Summer, and how it's fading.

I was so sad standing in Atlantic Court on the day we had to move out. All my friends were packing their stuff into their parents cars. We all assembled in front of a tree and got our picture taken with a Polaroid camera while we prepared to spend practically three months without each other.

I wanted to spend my summer with these people, in our white houses. I wanted to wake up everyday and be surrounded my my friends and spend every night talking about life, the world and what we all wanted to achieve, but of I knew that I had to leave as well.

Stupid regrets where going in my head, about the friends I should have made - but didn't, and the friends I shouldn't have made - but did. I didn't take enough pictures of the best times and I should have went out at every opportunity available to me.

All these things are basically nothing to worry about, as of course my year wasn't going to be absolutely perfect, but those things made it what it was and allowed me to have the best year of my life and meet the best people out there.

From the moment go, summer never really interested me - I didn't want time off. I wanted what I had for 9 months constantly. I knew I'd go home and it'd be me alone a lot of the time, and travelling a lot to spend time with only one person. It was a depressing thought.

I decided as soon as I got home that I did want to do something with my time. First on my list was a job. I was nineteen and I'd still never worked a day in my life which I got paid for, and I felt horribly inexperienced. I knew that when I was looking for a job they'd look at my youth work, they'd look at my grades and I'd look like a possible candidate until they looked at the big empty 'Previous Employment' section.

So when I got the job, I was really happy and felt satisfied that now I would begin making my own money, and start being very self-sufficient so that my parents money was for them, and I knew they deserved to have their own money. It also felt great to be capable of doing a job which helped people, and made a different even just to their day. It allowed me to work on my attitude, and if nothing else prepared me for working when I get a proper career job.

So I've been working there 3 full weeks, and I've earned 300pound in the first two. It may not seem much, but it's a big thing for me. In the next few weeks I'll be working up to 40 hours a week, creating a surplus in my bank account which I will spend hopefully on a little holiday with David at the start of September before we return to university life again.

Summer so far for me has been okay. Working away, and David coming up to stay for a while a good few times. I've also met up with everybody from university a few times and those times have reminded me of how much fun we have together and the bonds between us over the summer have only grown.

Summer used to be a lot more than it is now. Late nights, and playing in the streets until the milkmen came. Adventures everyday and family holidays to foreign countries. However, when times move on, so do we. We have to adapt. Now we have to travel, we have to create our own money, we have to make a lot of effort to be social and it's not handy or easy.

Sometimes we have to do what we don't want, to get what we do want. I'm enjoying summer, and working through it so I can fund the brilliant times ahead and maybe pay for something I want very desperately!

Hopefully I'll accomplish things! I'll let you know. :)

I hope you're all enjoying summer, and doing something constructive with your time!