A lot has happened in 24 hours. Guy has traveled to the other side of the world, Rick - my brother - has got onto a graduate training scheme for the accountancy firm of a huge bank, and another couple of my mates have announced that they’re upping sticks to go to another part of the country, as one of them has also got onto a graduate scheme.
And that leaves me.
I’ve had a lot of time to look into my heart, and think about things. If I am to be completely, brutally honest about around here, I’m not 100% happy. It is just a realization that, in a years time, I could probably count the people who I go out for a drink with on one hand, and still have 2 or 3 fingers left over.
Anybody who knows me knows that this isn’t me. During my time at Eirias we could easily drag out 10-15 people on the lash with us, and on a good day there’d be upwards of 20 people.
The same was true in the second and third year of university. Second year drinkathons became the stuff of legends, and it was a case of everybody goes out, always.
The third year it did calm down a lot, but still my social life was still going strong. This time, though, it was more in the lounge of my house and Kimos Cafe at lunchtime, as opposed to getting wasted all the time. This continued for another year, until I moved back to Wales.
Life in Wales started good, I got a job doing what I wanted to do for my life, but a lot of my mates weren’t so lucky, and over time they started to move away from Colwyn Bay. I just feel that, now, I’m not sure I want to stay around here.
Colwyn Bay is quite depressing you know. I know you only see the bad stuff, as the fact is that most of the good, honest people are in work like me normally, but walking to get my lunchtime sarnies or getting a breath of fresh, you see people who - it appears to me - are just waiting to die. I know that’s a horrible thing to say, but that all you seem to see mostly. No young, professional, happy go lucky people.
As hard as it may seem, I’m not bitter, angry or depressed. I have just given myself a lot to think about recently. I just feel like I need to do something ambitious. Life at times feels like passing me by, with everybody else doing such exciting stuff. I need to use my little finger’s worth of ambition to grab life by the balls and work out exactly what I want to do with my life.
Failing that, I could always get drunk and do crazy shit whilst I work it out.
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Rhys Wynne, the author of this blog, is a 20 something web designer from Colwyn Bay.
I felt exactly the same - all my school friends were off doing amazing things and I was stuck in Reading and then I moved to SOuthampton which as lovely as it was it’s not exactly a buzzing cosmopolitan place - it’s full of students, students who have fallen into jobs after uni and families and I wasn’t in any of those catergories. The tricky part is, is that it’s really hard to start again. I landed on my feet here in London and made a tonne of friends but they’ve all gone back to Aus now. So the last few days I’ve been a little down but i know that things are changing and I’ll be fine in a week or two. Life has it’s ups and downs and I wouldn’t change that.
Your not the only one gonna be left in Colwyn Bay, it’ll just be the two of us standing at the bar in the PYB trying to look young, free and happy infront of the kids who are now legal enough to drink but weren’t even in high school when we were!!
but to be honest I can’t say how long I wanna hang around here but not too long if I can help it.
Hey, I’m feeling exactly like that at the mo. Things could be worse Rhys, you could be me! I still have no one to live with me next year so thats a problem. I don’t know anyone in Liverpool anymore, when M&P leave in July I really will not know anyone. The bowling people are not what they were and I honestly can’t be friends with people I can’t stand to be around, you may say that’s my choice but it would do your head in trying to spend time with them. So many people have said to me “it’s that time of the year”, to me that’s balls, it’s one of the best times of the year at the mo. I have no suggestions for you this time only to carry on with what your doing and if you have some free time, look into doing something you’ve always wanted to do and see if you can go learn about it, something manual perhaps? If not and you still feel crap get yourself down to the gym and sweat out the feeling of fed up - it does work
This is exactly why I left the beautiful fresh air of the wales. You need to be where you are happy, but there are always going to be people who you think have a more amazing time than you. One of my friends is currently living and working in New York, damn that lucky sum bitch
I worry sometimes about when I leave Uni and what I will end up doing, having not worked for so long I think sometimes that I will just end up unemployable and drifting around. I don’t get it often but I hate that feeling.
I hope you figure out what you want to do and then grab it by the balls as you said.
Personally, I think you should sell you Wii, and buy a ticket to Australia and travel this beautiful nation amongst its gorgeous array of feminine beauty with your long-time buddy Guy…
But that’s just my opinion.
you know my opinion on the subject. Theres nothing (other than family) holding you to colwyn bay. And like I said last night I dont see your job getting you anywhere. If I were you I’d take this chance and go travelling Like paddy said, maybe just around europe (thats what I’m gonna do) cos your not going to get another chance until you retire.
Here Here. Seriously if I didn’t have financial ties I would be gone faster than Han on a bottle of Lambrini!!!
I know grammar nazis are as welcome here as a Frenchman with bad breath but…
It’s HEAR HEAR, idiot
Proof: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hear_hear
And now for the relevant comment:
I thought you went home on health grounds? If that is no longer the case, why don’t you try somewhere new? There is nothing stopping you, except for debt and maybe a little bit of fear.
If Han is right, and there really is nothing except your family keeping you in CB, then why not just have a look around and see if there are any jobs going that you might fancy applying for, anywhere you like. Even abroad if that’s what takes your fancy. You can apply, and maybe get an interview. You don’t have to take it any furthe if you don’t want to, it’ll just let you see what opportunities are out there.
I know how you feel, I was like that for ages. Only difference is, I have been back in Preston for nearly 2 years now,and I have managed to re-establish myself here, and now I DO have lots of things tying me here, my hobbies, my friends and I’m buying a house with my best friend! I don’t want to leave (although still struggling to find what I really want career wise, and love life wise!!)
So, alternatively, stick it out and get out there and find some new drinking buddies, and see if things work themselves out, like they did for me.
OR….do both!!
I do agree with the comments so far to a point, but I think the problem isn’t so much what’s not keeping you in Colwyn Bay, but you’re image of the lives of those who arn’t there anymore. During sixth form, and then uni there are obvious ways to form reasonably large groups of friends and hence have some of those often wanting to socialise and have fun. After that, in the world of work or whatever you do, this is less the case. Maybe you work in an office with at most 10 people, of which only 1 or 2 are of a similar age, its unlikely you’ll work with more than 10 people who are within 3 years of you (and hence the most likely people you’ll want to spend free time with as you’ll have similar interests). I loved sixth form, it was brilliant, but this change and move on. Here now in Bath (after last years crazyness) I live with 2 others and in my group of friends theres 3 others. So 6 of us, and I consider that very lucky. Not to sound downbeat, but wherever you’d consider moving, to London, Manchester, France, America or wherever, things arn’t going to be the same. There’s not going to be a group of 15 or 20 of you who do stuff together. It’s just part of growing up - like hangovers, beer bellies and receding hairlines.
God I sound morbid. It’s not all doom and gloom. There’s new places to be explored and people to meet. You’ll find that the diversity of ages and backgrounds in other places exposes you to cool new things (even in uni I bet most people were very similar really). I guess the problem with staying in Colwyn Bay is that you’re less likely to make the effort to make new friends. But it’s a great place, especially now summers coming and you can appreiciate the countryside + sea. I guess the ideas of others to keep an eye out in the newspaper job sections and browse for vacancies online every week or two is a good idea so that you keep your options open, but mainly try to appreiciate the life you have and the friends you’ve got around you now. Oh, and come visit me in Bath
Yeah, places with aging populations suck. I live in one too.
And the older you get, the smaller your social circle gets. But the quality improves tremendously, which is a relief, I think.
Lets face it, the Bay is a dump. I couldn’t wait to get out of there fast enough and never, ever want to go back. Sadly, from time to time I’m compelled to go and see one or other members of the family and have to trawl through the scally-accented, bedsit ridden, stink-hole. I remember the place being decent, if not wonderful. Now it’s Rhyl-lite.
Fact is that after University then friends tend to drift to all corners of the country.
What do you want? The bright lights of a big town, the quiet of the country or the Welshness of wales? There are a fair number of choices of town along the north coast which could satisfy any of those.
I ended up going to Manchester, then Southampton, Bournemouth and finally back to Wales - albeit the south coast.
Small town life, unfortunately :/. A close-by group of friends was one of the things I really missed when I got my first ‘proper’ job; which was in Cardiff, so in theory (or if I’d been a bit more sociable) it should have been relatively easy to make friends my own age.
Travelling sounds like a fun idea.
This happens to me all the time. A large number of my friends have moved to other states because they don’t like the traffic and commuting time here in California. Also they have found that they can buy much bigger homes in the midwest with the money they get when they sell their homes here. Only a few of my friends remain here, most of my high school buddies are gone, gone, gone.