese on them and for the first time in forever, the pizza didn’t make me feel sick. So now, just like everyone else, I have to admit that I grew to love pizza.. (what have I become?!)
I’ve been on a vegan diet for nearly a year now and I can’t say that it has made me feel any worse than I felt before. If anything, it made me feel a lot better. It still surprises me how easy it is to find meat substitutes and how many yummy dishes you can make with just a couple of ingredients and lots of spices. And no, we do not only eat plants, grass and trees if you still think that way about vegans in 2016.
So, yeah.. I’ve been in England for a year now, worked 3 different jobs, probably wrote about 25 songs that may or may not see the light one day and I’m slowly but surely getting to a point where I’m gonna be on stage with a real band now.. I guess you can say that I made quite a bit of progress after graduating high school just last year.
Overall, it has been a fun year, with it’s downsides too, but hey, if I had the chance to do it all over again.. I wouldn’t change a single thing.
