Wherever I lay my hat that's my home

Here's a bit of history for you....

1980 - Born in London (December)
1980/1984 - Lived in Sidcup till the age of 3.
1984/1986 - Moved to Doha, Qatar, till the age of 5.
1986 - Returned to England to live in Ramsgate, Kent.
1999 - Moved to Chichester age 18 to study at University.
1999/2002 - Completed my degree.
2002/2003 - Elected as Vice-President for the Students' Union (1 year term).
2003/2004 - Worked as Bars and Entertainments Assistant Manager at the University.
2004 - Moved back to Ramsgate.

Ramsgate has always been my home town and will always be the place that I grew up in but Chichester also has a place in my heart. The thing is that I loved my time in Chichester and spent 5 years there, but by the end of that time I was missing Ramsgate. I could've stayed but I had felt a rot settling in and had to leave to save myself. There was another reason for me to move back to Ramsgate and that was because my Mother and Grandmother also live there.

They both lived in the same house and this is where I moved back to. My Grandma was very ill and I think it helped that I was home to help my Mum whose responsibility it was to look after this bed-ridden old women, who had in her earlier years been the live and soul of the party, but in her latter years had been ravaged by Parkinson's Disease, stokes, and also arthritis . Sadly she died in December 2004, but I thank God that I was there to be able to be at her side at the hospital, to tell her I loved her, and to reassure her everything was alright. If I had still been living in Chichester I may not have been there for her and I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself. It was also good to be able to support my Mother at a time like that.

I am still living with my Mum, and we get by quite well, but it is times like now that I start to miss Chichester. I have got a lot of friends here but I only really see them at weekends so I think it is loneliness that is giving me these feelings for Chichester, where my life revolved around a place heaving with youngsters who are all experiencing something new, which in turn added something to my life. I am fed up with Ramsgate as it never changes, or maybe it is me that never changes. I am in a job where I spend most of the time by myself in a small office, and I think I need something new to put the spark back into me.

I'm looking into new avenues for job prospects and ultimately I keep coming back to the same areas. The only problem is that I can't commit myself to jumping into something, and it will ultimately have to be something which will start off working around my present jobs, the ones that pay the bills. Do I risk it all and follow my dreams, or do I stick with the status quo and keep doing what I'm doing?

The area I'm interested in is promotion and design. When I get the chance to work with Dreamweaver or Photoshop I become more animated and can spend hours working on something, perfecting it, and making someone else happy. I have mainly done small websites for bands, or people I know, and really enjoy designing something which has been transplanted from their ideas into something physical. I've just got an email from an old friend who needs a website for his band, and so I'm going to work on that later.

Another reason why these homesick feeling for Chichester have come up is that most of the people's sites I run are from Chichester, as it is where I learnt about t'web. I could honestly see myself living back in Chichester but what about the sacrifices I'd have to make to leave here?...my friends and my family.

At the end of the day nothing will probably come of this post and it will be resigned to history, but I will be visiting Chichester again on October 7th and we'll see what happens then. In the meantime I think this post has helped me a bit and I'll try and get my head into the correct mindset and try and be the person I was a few years ago, still me, but having more fun, and more self-assured.

Thanks for listening reading