things are a-changing

This post isn't so much Crohn's related but is something that has played on my mind for quite a while...

From the age of 4 you go into school and are immediately surrounded by fellow children, all eager to make friends. This continues all the way up until you're 18. You obviously move to secondary school and some people change schools or relocate, but each time you are generally set up with a group of people - all your own age, in the same place, for hours each day & you make friends. Again, when you go to Uni, you arrive on mass, with hundreds if not thousands of others, all eager to meet and talk to new people. & then you graduate.

Suddenly after 18 odd years of being on the conveyor belt of life you are flung in to the 'real world'. Many get a job and keep on moving forward. However, if like me you don't follow these steps you take an alternative route whilst everyone else seems to move forward around you. Some people decide to take a year out, move home, can't seem to get the job they want or simply don't know what they want to do yet. Some, like me, opt out of the job hunt & end up going it alone. Don't get me wrong, I love Chroma. I love being my own boss and the huge satisfaction of creating something from scratch and watching it grow and achieve. It does however get pretty lonely. I spend all day, five days a week, on my own. Even at the weekends the vast, vast majority of my school & Uni friends have gone two ways, jobs in London or travelling abroad. This hasn't left many people in my home town, and those that are around are busy working hard towards their own goals. I'm still living at home and so surrounded by my lovely family and I see the few friends still around once(isn) a week. It's funny, however, that even when you're super busy and have a lot of people around you, you can still feel on your own.

I start to doubt myself, watching the onslaught of 'successful' lives on my Facebook, Twitter & Instagram feeds. Suddenly people seem to be growing up. There are engagements, new jobs and pregnancies left, right and centre. Everyones lives are so transient with everyone moving at a crazy speed. Right now is also a time when you start to really work out and see who your real friends are. With everyone spread out around the country and even the world, you don't keep in touch with everyone as easily & that big group of school and Uni friends, starts to get that little bit smaller.

I sometimes look around and can't really work out how it has all happened. I know I have all my own stuff going on too - I'm moving to Cardiff (which I'm finding more and more nerve-wracking every day) and Chroma is steadily growing and taking up a lot of my time. Maybe others looking in, think I've got all my shit together too. But whilst I sit in on the weekend, contemplating heading to the cinema on my own, I wonder if lots of people are feeling the way I do. Everyone relocating, heading off to travel, starting new jobs or still wondering what on earth to do are feeling just as freaked out and lonely as I am...