As part of my new blog series, Face the Fear, I will be interviewing women about how they have faced their fears and what they went through to get to where they are now.
This series is tapping into the minds of incredible women, who have one way or another faced their fears. You can read the original Face the Fear blog post to find out why I wanted to write this and what my own fears are.
I’m interviewing Elena today who is going to be sharing her fear of the unknown, one I’m sure a lot of us can understand, as well as her fear of being alone. You can find Elena on her blog elenasquareeyes.com, her Twitter @ElenaM52 and her Instagram @elenasquareeyes.
Tell me a bit about yourself? What do you do, what do you love, where are you from?
My name’s Elena, I work in student recruitment at the University of Cambridge and I’m originally from a village in West Sussex. I love to travel, with Spain being my home from home, and I also like to spend my time reading, watching films, and seeing friends. I’m a big Marvel Cinematic Universe fan so to say I’m excited yet nervous for Endgame is an understatement! I also write film and book reviews on my blog, with one of my main goals is to read and review a book from every country in the world before I’m 30 – got about 140 countries to go.
What is the fear you’re going to be writing about today?
I’m going to be talking about the fear of the unknown and, I suppose, the fear of being alone as well.
How long have you had this fear/what made it start to develop?
I wouldn’t say this is a fear I have constantly. I’m a very pragmatic person but I’m also very easy-going, and I’m someone who tends to just roll with whatever life throws at me. Let’s just say that if I was an animal, there’s a good chance I’d be a sloth because I’m so laid back about everything.
When/why did you realise you had to face your fear?
In 2017 I was working as a supply teacher in an all-boys secondary school. It was varied, sometimes stressful but it could also be fun and rewarding, though teaching was definitely not something I wanted to pursue. I was living at home at the time, so when I was looking for a new job (something to do with student outreach at a university) I was looking at universities that would be a commutable distance from home.
When I went to visit a friend from college who’d moved with his parents to Cambridge, I fell in love with the place. Almost immediately I started to apply for jobs at the University of Cambridge as well as jobs at more local universities. I should say that Cambridge is roughly a 2-and-a-half-hour drive from my family home and the area I’d grown up. I’d lived in West Sussex all my life, bar the four years I went to university in London but even then, I could still come home for the weekend easily and there were all the long holidays too. So needless to say, if I did get a job in Cambridge, I’d have to move there.
This would mean moving to a place I only knew one person, starting a whole new job, and being independent for the first time since I graduated.
How did you face your fear?
About six months after I visited my friend, and a handful of interviews for different jobs later, I got offered a job at the Cambridge Admissions Office. I said yes and then there was a whirlwind of activity as I had to find somewhere to live, pack up my stuff and move there in the space of four weeks.
In many ways, I was too excited and busy to think about how I was going to a new city, moving out of the family home, and moving away from my family and a good portion of my friends who still lived in the area. Yes, I knew one person in the whole city, but it wasn’t like we’d be able to see each other regularly due to work. Plus, about four months after I moved to Cambridge, he moved away for work – typical isn’t it!
It didn’t really hit me until I had moved to Cambridge that this was it. I was in a new place, with a new job, and while I could give up and move back home, I already knew I wanted to make this work. I had found a flatshare where, like me, my flatmate likes their own company so our paths don’t cross that often but when they do, we’d have a chat in the kitchen, and it works for us.
I think to face the fear of being alone and dealing with a lot of new things at once, I learnt to become even more comfortable in my own skin than I already was. As an only child, I had never been lonely growing up and now living away from my family and friends, I kind of embraced the only child aspect of myself. I was comfortable with going back to my flat after work and spending the evenings watching stuff on Netflix or reading a book.
I don’t think I ever felt alone, in part due to my own disposition, but also because of social media. I know my mum doesn’t 
understand it and think of it as “real friends” but I do have a lot of friends I’ve met via Twitter who I regularly talked to. So even though I wasn’t socialising and meeting new people “in real life” when I first moved to Cambridge, I was still socialising online. I had a way to vent about any of my worries and people were there to talk to, so I never felt alone thanks to social media.
I’ve been living and working in Cambridge for about 16 months now. I’ve made a new best friend through work and the people I work with a genuinely great, they’re super friendly and we have work socials fairly regularly. I’m happy here, I’ve even got a new job I’m starting soon, same team but different role. I don’t know if I’m going to stay in Cambridge forever, but I can definitely see myself staying here for the next year or two. It has become my home – though I do find myself still referring to my mum’s as home. It’s a weird thing to get your head around.
Moving to a whole new place, learning a new job, and trying to make new friends was scary but it’s something I’m really pleased I did. I’ve learnt a lot about myself through the experience, like how I really am a very laid back person when it comes to potentially scary or stressful situations, and now I know that if I ever wanted to move to somewhere new, whether it was for work or another reason, I could totally do it.
Elena’s story is seriously inspirational, as someone who is looking to move out of home at the moment, this shows the big leaps are worth taking! Thank you so much Elena for sharing your story with us.
If you’d like to get involved in this blog series, please email me at beth@booksnest.co.uk and I’ll send you through everything you need.
