To adventure or not to adventure...

I'm the first to admit that the title of this blog is a little optimistic. I'm not a person who has a lot of adventures. Anyone who knows me will agree with that, I think. And no, the 12 hour oddyssey that was my outing around town on Friday night doesn't count, if only because I was officially asleep for the last four hours of it.

I never hear gossip first - a recent example being me congratulating a friend on his engagement when I turned up somewhere late, only to find that he'd been dumped by his fiance and told everyone else before I got there. At the moment, I don't go anywhere, because I'm trying to save like crazy (and going a little nuts as a result, because I'm sure my bank balance should be growing, but no...its somehow managed to shrink instead. My credit card debt, on the other hand, continues to grow - how? I'm not going near shops!!! I'm paying it off!!! I'm not even carrying the cards with me anymore!!! Yet still it grows, in one of the mysteries that will always be too much for me to understand).

TOday, however, marked a step closer to the adventures I know are waiting out there for me. I have a visa to work in the UK. True, its only a working holiday visa, a poor second (maybe even fifth) cousin to the ancestry visas so many Aussies seem to qualify for, but it will let me stay there longer than the two weeks that's been my record so far before running out of cash. (Yes, it's a recurring theme. I know. But to do things, I need money. I spent 7 years as a poor uni student, and now I've got to pay back the government for the paltry sum they loaned me to do it. I'm thinking if I work until my 87th birthday I should almost get there.) The point is that the adventure is so much closer. In under 10 weeks, I'll be wrapping up my work life here. Two weeks after that, and I'll be landing at Heathrow and finding my way to the couch of some friends until I have a job of my very own to support my shopping habit. Suddenly, it all seems more real to me. The lists I've been making of things I need to organise are getting whittled down, and the count downs I've been running since I bought my ticket way back at the start of February have finally made it into double digits. Things are starting to happen.

Now the only question is, will I have the nerve to get on the plane and leave almost everyone I know behind for two years like I plan? There's so much of the world that I want to see, but so many adventures that I know I'm too chicken to do on my own. So, to adventure or not to adventure, that is the question. I think I answer "To adventure!" and, in the spirit of that, feel compelled to down a shot of something harsh and alcoholic that makes my face contort into an unattractive grimace. Cheers all round.