What is Your Quest?

I have noticed there are some misconceptions circulating about my nationality. While it's true that I've been working on becoming a British citizen, I am sadly not at the end of my quest yet.

Over the past few months I've made certain steps towards that goal. First of which was passing the Life in The UK exam, followed by applying for a Permanent Residency Permit. Both of which required a lot of time. I've spent a month preparing for the exam, a week filling up a form for the permit and two months waiting for a decision to be made. It all went well enough. I expected to wait half a year for the permit but I got it in less than half the time which allowed me to visit my godson for his first communion ceremony. My main hurdle at the moment is money.

I've been saving money for it for the past year. Due to that trip I had to spend some of it so my plan to get it done by the holiday season didn't pan out. The fee going up by three times what I expected this year didn't help either. So a few weeks ago I sat down to make some calculations. Turns out that going by my usual rate I'll have enough money saved up for it in March.

As such, my main concern now is to cut down my expenses so I can get it over with as soon as possible. Currently, my plan is to cut down on my usual expenses so I can hit my target sooner than March. I've already made some decisions to achieve that.

- Reluctantly, I broke my promise to a good friend to visit her in Amsterdam this year.
- I won't be doing anything for my birthday in November nor for Christmas as in previous years.
- I'm suspending my dojo membership for the next three months.

All of the above should net me three months worth of savings and if I receive back the money I lent out to a friend, I'll have another month worth of savings to add to that.

It still won't let me reach my goal by October but my mum wanted to give me the money I'm missing. I refused to take any, obviously, but we talked about it some and reached an agreement where I would borrow money from her after the summer holidays. Hopefully, I'll manage to spend as much time at work as possible over the coming months, boosting my income in the process so I won't be forced to borrow as much from my mum as she's offering to give me.

Cutting Down

For the past few months I've been logging in on Facebook, going down my Friend List and clicking the unfriend button on someone. I would do this on a small scale every year after my birthday but this time I decided to go through all my social networks, Facebook being the last stop.

I'd like to be more open online like I used to be, especially now that I'm putting up a front in my day-to-day life. In order to do that though, I have to ensure that only a select group of people has viewing privileges.

I've never been a party person. Although it seemed to me to be a well-known fact, it kept being ignored. I was constantly subjected to endless questioning and dismissal in my attempts to explain why I take no enjoyment in the same activities as most. Despite it, my wishes went ignored and I kept being damaged by so-called friends who thought they were doing me a favour by trying to fix me.

I was tired of dealing with it.

I thought that maybe if I go out a few times, drink some, start lying about having fun but my finances dwindling too much because of it, I'll be able to get some peace at work. It worked, in a way. I no longer feel like I'm being dragged out against my will when I decline an offer.


I'm not happy that I had to resort to outright lying to people and I have to admit, being so closed up these days is having severe negative effects on me.

I broke down last week.
I spent a whole day mostly in bed and in tears.
Today I managed to keep myself together for half a day, at least.

I guess I'm still struggling to find a balance to this new way of life.