Within four days I will have started my new job, within six days I will know what my degree classification will be, and within three weeks I will have graduated. Until then, however, I’m in a state of transition, and I hate it! Whilst I can be quite patient and wait for things to happen, I find it difficult to do so when the deadlines are some pre-determined fixed point. It’s those states of transition when you’re neither fully in one place or in another, whether that’s waiting for a degree classification and not quite being a student but not quite being a graduate, or in the process of moving house with some of your things in one location and some in another, or apprehensively awaiting the start of your new job.

As I write this, I am spending the first night in my new flat. Whilst some things have been assembled here, the majority of my things are either boxed, piled or still at the old house and as such are no use to me. In the case of my bed and wardrobe, they have still to be bought.

I said to myself this morning that there was nothing more deeply unnerving than an empty home, but I may have been wrong - what’s even more unnerving is having two partially inhabitable abodes. You could say that both places are in a state of transition - moving from inhabited to uninhabited, or vice versa.

Whilst I have plenty of reading to be catching up on (the number of manuals that come with this place is impressive, although as usual the one I really want isn’t provided) I find myself thinking `Oh, so-and-so would be on telly about now` or `I’ll just see if so-and-so is online or what they’re up to` or `I’ll just relax for a bit and read so-and-so` and can’t because I don’t have all of my things over here! Some of them are, in fact, 90 miles away.

I appreciate that it could be far worse and I could be doing all this moving while I was working - a prospect some of my friends are facing - but that isnt helping a great deal! Although I don’t regret the decision to get a place of my own, given that several of my friends will be living nearby, they won’t be moving for about a week so on a night like this where all I have is my dvd collection and radio for company, it has felt quite lonely at some points. Listen to me, I sound like I’ve been encased in this building for weeks!

And the moving of friends raises another point - some of them I may not see again for a very long time, if at all. What a disturbing thought! After three years endlessly harassing them, they get away scot free! We can’t be having this! It is a pleasing thought, though, that some of them are remaining in Leeds and that we’ll be able to keep in touch. Well… I’ll keep in touch and they’ll sob uncontrollably, thinking they’d escaped me. Bwahahaha, and all that.

One thing I’m glad I’ve done, despite the inevitable damage to my back, is to spend this night at the flat to get used to the building, the sounds of a 13-storey building and its inner workings (the designer of the constantly-running ventilation system in my flat has an entirely different definition of the word `quiet` to the one I have, and as such it’s been switched off!) and to get over the initial disorientation of being in a new place. The alternative was to wait until the bed was in, which would most likely have been Saturday or Sunday, thus leaving me little time to acclimatise. I’d rather be cranky around my friends thanto turn up for my first day of work on Monday complaining of lack of sleep - it wouldn’t have made a good first impression! Unfortunately, I don’t have a working fridge at present, so no cereal or toast in the morning… I know, I know, I’m deprived. Wait, wrong vowel!

Whilst the view out of my balcony is less than impressive at the moment, due to the construction going on next door and further up the hill, it is beautiful at night when the lights of the flats opposite come on and light up the building! I’ve even bought myself a deck chair so that when I’m more settled in I can sit outside and enjoy the lights… and ignore the evening traffic. Hopefully I’ll still enjoy it as much in the morning when construction resumes at some unspeakably early hour! When I start work on Monday this won’t be a problem, of course, as I’d be expected to be up at that time anyway!

As this post is going up the morning after the fact, I hope you have all had a pleasant night’s sleep! Despite an hour of restlessness, I eventually nodded off and, as predicted, woke to the sound of construction next door. Oh well, at least it will wake me on a morning when it’s time to go to work!