Tuesday 7th June 2022

Phew, glad today is over, no real reason I should feel like that but it has just felt like a bind really!

I was at home today as I’ve switched my uni days around this week for meetings etc and now I’ve got a friend coming to visit on Thursday for one night which will be lovely.

Just feels like I’m juggling so many different things right now and really feeling like I’m doing any of them well as my mind is always somewhere else, I’m sure these feelings will pass as they usually do and I know that I have to relinquish control sometimes to allow things to flow more easily.

Easier said than done as my controllingness (don’t think that’s a word) helps keeps my anxiety from my dyslexia at bay. It’s nice to be able to move my days around at the uni during the summer break but it’s sent me into a tail-spin a little bit as now I don’t know what days I’m coming or going so need to look at my calendars for both the business and uni and work out which days are which for the next couple of months as then I can plan other stuff.

Quite a big thing today though is that my last payment to my legacy debt has now cleared in the bank, the balance I owe is ZERO!! Whoop whoop – it’s taken me over 6 years to clear it and at the same time I’ve also managed to put some money into a saving pot, back then I didn’t think this day would come.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll feel a whole lot better tomorrow after a sleep!

Monday 6th June 2022

Back to the uni today, the campus is really quiet now that most of the students have gone home for the summer. A couple of my colleagues were in too so that was nice to have company.

Despite the students having a long summer break, there is no such luck for us lecturers as now we are already doing all the planning and prep for the next academic year!

I successfully got the bus into the uni today, I always celebrate this achievement, which might seem weird to some, however, with my dyslexia I sometimes struggle with time & get anxious when I need to be at a certain place by a certain time as I can get confused with the bus timetable. So making it on time & catching the bus is a big thing for me. My colleague very kindly gave me a lift home so that was good.

This evening has been non-stop, I literally walked in the door, fed Sophiecat and walked straight out again to go and help a friend put up a wardrobe she had bought her daughter, it was quite large and complicated to put so took over 2 hours, I got home, had about 10 minutes to get some food in before I did a WhatsApp call with a friend who lives over 150 miles from me! It was so lovely to catch up with them and all their news and distance between us fades away!!

Now I’m sitting here, ready for my bed! I have lots of stuff going on in my head right now as a few exciting opportunities are coming my way and I’m torn about the path to take!

Sunday 5th June 2022

For the first time in a few weeks, I set my alarm today as my friend had offered me a lift to the lake for a swim, as I had to fit in with their schedule, they had said they would pick me up at 8.30am so knew despite Sophiecat being a pretty good alarm clock I didn’t want to risk not waking up.

It was pissing it down when I got up so I was excited to go swimming as I love nothing more than swimming when it is raining! However, by the time we got to the lake it had stopped, the swim was still glorious and just what I needed. Being in the water is such a rebalancing experience.

Got home and done fuck all for the rest of the day, sat and watched the Jubilee pageant for a few hours, while writing my new blog post for May! And before you know it, the long bank holiday weekend & my week off work is over, back to the grind tomorrow!

May 2022 – Conditional Living

May for me has been quite an emotionally tough month for many different reasons but also a month of realisations and lightbulb moments too.

As I mentioned last month, I had planned to do some daily actions for 100 days leading up to my 45th birthday – when I thought of the challenge, I thought it wouldn’t be too stretching for me to do as most of the actions I do daily anyway, however, after 7 days I abandoned it!

The main reason for this is I came to the realisation that I put so many conditions on my life that I get so caught up in these conditions that I don’t live the life I should. As most of you know I am very hard on myself all of the time! My bar for success is higher than it really should be and I generally berate myself daily for not reaching these standards!

Another reason I do these challenges is to avoid doing the mental work I need to do to move forward with some of the mental and emotional blocks that I carry with me like most people do from events we’ve experienced during our lifetime. We all have a past/history/baggage! I realised that I need to put this baggage down to lighten the load that I carry.

A third reason is that I actually have enough to do in my life to balance my work at BGU, the business, running a house, maintaining a social life as well as keeping myself healthy so even though I thought I could handle the additional actions, it came to a head when all I could think about was when I was going to fit these actions in on day 8 and realised I couldn’t without sacrificing things that actually are really important like earning a living!

When I think of food and alcohol, I have a really good relationship with both, alcohol I can take it or leave it, I can go months without drinking any and generally drink it only when I feel like it. My diet, in general, is really good, I don’t eat fast food/takeaways, I cooked all my food from scratch and don’t eat many sweets, chocolate, cakes etc yet for this challenge I had decided to give up alcohol, sweets, chocolate, cakes, biscuits & crisps – this was making me sad! I don’t emotionally eat but I do like a cake every so often.

In terms of exercise – I love it, however, recently I’ve had an injury to my right knee! I rested and had physio and it felt like it was getting better, so I headed back to the gym and managed my normal routine for a week, then bang my knee went again and I haven’t been back since! Again this makes me sad especially as I’d only just got my exercise mojo back.

I felt like I had lost sight of who I am and not in a body I feel comfortable with (as shallow as that sounds). My word for the year is Authenticity and right now I feel very far away from being my authentic self.

As I write this with tears running down my face, I’m not actually sure how to get back on track with exercise or deal with my mind gremlins. I’m sure the universe/my soul will show me the way if only I stop to listen!

I hope you are well and have enjoyed the long Jubilee Bank Holiday weekend, until next time Big Love xx

Saturday 4th June 2022

Hallelujah, Sophiecat woke me up at a more forgiving hour this morning! I had a lightbulb moment yesterday and decided to have a food station for her in the bedroom in the hope that she will feed herself in the early hours rather than wake me up and it worked, fingers crossed it will work tonight and the coming nights so I can have less disturbed sleep.

After the late night last night, I felt really jaded, when I woke up I decided that I wasn’t going to get the bus into town and instead just order what I needed off Amazon! The easy option, so I did that and then an hour late I cancelled the order as I knew I would be pissed off if I didn’t get off my arse and go into town. So after a monumental amount of effort I was on the bus!

I have roughly 2 hours in town between buses, the first thing I did was head to one of my favourite coffee shops for a coffee to kill town, I didn’t have much to buy and I’m not a fan of shopping or wandering around the shops aimlessly. I got what I needed and then had time for some lunch before I got the bus home.

This evening I’ve been watching the Jubilee concert at the palace on the telebox! It’s quite emotional at times, I feel very privileged to live in an amazing country, admittedly we don’t get everything right (childhood poverty, health inequalities & the wealth divide to name a few) however, with events like these, you realise the British spirit is in all of us.

Friday 3rd June 2022

Another quiet day as another bank holiday!! Had planned to do some housework but simply couldn’t muster the energy to do it, always tomorrow!!

Back home late as been to a friend’s sister’s birthday party, they have additional needs so it’s a real celebration that they have got to the age of 40 as they have defied the medical team who said they wouldn’t live that long.

I had anxiety before going as I don’t feel that comfortable/confident in social situations have felt like this for a few years as feel not great at doing small talk etc, thankfully, I was at a table with friends but still, there were times when I was just sat in silence as everyone else was engaged in conversations. It didn’t help that our table was right next to a speaker for the music which was quite loud so it was hard to hear stuff.

Can’t believe we have another 2 days off now for the weekend! Am going to enjoy it and not put too much pressure on myself to get stuff done!!

I’m hardly able to keep my eyes open when I’m sitting on the sofa so perhaps I need to listen to my body and rest!!

Thursday 2nd June 2022

A slightly weird day today being a bank holiday on a Thursday!! Not really much to write about today as I’ve not really done anything, the cat is now waking me up around 3am which is really destroying me sleep-wise, I am able to go back to sleep once she has woken me up but I get to this time of day and I’m absolutely shattered.

I’ve mostly just chilled on the sofa watching TV as there have been a number of programmes on for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, what an amazing lady our queen is, whether you pro or con the monarchy, you can’t deny that Queen Elizabeth II has given her life to service, not just here in Great Britain but across the world. At times I found it quite emotional seeing what she has achieved over all these years on the throne.

I went for a cycle with my friend and her daughter around where we live, I’ve riden a bike for decades so was a little nerve-wracking but I managed not to fall off.

Then went to their house for a BBQ which was lovely and now the sun is setting on another day – probably sleep well tonight.

Wednesday 1st June 2022

Hello Summer!!

Today has been an interesting day, the first meeting of the day was at the garage to take my car in for repair and that’s where I left it for the time being so I am car less.

Then had a meeting with my accountant to sign off my business accounts and to talk about some business opportunities that have come my way, it’s nice to have a sounding board with someone who is emotionally removed from my business.

Then back to the garage for them to give me a lift to my next meeting as I looked on the map and it was a 4.5-mile walk which I really didn’t fancy! Then I got a friend to give me a lift to my next meeting which was again a few miles away.

This meeting was an interesting one too where we spoke about the changes to the way our UK government want to move funding from central government to regional authorities and how that might impact businesses locally. I will also put myself forward for these types of round table discussions for many reasons as I like to be seen by the people who run our councils and local authorities, as a woman I want a seat at the table to show representation, out of the 12 people in the room there were only 3 women and one of those was an officer who was just taking minutes for the meeting rather than being a participant and I want my views heard.

Finally, I got a taxi home, a luxury I know as I could have got the bus but that would mean waiting for an hour for it and I had a client who said they wanted some work back before everyone broke up for the long Jubilee Bank Holiday so was under a time constraint, as it happens they never got back to me with some information I needed to complete the work which meant I could have got the bus home.

Being reliant on others is hard for me as I’m used to be an island, so being ferried around today asking for lifts was challenging.

Today is a celebration day, as I made a final payment to a legacy debt I’ve been paying off for about 6 years! It’s not really sunk in that I’ve managed to clear this debt as when I was in the throws of money troubles I never thought I’d get to this position of paying it off. Over the last 6-8 months I’ve also managed to put money into savings too, so when I feel that sometimes I’m not really living as money is tight I have to remind myself that I’ve come a long way from where I was and that my financial position will only get better from here on in as I’ve learnt so many valuable lessons from these struggles.

Tuesday 31st May 2022

How can it be the end of May already!! Less than 2 months until my birthday! Another strange day here as it feels so alien to me to have paid holiday, just can’t get my head around it.

Anyway, had a call from the garage and the conversation didn’t go as I wanted as they simply don’t have any courtesy cars to give me while mine is in for repair – whatever that repair will be. So it now means me re-arranging and planning meetings so that I can still get to them without a car, back to using the bus for a week or so, not the worst thing in the world really, just frustrating more than anything else.

It’s a bloody good job I like being at home in my own company as that’s what going to happen for the 4 day weekend we’ve got coming up, I am going to party on Friday night and thankfully a friend has offered to drive but apart from that, I’ll be at home!

I guess the universe has its ways of telling us what we should be doing and perhaps I needed this to crack on with either the house clearing out or a couple of projects that have stalled recently with my focus being elsewhere – no excuse when I can’t go anywhere, although I might pop into town on the bus on Saturday, just for a wander around & to get any supplies I need.

Bed for me now as tomorrow will be a bit of an ordeal and a lot of walking getting from one meeting to another without a car! Thankfully, I’ve got a few hours to kill in between them so can use this time to catch up on a few things!

Monday 30th May 2022

It’s been a strange old day really, my mind is in semi-holiday mode as I’ve got annual leave from the uni today and tomorrow! So I started the day pretty slowly, then after lunch, I got a second wind and was really productive for about 4 hours.

In my business, I’ve been offered a massive opportunity that has been playing on my mind for the last week or so, have spoken to a couple of friends about it, and today I rang up a guy I’ve worked with in the past to ask some advice. I have a meeting on Wednesday to discuss this opportunity, so I wanted their opinion.

I’m also starting to organise a conference too, I ran one in 2019 which was a success and in 2020 I ran it online as we were in lockdown, last year I had planned to run it again but then time just got away with me and before I knew it the date was fast approaching and I simply didn’t have the time to make it work so this year I’m kind of re-launching it with a slight change to it to reflect what has changed in the last 2 years!

My car is still broken, rang the garage this morning to be told the earliest they could fit me in was next Tuesday! I said that wasn’t good enough so will call again tomorrow and speak to a manager, thankfully I’ve only got one online meeting tomorrow so don’t need to go anywhere and have all that I need at home – it’s just annoying really.

At the moment I get the feeling that change is coming in one way or another for me, can’t quite put my finger on what it is but I can sense it!!