I've been a working girl all my life or so it seems but to be honest I have never really known what i wanted to do although I have in the main enjoyed everything I have done. I've already mentioned in a previous musing that I didn't have the courage to fail at being an architect which I rather fancied doing so instead of getting down to studying I scooted off to London instead where my education was of a slightly differing variety. More of that later.
I started young with my work ethic; I dabbled in a little cottage industry making Fimo badges when I was at school and that brought in extra pocket money but it was clear I was never going to be a talented artist. Babysitting for kids that were only a few years younger than me earnt me plenty and taught me tips I use today as a mother ( always have ice pops in the freezer) but quickly proved anything related to teaching or childcare was not my vocation. A Saturday job in my future brother in laws shop was a great social tool for future beaus but didn't bring many prospects long term.
I'm supposed to be grown up now but it's mad to think that I still don't really know what to do when I grow up and yet having had so much time of late to think about it I'm still no closer to knowing. What I have realised though is my experience over the last twenty years means I am actually pretty well suited to the work I do and as in recent weeks I've finally started back doing some hours it has brought hme to me again just how important work is to my psyche. It's good to know when you can do something, and I'm learning what and how much of the stuff I used to do is still possible and in reach. But Blimey it's hard work this working lark after such an absence. My poor brain has been through it over recent months and i thought i'd felt most things but I swear I could hear it fizzing and stretching the first time I opened up an excel file after a lengthy time apart. Excel I have not missed you in my life.
I'm taking things super slow as i return which is not something that normally features in my plans but I'm fortunate that I work with enlightened people who understand that you can't rush this brain of mine. It won't be rushed. A friend shared with me a view a neuroscientist had given her which is that the brain is like an elephant and the mind is the rider of that elephant. Sometimes the elephant is just going to go its own way and there isn't the slightest thing you can do to turn it, might as well just look up at the clouds once the elephant is off rampaging.
I have wondered often about choices I have made in my work path but equally I think most things work out well if you believe that anything is possible. I do wish I had been less scared to fail at things when I was younger but maybe that realisation only comes with age and the experience that failure is not actually scary most times, hell what is someone's definition of failure is another's of success. The experience of living with a constant changing pattern of health , now thats scary somedays, and the shadow of fear it casts is challenging my values and stretching me like nothing has before. Just last week saw hospital trips and blooming big needles and it threw me back to unhappier days. It's so hard not being able to trust in your body , in the signals you always felt you knew pretty well. And I'm SO impatient. I applaud the slow movement but equally find it hard to be in enforced membership but I WILL learn to live with it.
my London education? Where to start? I could vault any road barrier whilst hailing a taxi and wearing an extremely short skirt. I measured Petula Clark for a bra. My flatmate and I were word perfect to Carly Simons working girl theme song which would be belted out after many a late night salsa and tequila night. Oh the sweet innocence of the early nineties, maybe that's the subject for my next blog entry. I best warn said flatmate before I open up that can of worms. I don't think anyone has a picture of me trapped in an Oxford Street escalator though after it ate my skirt...thank goodness mobile phones weren't as commonplace back then as that would have been a million plus viewer on YouTube.
No comments:
Post a Comment