When I grow up

11th June

Days off Snow:37

Days on Citalopram: 19

Money: GBP15.98

Tinder Matches: 2358

All my working life I have worked in jobs which have been people facing. There has been years of experience people watching. I worked behind a bar for years, every drink had its own stereotype. Carlsberg top: builder on a weekday would probably have one or two to buffer going home to his wife. Prosecco: Giggly mum on a weekend that rarely gets time away from her bratty kids, Vodka and Coke: Underage on a Thursday night on their siblings ID trying to get as drunk as possible outside the house before going to the local student night.

With this new job comes a whole new set of stereotypes to judge: very busy important commuters, local shop workers who need coffee to get through their dull days, sixth formers pretending to study for their exams, first dates, dog owners that don’t actually like walking that much and my all time favourite gluten free mummies in their active wear with their bratty messy children. Of course I’m being extremely judgemental and stereotyping.

Life seems to be moving so fast all of a sudden. Its already fucking June. It feels like one day I’m going to wake up and be one of these gluten free active wear mummies. That absolutely terrifies me. All this messing around travelling the world will eventually lead to pushing some snotty nosed kid around in a push chair. Not to say that being like that is bad thing at all. I admire my parents massively. I just never want it to be me.

Saying that I’m not totally sure I don’t want kids. I just want to be significant. I’d like to achieve something and I feel very much that I’m not at the moment. Maybe because I work in a coffee shop or that I’ve just been turned down for a student loan to study a degree at the open university. I’m so frustrated that my life has stalled. It seems like skiing just isn’t enough anymore, maybe because I’ve been off snow for over a month now. Normal people have time off all the time. It’s alright. I just can not stand not achieving. I haven’t been on holiday in over 8 years because I don’t know what I would do with myself. Even having this blog is part of the whole paranoia of not being successful.

Its all just narcism really. Convincing myself that people want to read every week about how lost I am. I’m fully aware that everyone has felt like this as some point in my life. Some how it feels very lonely at the same time.

#fuckthegraduates

6th June

Days off Snow:32

Days on Citalopram: 14

Money: GBP32.16

Tinder Matches:2382

I finally got a job! In a coffee shop that pretends to be an independent local but is actually part of a larger chain. I like it, its just above minimum wage and closes at 6pm. It’s the perfect job to walk out of in 5 months time.

It does mean I’ve spent the last three days being sent into London to learn about coffee. While I appreciate that the company actually provides real training, rather than just letting a spotty teenager take great delight in teaching a 22 year old loser how to draw a heart in a latte, it has meant I’ve had to commute to Southwark everyday. Commuting is a contact sport. I’ve grown up in greenbelt north London, so the tube is not a foreign concept to me but neither is it something that I have ever used regularly. Standing on the platform at 7:15am I have never felt more out of place. Surrounded by my peers that I was once at school with I feel like a bit of a fraud in my jeans and t-shirt. Everyone else was wearing navy suits and black pencil skirts. It becomes even more apparent that, thats what I could’ve been if I stayed at university.

I dropped out of an industrial design degree when I was 19 due to a family death. In all honesty there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t hate myself for doing it. It was definitely the right decision. While I live at home I feel like I am constantly defending my choice to choose a career in skiing. Back in Canada it’s a relatively well respected sport and career but here at home I have had to explain more than once that I haven’t just spent the last 6 months in Canada on holiday. Because skiing is seen as a luxury holiday reserved for the middle classes, its automatically assumes that I’ve spent all winter in a log cabin with an open fire. Rather than the reality of a single glazed shared room in -40 and getting up at 6:30 everyday to push grizzly kids and fat adults down a hill. There seems to be a disconnect, without people like me the children my peers will inevitably have won’t learn the middle class pursuit that means they can sit on the board of the ski and snowboard society at Exeter university. (or fill the “Interests and hobbies” section of their CV to prove that they actually have a personality beyond prosecco)

It occurred to me that there are people that spend their whole adult lives getting on these trains, getting on at their favourite set of doors, barging other commuters out of the way to get through the gate that gets them closest to the escalator to run up on the left hand-side to sit at a desk all day. The same group of people do it the same thing 5 days a week and yet they have no idea who each other are. They never speak to each other but they live their whole lives with each other.

There was a design and architects studio opposite the coffee training kitchens. I couldn’t help think that’s what could’ve been if I’d stuck at the degree (or if cancer hadn’t decided to tear my family apart at that time). I can’t stand that all my friends are starting “proper” jobs. They have “proper” relationships. They’re doing the whole adult thing. I feel like I’m in a perpetual cycle of being broke and lonely. The influx teenage seasonaires continues where as I only get older. I fear that soon I’ll just become a wannabe in the skiing world.

But I’m not sure that I can live a life on a train with familiar strangers. I find it intensely frustrating and lets be honest it fuels my disgustingly low self-esteem, but I do like my choice in lifestyle and career. Even if it does mean that I forfeit long term relationships, a permanent home and a disposable income.

Relationships?!

May 31st

Days off snow: 26

Days on Citalopram: 6

Money: GBP 7.90

Tinder Matches: 2348

As I come and go people tend to care less. I travelled back from Canada with a load of fodder (first year ski instructors that enjoyed the pictures in the jacket more than the actual job). In Heathrow terminal 2 they where greeted with teary eyed parents running to hug them as they all said goodbye to each other. On the other hand, being the hardcore 3rd season vet that I am, I greeted my slightly bemused parents and was shuffled off to the car park in a way that’s become routine.

The same is with friends, the first time I came home there was a rush and interest to see me. Lots of drinks in the pub where I get to perform versions of events I’ve experienced. Edited, of course for audience consumption. Now its just something that happens in May. I come home.

I also find myself cancelling plans a lot more. Dismissing old friends. Pretending that I am too worldly for them now. Looking down at them for going to university, I made the right choices and they made the wrong.

I’ve been home nearly a month now. The connections with season friends are starting to dwindle. Every year I convince myself that I’ll stay in touch. This time its friends for life. Every year I’m wrong. The loneliness is really starting to set in.

Romantic relationships are always something I find hard. It’s always something that I’ve kept away from, especially when my only relationship ended when I was 20. I was too depressed and it wasn’t fair on him. (It didn’t help that he’s repeatedly tell me that I was lucky to have him and that no one else would be able to cope. It turned out he couldn’t cope either). Theres been a string of half arsed “Seasonal” relationships. Where you’re not together but you are. Its probably exclusive and you almost definitely have sex three times a week sober. I have genuinely cared for a lot of these boys (some not so much) but never fully invested because the end is always inevitably close.

Normally I hit tinder hard every time I move, just so my phone is buzzing and I feel a little bit wanted. Occasionally I sleep with one or two of them. Its never good.

I just don’t feel like it this year though, I have absolutely no interest trying to explain to a big headed banker that I am definitely better on skis than he is and no I can’t do a back flip. Tinder is definitely my punching bag.

A seasonal lifestyle is hard, mentally. I don’t feel like I have any permanent friends. The doctor asked about my friendships last week as a way of determining my mental health. I said I had a really good group of friends. I neglected to tell her that they where the other side of the world getting on with their own lives.

I think I use people for my own personal gain a lot. Last summer I worked a seasonal job on kids summer camps where I manipulated my boss into promoting me. I then started sleeping with some poor lad that lacked in confidence but was well liked among management to boost my reputation. I’ve done similar things with other jobs and people.

Then I wonder why I don’t have any close friends.

Pills are good…

27th May

Days off snow: 22

Days on antidepressants: 3

Money: GBP 18.12/CAD 3684.24

Tinder Matches: 2353

As is the fashion at the moment I suffer from mental health “issues”. To be specific severe anxiety and moderate to severe depressions.

The combination of living in an endless winter, leaving said endless winter and general genetic fuckery has lead to me back on to the happy pills. This isn’t my first and more than likely not my last on them.

Once you get over the three day hangover they give you, life starts to even out. The highs aren’t as high and the lows aren’t as low. Feelings and emotions become a thing of the past and it’s what I imagine being a psychopath is like. I quite like the lack of empathy in my life.

The only thing I don’t like about them is how things aren’t as sharp. With the massive weights of anxiety comes endless nervous energy. I’m oscillating at a higher frequency. Colours are brighter and food tastes more intense. I always like being the quickest and driest in the room. Theres never a fear of not saying something and outrageously controversial because it’ll distract from the fact that I might not be drinking, or that I’m struggling to sit still with nerves. Being so wound up is a bit like having a superpower, an utterly exhausting one. I think I have a lot to thank anxiety for.

So even though these pills give me the break from myself that I need. They completely destroy all the things that I like about myself. Everything is in black and white compared to HD. But it does make me fit into the London suburb model that I fight and long for at the same time. I could quite easily be the boring significant other to a history graduate on these pills. They make it a bit easier to keep my loud fucking mouth shut.

Out of work

22nd May

Days off snow: 17

Money: GBP 27.17, CAD 3684.24

Tinder Matches: 2259

One minute you’re this god of the mountain. Gazed upon by the general public as you glide down the hill effortlessly. Slamming hips down left right and centre.

The next thing you know you’re touching down at Heathrow in the drizzle surrounded by excited Canadian tourists fantasising about quaint country pubs and Harry Potter experiences.

Now I’m going to spend the next 400/500 words complaining about how difficult it is to be a Ski instructor in the summer, moan about all my poor little rich girl problems of living at home and bingeing Grey’s Anatomy, the ups and downs of seasonal life and slag of all my graduate friends that I’m oh so jealous of, with their long-term boyfriends and save-to-buy schemes.

I’m fully aware of how privileged I am. I get to live all around the world pursuing a sport thats only really available to the middle classes and school children on trips. I’m lucky enough to have skied for my whole life and have enough athletic ability and drive to hopefully make a career out of it. The only problem is that its only half the year. Maximum. The rest of the time I’m your average minimum wage bitch.

It would be very easy to reminisce about the previous season with rose tinted glasses. Give a witty anecdote about that one time where four of us went to brunch and continued drinking until I ended up crouched over the toilet bowl at 3am with my seasonal boyfriend trying to make each other sick, or that student I once had that thought running his gloves under warm water would keep his hands warm in -15. But I’m not. It’s very easy to remember the really high highs, but not so easy to remember the morning after where you spent the day in bed crying in a ball of shame. If I have enough patience to continue this blog into next season I can you tell all these stories as they happen.

But I feel like I need to be honest, as fun as seasonal work is and it really is (I’ve done 3 winters and 1 summer at this point) it is unbelievably hard and lonely. Its hard to make any long term friends, not saying you won’t make some awesome season friends but they won’t be in your life for anymore than 6 months. You can perfectly cultivate a personality, make yourself popular and loved, create an illusion of success all for it to come to an end nearly as soon as it began. I mean I am successful in the small world of the resort, I’m well qualified, training towards a prestigious qualification as well as being offered the job of my dreams for next season. Theres just a 4 month chasm between now and then where I’m stuck in the North London Suburbia. In an endless cycle of interviews where I’m asked why I’m never in a job longer than 6 months (Season work) and do I have a degree? Its soul destroying and boring.

Every 6 months my career has to go on hold, due to factors I can’t control (weather). I try and fill the endless loneliness by spending my evenings having “drinks” with old school friends. I have very little in common with them. I get to listen to their future plans, their graduate schemes and watch their boring other halves inject the conversation with dull details about the one bedroom shit hole they’ve found “at a really good price” in Euston. Meanwhile I’m brimming with jealous and trying to justify myself as focused and career led. Trying to make out I am the high achiever that I was back at school. But they really see me for what I am, a little rich girl playing silly games abroad, kidding herself that she’s doing something of worth. My reality, for at least the next 4 months, is that I’m worth nothing more than the 7.25 an hour to clean toilets despite being able to slide down a hill on two planks of wood really fucking well.