Do you see the light?

Hi everyone

It can be very easy to slip into a negative state of mind, when everything seems to be going wrong or not as planned. As one thing builds on top of another, it is extremely important to still see the light.

One of my mottos is – Through the downs comes the ups – So if I am experiencing a lot of downs, it must mean there is a ton of ups coming my way.

I didn’t always used to think so positively, in fact, I used to be very negative and in a depressive state, but when I was made redundant for the second time in my career, in 2009, my life began to change for the better.

It’s been a while since my last blog post. To give you a quick update, after being off sick from my day job for 4 weeks, I went back to work and got an upper respiratory infection and had to be off another week. I went back to work part-time last week and today is my first day working full-time. If I am off sick for a third time this year, before the 5th of December, I am due to be investigated and possibly have a first written warning. I don’t feel that this would be fair, as I have doctor’s notes and was taken to hospital by ambulance whilst in a work meeting, for my first illness. Nevertheless, that’s the situation.

I am still self-employed and so long as I do that, I will always be in work, but I currently do need my day job to pay the bills.

After my illustrator moved the book completion deadline from Monday 20th to Wednesday 22nd, and I started back to work on the Tuesday 21st, I had to work throughout the night on Tuesday, to get my book finished for Wednesday morning.

Although in theory I did finish the book and the cover is now complete, I am still working on the index and book content. Whilst the number of pages has to remain the same, I am adding some text and cutting some out to make improvements to it, before uploading it to Amazon. It needs to be the best it can be.

I start teaching again next week, on one of my days off from my day job, and yesterday I had to attend a tutor meeting.

Yesterday, I also got my four furry babies back from their long vacation at my parents. Daisy has recovered well after major surgery to remove a lump that turned out to be a hair follicle cyst that had got badly infected.

At the moment I teach on a self-employed basis but I have recently been offered a contract with the NHS to go on their staff bank, with a new job title and 69p per hour pay rise. I don’t work many hours for them but I still think it’s fantastic. I have to have an informal interview with them before becoming staff. That I can hopefully do soon because I am feeling better than I was. I have had to stop taking one of my tablets because it was giving me bad side effects and even working part-time last week, was a struggle towards the end of the week.

My Grandma was very poorly with an infection before her birthday but is off anti-biotics and thankfully seems to have improved.

I got upset when I visited her and she said to me, “I want you to hold my hand until my name is called.”

Me and my Grandma have a special bond, I can usually understand her when no one else can and when anything does happen to her, I will be devastated. We just ‘get’ each other. Whilst some others, just don’t.

I have faith that there is light at the end of this down tunnel and that I still have lots to look forward to in 2014. The teaching contract is a great achievement for me, as I got a teacher/trainer PTTLS Level 4 qualification in 2012, but I couldn’t get a teaching job back then because I didn’t have enough experience. Consequently, I went back into retail for a 16th year. Ironically, since working in retail, I now have a teching job.

I want to thank you for your patience, time and understanding whilst I finish my Break through the barriers of redundancy book.

I know I haven’t visited many of your blogs recently or left many comments and I thank you for your loyalty and support whilst I finish my book. I have people waiting for it to be published so they can buy it. Therefore, I do need to take more time out to do just that.

I hope if you are experiencing a lot of downs, that you too, can see the light.

Write as soon as I am able to
Sandra