I Need a Project

I’m Nathalia, hi.

You might be wondering about my name. My basic pronunciation explanation (that’s a bit of a mouthful) is just pretend the ‘h’ doesn’t exist, but the more complicated explanation is that the ‘h’ lengthens the ‘a’, so that instead of ‘Natalia’ with a short ‘a’, it’s ‘Nathalia’ with a long ‘a’ (I don’t actually know anything about linguistics, this is just how someone once explained it to me, so if you know better please let m know). I could tell you more about my name, in fact I could write a whole blog post about it and maybe I will, but that’s probably enough for now.

Okay, (very) basic intro over, now lets get into what this whole thing is actually about. I need a project. I finished my A-levels a month ago now and since then I’ve done very little. I’ve visited universities, I’ve seen friends, I’ve baked cakes, I’ve gone for walks in the park, but for the majority of the time I’ve been sitting at home, in my room, on my bed, scrolling through Facebook and Twitter, whilst half watching an episode of Orange is the New Black, or forgetting to click the ‘skip ad’ button on a YouTube video. I’ve told myself I need time to rest, that A-levels were exhausting and stressful and I need to give myself time to recover and to a certain extent that’s true, but I’m becoming lazy and ‘I need rest’ is becoming an excuse to do nothing rather than a reason to look after myself. I haven’t been reading as much as I said I would (despite getting very excited and buying lots of books), I’ve only been running once, my room is still a mess and as for starting my personal statement so that I’m all ready to apply to university as early as possible, well lets just say I haven’t got very far with that either. So I’m starting this blog.

I’ve got other reasons for starting this blog too. I decided not to apply for university last September when the rest of my year did, because I was confused and undecided. I didn’t have time to do the research I wanted, or to take trains across the country visiting universities and to top it all, one of my English lit teachers decided to shatter my already fragile decision to study history, by telling me that I was really good at English and that he thought I should do an English literature degree (I’m actually really grateful for this, because at that point I was basing my decision on the fact that I thought I wasn’t good enough for an literature degree and now my final decision to do history feels far more thought through). I wanted to take a gap year anyway, so last Autumn I decided I would wait for a year and to apply once I had my A-level results and had been able to do a bit more research. However, this means I’m now facing a year of unknown, living at home probably working in Sainsburys and maybe traveling somewhere and I want to document that. I have a diary already, but I wanted to do something more formal and feel like I’m creating something and I also wanted to make more use of the fancy(ish) camera I bought a few years ago when I though I wanted to be an artist. I also wanted something that would keep me thinking and stop my writing getting rusty, because although this hypothetical job at Sainsburys will bring in money, I can’t imagine it will keep my brain very engaged, or my writing skills up to scratch.

Here goes. This is about to go out into the world where everyone who googles my name can see it, because lets face  it, people probably aren’t going to read this. So imaginary reader, I’m off to watch University Challenge, marvel at the lack of diversity and listen in bafflement to questions in which I generally only understand 10% of the words and sometimes get very excited about knowing the answer to (usually if they’re about Harry Potter, the Tudors or King Lear) bye  for now.