Hello again!

I feel as if a new greeting is necessary, as it has been quite a while since I have done one of these. (It has also been almost as long since I have written in my physical diary, but I'm not sure if that makes me feel better or worse about my supposedly casual undertakings, so let's agree that that is neither here nor there.) On January 1st, when I just so happened to both write my last RE: column and purchase said diary, I blabbered about my Ins and Outs for the year, trying to stay in the UK and making sure I didn't feel like a failure if I had to come home.

Well, let me catch you up.

None of that came to pass.

It all began on New Year's Eve in my twenty-eighth year of being single. For the first time in a long time, I found myself surrounded by new faces, and, for the first time ever, I spent the initial moments of the new year watching the various fireworks displays around the city from the safe and free vantage point of a North London balcony. As the sky lit up around me, I realized that the past few weeks I had spent feeling so unmoored and out of control of my own life had done me no good. If I wanted to stay in London– and spoiler alert: I do–the only person with any real say in that is me.

And so I made a major decision. I had to make sure that even if I did end up on a plane back to The States in six weeks. I wouldn't feel like I had failed myself. I woke up this morning and made a plan, not about how I was going to stay (That one is easy: apply to any and all job postings I can find that may or may not sponsor a visa), but about what exactly it was that I wanted to accomplish with my life, what would I want to be known for– real big picture stuff. I decided to start a diary to tell the truth about Sydney Bolen—the whole truth and to keep myself accountable.