Job hunting... again.

Many of you know that come the new year, I'll be beginning my search for a great job once again. Alex is going to daycare starting January 7, which means I'm going to have to find something else. I will keep working with him on Thursdays, when he doesn't have daycare, for as long as I can--and if my Thursdays are taken up, I was also offered Saturday mornings to look after him and do a bit of housework.

It's sad to leave, I will say that--after caring for him forty hours a week for the last five months, I've grown quite attached. However, Alex was SUCH a good kid, and I'm worried if I go back into nannying I won't be quite as lucky. And having witnessed some of Alex's playmates' tantrums, I'm not sure if I could deal with that on a daily basis (as someone caring for a child--if I was their parent, I'd be employing some extra disciplinary action!)

So once again I face the question: what do I want to do?

This question has become quite easy to answer in theory. I can't remember if I've written about it before, but I recently learned you can make enough to live on if you get popular on YouTube and make enough videos. I've been watching a couple who do their own "reality TV show" by basically just filming as they go about their daily lives and uploading 20 minutes of it every day. Neither of them have a different job, and they're doing quite well for themselves.

I think I would find that incredibly enjoyable. I'm not saying it's easy--far from it, considering I haven't bothered to upload anything to CBBC since August. You'd have to remember to film, constantly have your camera on you, if you filmed tons you'd have to edit it down, and you'd have to make it interesting enough that people would actually want to watch you. Not to mention at the start, waiting for/trying to get subscribers (the people I'm talking about have over 60,000).

It would be a long haul, a daily commitment, subject to stop making you money at any time--yet the thought that I'd have the freedom to govern my own days is highly appealing. As it would be to anyone, I'm sure. But I feel like if I had the money for such things, I could go more places, do more things, if I didn't have work hanging over my head. I mean, just thinking about doing this Europe trip and heading off somewhere for a month--wouldn't it be cool if my "job" was just travel vlogging or something?

Or blogging--blogging would work too. I've seen loads of advertisements looking for bloggers. It's just been about topics I'm not all that interested in. I shouldn't be so choosy, I know.

But the other problem is, how to be interesting and appeal to people? I guess I sort of look at my life and think, "Well, guess I could call THIS video People Who Hate Laundry A Lot." Or: "Browsing Facebook for the Umpteenth Time, But My Friends Are All Sleeping At 4am."

I figure I have a few things to work with: travel, books, and being in a long distance relationship that worked. Those sound like interesting topics, right?

My resolution is this: every week day that I am not otherwise employed, I will:

a) Send off at least three job applications.
b) Write a blog post / make a video about SOMETHING. Such as:
        - Book review.
        - Travel (visas, travel sites, locations, restaurants, etc.)
        - Pinterest experiements--offering a plethora of topics.
        - Daily life post.

Hopefully by doing this I will at the very least get into the habit of taking the time to put up something. And while I doubt it will lead to riches, at least I'll be productively engaged. I was pathetic between graduation and employment. Granted, for a month of that I had a cold so horrible it made getting out of bed difficult... but even so!

I have to stick to this, friends. Maybe I'll call January JanBlogMo... that might keep me on track. ;)

Europe Planning

Update on our trip through Europe!

Basically, I spent all Christmas Day planning our trip through Europe. I've been running into a few snags in that we don't know exactly what's happening in the next year in regards to money, given that my job's ending soon and I don't yet have another one and Cal's job is ending soon after that. We might be able to afford to go December 2013, we might not. Regardless, a lot of flight booking sites aren't allowing me to look so far into future anyway. But here's the general plan thus far:

Brisbane, Australia to London, UK.
Stay in London for a few days, getting over jetlag by visiting familiar sites (for me, anyway).
Day trips from London: Dover, Stratford-Upon-Avon, Oxford, Canterbury.
(Total time with London as "home base": ~7 days)

Train up to Edinburgh for a night or two.
5-day tour around Scottish Highlands through Haggis Tours (look 'em up, they're awesome). Would prefer non-tours and ability to do our own thing, but as public transportation isn't great up there, this is much more convenient and relatively well priced, too.
(Total time with London as "home base": ~7 days)

Train back to London; probably stay the night.
Train to Paris, stay one night. (We just want a picture with the Eiffel Tower, basically--we're okay with a short amount of time here)
(Total time in Paris: 1 night)

Flight from Paris to Rome (only 40ish pounds each!)
Stay in Rome for 3 days, soaking up the various sites and what have you.
Train to Florence (only 1.5 hrs!), stay for a few days.
Train to Venice (2.5 hrs), stay for a few days -- be sure to take a Gondola ride and hit up Murano.
(total time in Italy: ~8 days)

And that, my friends, is 3/4 of our planned month-long trip gone--and here is where it gets a bit dodgy.

Austria: probably take train from Italy. Not exactly sure what we want to do here, except that we want to go. Salzburg, perhaps?

Prague: A few nights, again, can probably take a train--hit up main attractions.

Germany: Head to Munich, from there do a day trip to Neuschwanstein Castle (accessible by train), along with Schwangau Castle and the Museum of Bavarian Kings. (able to see all in one day--right next to each other).
Probably also see Berlin.

Netherlands: Spend a few days here, soaking up Cal's heritage.

Belgium: Just one day in Brussels.

Then: Take train from Brussels back to London, flight from London back to Australia.

I think you can tell where my internet stopped working and/or I got sidetracked looking at backpacking backpacks. Getting so excited for this trip. But I had to cut out Norway, Spain, and Greece for this particular itinerary--as it is, we'll be running ourselves pretty ragged, and I want to take some time to enjoy what we are seeing, and those three places I think need a lot of time spent in them. Oddly enough, Norway, Spain, and Greece are three places I'm most interested in, but I think that just means they're the places I want to spend the most time in, and there's just not enough time!! They're also the places I can see taking kids to down the track (I know it seems like a long way off, but by the time we head Europe-way again, we'll probably have them).

So here's the timeline of our various travel:

January: New Zealand.
Possibly December: Europe.
After/Between: I'd like to do some more travel within Australia. I figure I get to do more of this once Emily and Sarah get here!