Today felt like a roller coaster. It started alright- I found my groove in the morning and actually felt like I was getting a lot done, but right around lunch everything started piling up. I have about eight different projects I'm working on and I've managed to stay fairly organized, but the woman I've been mostly working with kept coming to me with about ten issues for each of my eight projects, so by mid-afternoon I felt like I was drowning. It was like the book "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day." I figured things my day was totally ruined but it actually improved quite drastically after I left work.
The nice part about really tough days like today is that when you finally leave it feels like you're being let out of jail, or class on the last day before summer. I decided to treat myself tonight and go to an actual restaurant. I've sort of been trying to stay away from them because I don't really want to be the single person sitting in the corner, but I couldn't face eating another prawn mayonnaise sandwich or some bland Indian wrap, so I found a restaurant online that looked pretty good and made a reservation. I've been trying to spend as little money as possible but since everything here seems to be at least twice as expensive, that hasn't been working out so well. Even a pre-packaged sandwich, 7-Eleven style, costs around $6, and I've realized you can't live on those for long!
The place that I picked served Mediterranean food that wasn't fantastic by any means, but I was happy to eat anything that wasn't between sandwiched between two slices of bread or stuffed in some sort of wrap. The restaurant was really nice inside and it was so relaxing to sit there in the dim light and listen to the piano music in the background. I picked and houmous and falafel appetizer from their prix-fixe menu that included a glass of champagne, and added a glass of wine with my seafood risotto. I said it wasn't anything special but I guess it was decent since my mouth is watering just thinking about it again! The pianist played all sorts of classics like Steve Wonder, the Beatles, Billy Joel, and even Bob Marley, but I knew my night was complete when she started playing Phil Collins.
I'm definitely getting used to living in London and sometimes I start to take it for granted, but as I was enjoying the music and sipping my wine, it hit me again how amazingly lucky I am to have an opportunity like this. Even though I'm here to work and sometimes it can be really stressful, I can count the times like this morning on one hand and the rest of my time here has been pretty much perfect. I enjoy my work the cast majority of the time, but I really couldn't have asked for a better job straight out of school, whether because of the millions of opportunities within our company, the invaluable experience I'm gaining in the business world, or the traveling. I just need to keep that in mind when I feel like everything is crumbling, like this morning.
