In the beginning...

The start of a new blog. A chance to create something totally original for myself and document all the ways in which I aim to further myself, both professionally and personally.

And my first goal is a BIG one... To cook my way through Julia Child's 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' in 365 days, in an effort to escape my mind-numbing job as a government call-centre worker living in New York city.

... oh, wait. Scratch that.

And yes, that... ladies and gentlemen, is what I'm sure this and future posts will be littered with, comedy GEMS such as that one. Which I have no doubt will have you freely spraying your shorts with urine as you roll on the floor laughing (or ROFL, if you will) as you can barely contain yourself long enough to read on.

In truth, I'm feeling very unfunny at the moment, as I sit here in my FREEZING cold flat in Leeds. In a house which seems to be caught in a kind of 'limbo' between a suburb called 'Chapeltown' and further up the road 'Chapel Allerton'. The latter of which is small yet oddly charming little area of Leeds, which all seems to centre around (quite literally) a giant 'weeping willow' tree in the middle of a round-about on a busy main road. Around which are dozens of little coffee shops, restaurants and frilly boutiques, which seem oddly distanced from the city centre and leave me wondering how they survive so far from the consumer masses. It is a largely white middle-class area and seems to be busy all the time (even though I've only been here 5 months and I've only walked through it half a dozen times)

'Chapeltown', however is a very different and hugely diverse community, which runs along a busy main-road leading up to a motor-way not far from Leeds city centre. I'm aware that it obviously spreads out further than the main stretch of shops (as does Chapel Allerton), however it's the only area that I see on my way to work with my girlfriend every day. It's an area that people I spoke to before moving to Leeds told me to stay away from, as it apparently has something of a reputation for crime and violence. Like I said before, I've only been here 5 months and although I don't 'technically' live there, I feel I can comment on what I've seen. Which that Chapeltown seems like a far more 'real' place to live than Chapel Allerton. Don't get me wrong, Chapel Allerton is a lovely place, however it feels rather 'commercial' (whatever that means) compared to Chapeltown which feels like a living, breathing, evolving community.

I'm not going to lie to you, I have felt rather intimidated walking through Chapeltown, coming from somewhere as middle-class as York, I feel I've had instilled in me an oddly unfounded sense of uneasiness. It's strange, as I feel like I've never had to be afraid of where I've lived in the past, so I walk around in my new neighborhood, telling myself over and over 'I'm okay, I've got this... screw the naysayers, I can handle this'... The strange thing is, this seems to be exactly what I wished for when I moved away from York with my girlfriend Keeley, to step outside our 'comfort-zone' and start to create new things for ourselves. And so far, I feel like we're slowly doing that, we're both still in retail work and we're worrying about things like money seemingly more than ever... but underneath it all it feels like the first step toward our own life together.

It has to be said though, we both miss York quite a lot. Apart from my girlfriend's family (whom I've become very close with over the last year and a half) I miss all the folks I left behind at the City Screen cinema, most of whom I feel like I made life-long friends with. And although my colleagues at my new job are brilliant and I get along well with them, I miss how much I laughed working at the art house cinema, which had a great feeling of electricity about it (even though if you would've asked me whether I loved working there just 6 months ago during a 12 hour shift, I would've probably sprayed profanity at you through a mouthful of my fifteenth cup of tea that day) But everyone has a tendency to romanticise the memory of places they used to live, or people they've met, but in the case of York and the City Screen, I loved it even when it seemed crappy. It was a place full of people like myself, who were either frustrated actors, writers, artists or musicians, who could come together and try to work on projects whilst bitching about all the slightly 'off-kilter' regular customers who frequented the place (although if any of you 'regulars' are reading this, I don't mean you... just those other ass-clowns)

Which I suppose brings me back to sitting here, in the cold, wishing I was being more creative and having only myself to blame at the fact that I'm not. At the moment, especially with working a 9 to 5 job, I can't help but feel like an older, more boring, less creative (yet thankfully, slightly thinner) version of my former self. Yet I've at least resolved to do something about furthering my acting career (which at the moment is pretty much non-existent) However, I've had some head-shots taken by Mr. Matt Dobson

Which is why I'm writing this blog, which will appear pretty much whenever I feel like writing it. However it will be an attempt at forcing myself to look at what's going on with my life at the moment and striving forward to make positive changes... I realise that I've pretty much just said that same thing in the last paragraph, but what do ya' want?, I've barely written more than 200 words since university so the first few posts are probably going to seem poorly punctuated and uneven, but that's the beauty of these things, they don't have to be perfect I suppose.

Well, I'm going to stop there for now. There are about 10 other things that I wanted to mention in this first post, but I've just realised how long this one is... space it out for the people Arron, space it out, don't be such a frickin' time-vampire.

I'm going to go cook my first dish of the Julia Child's challenge now, which I've decided to combine with my love of film to create alternative celebrity-based dishes. Tonight's dish?... Shia La Boeuf Bourguignon! (See? Comedy GEMS!... *ahem*)

Anyway, until next time,

Bon Appetit!