Project

Over the Christmas holidays, amidst my Disney movie marathon, which basically consisted of running "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" over and over again in the background as I feasted on pita chips and Jolly Ranchers, I watched two movies about self-discovery in foreign places: "Under the Tuscan Sun" and "Eat Pray Love." These two are pretty much the same film, only, "Under the Tuscan Sun" did it much better. It was funnier, Diane Lane's dresses were prettier, and the colour-scheme was much more vibrant. But that's beside the point.

The point is, as I watched Julia Roberts eat a plate of delicious-looking pasta in an almost agonizingly slow five-minute scene where she really is JUST eating pasta, and as I watched Diane Lane frolic through Italy in her various pretty sundresses, looking all sad and divorced, I couldn't help but think to myself, "I should totally just go to Italy to find myself. After all, I've been feeling lost and pathetically helpless for ages!"

So, what's stopping me? Well, money, for one thing. I have none, which presents a slight problem. I'm also going to uni, which is another problem, because I can't just stop and quit now. If I drop out now, I'll have wasted a year and a half of my life studying "the classics," and I'll also be forced to leave the country, since my student visa is the only thing allowing me to stay in bonny Scotland. These are two very large obstacles standing between me and sunny Italy.

But just as I was feeling sorry for the fact that I'm basically stuck in a rut and can't actually just pick up and leave, I realised there's little sense in doing so anyway. These women - Julia and Diane, let's just call them - left their lives in America and ventured to Italy (and India and Bali) because they were feeling probably just as lost and hopeless as me, if not more so. But they only left after their lives had fallen spectacularly to pieces back home. My life, as it currently stands, is not in such a dire state of dilapidation. I have been through no horrible divorce, my ex-husband has not robbed me of all my money, and I honestly have no desire to go to India and meditate for four months in order to cleanse my spirit (having said this, I would, at some point in my life, love to go to India. Just not to meditate). Perhaps if my life truly were in shambles, I'd want to leave Edinburgh, but my life's fine.

But that's just it. It's "fine." It's only really ever been "fine." And I want more than "fine." I want to at least know that someday, I will do something that's worth something to someone. To anyone. I want to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that in 10 years time, I will be happy. And I want to stop feeling so goddamn lost all the time.

I'm sure I'm not the only one to feel lost in the middle of her second year at uni, nor am I the first person in the history of the universe to feel as such. It's such a cliched concept, to be sure. The whole "I'm just trying to figure out who I am" done-to-death quest for personal identity. Who cares anyway? There are seven billion people in the world, and my story is no better than anyone else's. So really, why bother at all? Maybe I should just go to Italy and see if life gets better there. I've got nothing to lose, right?

Well, that would be all fine and dandy, save for the fact that really, Edinburgh's not the problem. It's not just a matter of where I am. I love Edinburgh. I love this city and have since the second day I moved here (on the first day, it was raining), so leaving makes no sense. I love the people, and I love the place, and let's face it, if you can't find yourself in a place you love, what hope do you have of finding yourself "out there?"

And so with this in mind, I start my new project for 2011. The "S'il Vous Plait" project, where I will visit at least one new place every week. A place I've never set foot in before. Most of these places will be in Edinburgh, and most of them will probably be restaurants, because I like food. But occasionally, you'll find me somewhere in Asia or the US, because my family does a lot of travelling (hence the tragic number of air travel mishaps I've had this year).

But anyway, what's the point of this? To find the best little place in the world. Solely because I believe that if I look in enough places, maybe I will find some clues as to what I want to do with my life.