Ah Jeeeeeeeeeez. Rewind a year or so ago and life was sweet. I was working a well-paid, part-time job with flexible hours, Grace was enjoying life splitting her time between nursery and time with Mummy, and Matt the Husband's only worry was deciding whether to mow the lawns on Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon. We had balance in our lives.
I don't say this for the sympathy vote - seriously, keep it for yourself as I guarantee you'll need it sometime. I say this to set free the maelstrom flailing around like Bambi in my head, which once in a former life was very 'together' and now seems rather 'apart'.
My recipe then:
Take one mid-level manager working in an upbeat and fresh environment, and add one big fat redundancy. The stinkier the better. (I say fresh, as although there was the element of 'same shit different day', we did it with gusto and if we complained about it, we did it over a biscuit and a drink from the klix machine, free, of course. The lesser fresh was the aroma from Donna's feet.... a permanent fixture in the office since she refused to wear shoes and the question remains to this day - Who killed the money plant? Was it Jo pouring her coffee dregs in the pot, or just simply the fumes from D's feet?)
Add an enhanced redundancy package that left me skipping away with my compromise agreement tucked in my waistband, which at that point could still fit two fingers underneath without cutting off the circulation to my legs. Wedding loan and a few other debts paid off and a few bob spare, I remember having a nice bottle of wine that night. A nice one that cost more than 3 for a tenner and needed a corkscrew to open. Redundancy felt o.k.
Why? Because I sourced a vital ingredient, at alarming speed and without much effort. Stirred vigorously, and one could sit back and let the elusive 'new job' rise for a while as I kicked back and enjoyed a months garden leave between closing the door on the old work life and saying hello to the new one. Aside from trouble sourcing a half-decent dog walker for Daisy-woof, and changing Grace from one nursery to another as hers didn't have space on the additional days I needed since the new job was full time, the transition went well enough and after a few weeks we were into a routine.
Stir in a family nightmare, to the tune of Mum having a stroke the day before I started my new job, and later passing away just a week or so before I handed my notice in, and you're left with a vision of where I'm sat now. Sieving away at a half baked start to 2013 which instead of taking off like a rocket has rather risen and flopped in an oven that's had the door opened one too many times.
Whether the recipe fails because I can't 'train' for toffee, or whether it's because I was more adjusted to part-time working than I thought. Or whether everything would have been fine and dandy if not for the fact that mother chose this moment in time to move on to pastures greener, remains something of a mystery to me. Her pain is no more, and I'm grateful for that. But whether the influence to jack my new job in and run for the hills can be attributed to one, two or all of these points, remains to be seen. The proof I suppose, is in the pudding. And that's well and truly fallen flat.
So grinding away at both the job pages online and the credit card taking a new lease of battering, I plod on, scratching my head often and thinking to myself what on earth am I going to do to get this recipe for life back on track?
Whip crack away.
That is all.
XXX
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