The dangers of not doing...

I'm excited, as Big Kev used to say before he died of obesity-related causes.

Excited to be living in London, the first time I have 'set up' on my own, away from (most) friends, family and familiarity. And it's cool here, cool as. It's the London of gritty movies, frosted lipstick girls and hair-combed-forward boys. The population is diverse, there's estates round every second corner, a pub on every first.

So why do I feel I'm still hovering, uncertain, on the edges? How to plunge into society, take it by the scruff and claim it as mine? I'm here, I'm Claire, I'm in London, I'm... a Londoner?

Finding work has been relatively easy for me. But I'm scared of how awful I felt when I wasn't working. All the plans I'd made about taking time to potter around and do creative 'stuff' seemed to vanish in a puff of sick-smelling desolation. Without a routine to hang my life around, the rest of it collapsed like last season's dresses without adequate coathangerage. You could still discern the patterns in the puddle of clothes on the ground, but they seemed flatter, less beautiful, and perhaps not something I would actually wear.

Now I have the employment bit sorted, and yet a new fear emerges - the rut. I love the place I'm living in, am enjoying the commute to work because it's new, and feels so quintessentially "London", but I work each day, come home at night, Isco cooks, we drink wine, I bitch about work, we watch TV, then go to bed. Hmm, sounds almost EXACTLY like our life in Marrickville! It's OK for a bit, but where is the tipping point between 'settling in' and having settled back in to a slightly dull groove of what I've come to realise is my typical modus operandi?

I'll keep you posted. Not that anyone's reading, I don't think, heh.