Time is money....Time is of the essence....Time is drunk and needs to take a seat.

I'm forever jealous of those people surfing through their early 20's with ease. Who are you mutants? Where did you come from? Are they accepting new applicants? I would love to apply to whatever cult it was, I will gladly drink that Koolaid.

I just realized that I've started to wander down a path in the this blog post I don't want to go down. A path that leads to a 500 word ramble about confusion and direction, when in all actuality I have plenty of one and not much of the other and for once the scale tips in my favour. I am currently confusion-less (actually that is a lie, I am still very confused as to how boys wear skinny jeans without their boxer/briefs/mankini getting all bundled up, but that is for a different post). I know what I want, or at least I know the correct route to take.

If you are an avid reader (aka if you are my mum) you will know I had planned on being in Los Angeles by this point in time, instead I am writing this from sweltering New York City and for once I can say this is out of choice (and let's be honest there are worse places to be.) The Dordyline of yesteryear (ok, yesterday) would have wrote a scathing rant on the perils of being stagnant. The new and improved self is looking at the glass half full of opportunity (and Pinot Grigio.)

Over the last few weeks, I have learned to accept that time is not flying by as fast as I may feel sometimes, yet it is not frozen like it can seem. I can't let it pass me by, but I can't hyperventilate my way through it either. Things happen when they happen, that great opportunity left to make way for something better and hustling is paramount to success.

I will make things happen and that I'm sure of, but they wouldn't happen in the next three seconds no matter how hard I click my heels and this is the most refreshing epiphany I've had in a long time. 

Tune in next time for another episode of You've got this Girl written by a tipsy 22 year old who is really good at stumbling in the right direction. Now if you would please excuse me I have apples to smother in peanut butter and apartments to google. 

Different, yet exactly the same.

(In honor of being 12)

2005

When a cranky eight year old Jordyn used to complain about being so tiny, she was told to not be sad at what she was because time would go so quickly. Two blinks later she would be all grown up.

A few weeks ago I gathered with some of my longest friends. It's an odd statement to make, because I could of sworn it was just yesterday we were introduced, yet here we were ten blinks later. We used to spend every day together, just silly 11 year olds who spoke with the voice of false experience. We had our snow globe life completely figured out, before swiftly throwing it up into the air and having it come down with a crack.

We all left that snow globe; leaking out in different directions, towards different cities and down different paths. Months upon months would swirl by in our new worlds but every year we would make it a mission to reassemble in one form or another. 

This time it was different.

We weren't simply hanging out to reminisce and reconnect, we were gathering at the beginning stages of each others next step. To celebrate graduation and change, we were linking arms to pull each other on to our next chapters.

Moving abroad or across the country, going to law school, or jumping feet first into a bonafide big girl career in the big city...we were all taking steps towards our next phase. 

As I drove away that day, slightly (very...) pink from the sun and full of happy memory, I thought of those little girls we once were, bigger than our boots and over confident on life, speaking of the future as if it was forever away.  Now we were so much different, yet exactly the same. Those same young girls but now we had confidence by the hands of experience, closeness by the hands of the past and opportunity by the hands of all we were. 

and I can't wait to see what comes next.

Anywhere else you could possibly go after New York would be, a pleasure cruise.

It's 3:05am on a Friday night and I'm laying in my bed...alone...pondering.

I've lived in New York for years now, and that alone is very hard to comprehend.

What happened to 2011?

Most of my time here was a blur.

A blur of alcohol and nights. I spent months dedicated to different people, yet in reflection they seem no longer than the blink of an eye.

New York is weird....or at least my New York is weird.

Being here doesn't feel like life.

My day to day doesn't exist.

Living here is like fake living, and the days seem to pass much quicker.

You don't have time to be, because you are always going with no end goal.

When I first moved here I worked nights, and followed up all shifts with alcohol.

I don't think I even saw daylight for months on end.

New York broke me in a way.

Many ways.

I've reached a point now where I am unhappy surrounded by it.

Unhappy with the same people, places and things, always, everywhere.

So I avoid being surrounded by it.

Today I woke up at 10am and forced myself to go back to sleep so I would have less time to kill.

That isn't living.

In the past these feelings would force me into a relationship.

Another way to kill some time.

Killing time so one day I can wake up at 52, wondering where all my years went.

The truth is, I'm full of talk.

One minutes I'm moving to California.

The next I'm going home to Australia.

A few more fleeting moments and I'm back in New York forever.

Last year I went home to visit my Mum 4 months in a row to get away from this place.

And I cried every night before I had to return.

I'm unhappy and anxious here....always.

Which is why I'm leaving.

The how doesn't even matter.

Simply the where.

So bring me a map on a cork board and a lucky dart and I'll figure the rest out later.

Give it a year.

When I was younger I made a lot of big decisions on impulse. I lived in a constant bubble of "the grass is always greener" and no matter where I was I constantly pined for what I didn't have. When I was 11 my mother moved myself and my brother away from our home in Australia and settled in the USA, which gave me two homes, and a lot of options. I pin-balled between homes for a few years, even making the move to the other side of the country along the way. No matter where I was it seemed I wasn't content.

http://www.sydney-australia.biz/western-australia/perth/perth-kids-activities.php

Home.

Now that I'm older and wiser (debatable) I still have those same unsettling thoughts that maybe I'm not in the right place, or doing the right thing but the wiser element of the equation has made a huge difference. Instead of biting the bullet whenever my mood shifts, I now have, what I like to call, a one-year-to-get-my-shit-together-plan.

For example, last January I went home to Australia for a month of sun, free alcohol and nothingness with my family, and at the time it was exactly what I needed. I needed to get out of New York, and be surrounded by people I loved and cared about. The flip side of this was that as soon as I returned to my apartment, I had this longing to be as far away from it as possible. Younger Jordyn would have begged to come home, forget this rotten American life and move away. Older Jordyn gave herself one year. A year to devote all my time to figuring out if New York was the place for me, get a new job, meet new people...get my life together!


                           

http://www.newhampshire.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/99999999/NEWHAMPSHIRE0307/110429989/0/sports09

Home.

Along the way, I decided that New York probably wasn't the place for me. Don't get me wrong, I love it here. I have been a big girl on my own in this city since about a week after I turned 18. I've had a lot of amazing experiences here, I have great people here....but something is missing. On the flip side, I started to question if moving home to Australia was the best alternative.

I love my family more than anything and every time I go home to find that my four year old brother is now pushing 6' (now over 6'....I get it Matthew!) is rough. I feel like I'm missing out on a lot, and as someone who values relationships over experiences, it's a hard pill to swallow. Time isn't infinite and the thought of something happening to anybody whilst I'm so far away will never be an easy thought, but since I was 11 this is my life. I'm spread out, bi-continental, and that's just the way it is (things will never be the sammmmmme) 

http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/03/9b/2d/f2/new-york-city.jpg

Home.

I have constantly had a list of places I wanted to live. I remember telling my step-mum at the age of about ten that I wanted to live in London, I love the idea of living in Nashville where everybody just seems nicer, or Seattle, or Sydney.

My only hesitation? I don't want to get lost in the whirlwind of looking to greener pastures in my past. I want to know for sure, not that where I'm moving is necessarily the place for me, but more importantly that I'm not leaving a place I belong. Yes, going back is always an option, but who wants to go backwards in a life that keeps hurtling forwards?

http://students.marshall.usc.edu/undergrad/international-programs/iep/incoming-students/living-in-los-angeles/

Home?

That is where my year plan comes back in. After a year of thought and action, I have decided that moving back to Australia isn't the right game plan right now, but recently I have had California on the brain. So what now? I give it a year. I live my life with the idea that next January, California will be my home. I budget and look towards that, and ultimately decide if it's for me.

Right now, nothing seems more right... but a lot can change in a year.