I was glad to see the back of June with the sadness I had been feeling. The first half of July was full on, I had been commissioned to deliver a couple of training courses and although these had been booked a couple of months previously I was behind with the preparation. The dates just seem to creep up on me. So, I didn’t have time to even acknowledge the sadness and it seemed to just fade away.
However, I do know that on occasions I work best when I’ve got an impending deadline, especially for courses I deliver as the energy it creates gives me a real buzz and helps me to create the best training I can. I have been delivering training for over 25 years and still to this day I get giddy at the prospect of sharing my knowledge. Regardless of the content I’m sharing, I do everything in my power to make my training memorable (in a good way obviously). I’m not an attention to detail person generally, but when it comes to creating materials for my training or making up goody bags for the delegates my perfectionist comes alive. Everything has to be perfect, I will spend hours perfecting things so they are just right (and I think I drove my printers mad when I kept asking them to re-do printing when I noticed an error – shame my proof-reading skills weren’t up to scratch!).
All my training went well and the feedback I received was excellent – a real confidence boost just when I needed it. I give my all when I training and I was completely emotionally spent by the end of the month. This is when I start to question my ability as a trainer. I re-read the feedback quite a few times in the weeks after the training to help to my brain believe I’m good at what I do – this is exhausting and something I’m looking at mastering over the coming months.
Any training I do I feel privilege to be able to share my knowledge with others. I’ve always felt that the knowledge I have isn’t mine to hold on to and keep but to give to others to benefit themselves. Most of the training I do is centred about individuals – food and nutrition, first aid for mental health, creative thinking and I just love that I can help people live the life they want though knowledge and empowerment.
During this time I was still lecturing at the uni and the days seemed to blur into each other. It was just get up, lecture, home, sleep repeat. I love what I do but by mid-July my energy was depleted and I started to count the days until I could take some time off.
The highlight of the last week of July was our uni graduations, I find them quite emotional generally and this year more so as I got to see the first students I taught at the uni graduate, they have grown up in front of our eyes and have overcome many challenges and obstacles to complete their degree and I am beyond proud of all of them.
July is my birthday month, I’m not that great at celebrating my birthday as I find it hard, our family have never really treated birthdays as anything special and I want to break this cycle so had planned to do something special with a friend. However, the weekend of my birthday I wasn’t well. I woke up on the Saturday feeling incredibly nauseous, I thought this might pass so carried on the plans I had made and met my friend at a local train station for a day out in London. We got to London and I wasn’t feeling any better so we just waited in the station for a train to bring us home; when I got home, I went straight to bed and slept for 3 hours, this is very unlike me! I got up had some boiled water and plain food and went back to bed. The Sunday, my actual birthday, I woke up with less nausea but jaded from hardly eating anything the day before. I managed to make it out to the shops to pick up a newspaper but came home and felt rough, spent the rest of the day on the sofa.
Exercise went totally out of the window this month as it felt like one thing too much to think about/organise… This is becoming a constant which is frustrating!
Anyway, I survived another months of ups and down, bring on the rest of the year.
Lincolnshiregirl 