The first month, and the future

I've been unemployed for four weeks now, and I have to admit, it could get addictive!  It's probably a good thing I will need to get a new job eventually; I could very easily slip into just relaxing and enjoying having my time to myself.  I could very easily get incorrigeably lazy.

I had promised myself I would take a month off completely, once I finished at work.  I've kept that promise and I have indeed been thoroughly lazy for almost the whole of July.  I've read masses, I've gone for walks and bike rides, I've had lunch with friends; I've had a week on a beach in Kefalonia doing absolutely b*gger all but read and swim; I've been to the cinema and to stay with my mother, and I've done some sensible jobs like sorting out all my mending and sewing jobs and getting started on some of them.  I've also had several medical appointments; a blood test, another session of cryotherapy which I think (cross fingers) has finally killed my bloody verruca, and a retinal screening, which was fairly horrible (dilating eye drops, ugh).

Next week I'm going to the cinema again and to Covent Garden to see Carlos Acosta and Co. in action, and then down to Brighton for a girls' weekend with the lovely LadyK, Snoozie and Sammy J.

I haven't done any job-hunting at all.  I haven't even thought about working on my CV.

I wanted to give my brain a chance to flush out all the tension and anxiety and grief about losing my job; I wanted just to sit empty for a while with the air blowing through me.  Sorry about the slightly weird metaphors!

My blood test results were excellent, which was enormously cheering.  I've managed to pull my haemoglobin A1C reading down from 58 to 35 (normal is anything under 45, if I remember correctly).  HBA1C is a kind of average measure of your blood glucose levels for the previous three months, so this is very good news as it means I have kept my BG normal consistently for the whole of that time.  My blood pressure is back from being rather high to being distinctly on the low side, and my weight loss is now official; from 226lbs to 190lbs, 2 1/2 stone lost.  The doctor reduced my medication and said "Well done, keep it up!" and I came out of my appointment feeling hugely cheered.  I'm doing the right things.

Of course, it's the keeping it up part that may be a problem.  I don't want to let myself slip up and slide into having a few things I probably shouldn't eat, and then a few more...  I suppose the price of good health is constant vigilance.  Now where have I heard that phrase before?!

I suspect the reduction in my stress level has helped, too.  The last few weeks at Kew were very peculiar; and the last six months had been frankly horrible at times.  I miss my colleagues - I miss some of then quite dreadfully - but I don't miss the job or the atmosphere at all.

At first I was sad about that; sad to have gone, but more precisely sad not even to be missing something that nine months earlier I'd expected to be happily doing for years to come.  I'd worked hard and been completely committed to the place for more than ten years.  In particular, I'd been very proud of what Paul and I achieved in Travel Trade and Group Bookings since we took it over in 2012.  It seemed a sorry way to go, not even to want to hang on to a job I'd been good at and enjoyed.  But things were the way they were, and that was that.

Having this break has helped me to move on from that state of affairs, to accept that situation and to let it go.

I know "Let it go" has become a cliche over the last couple of years, but sometimes it really is good advice.  You pick your fights, to offer another cliche; and this fight was one I could only lose.

So.  Onwards and upwards.  To infinity and beyond.

I got enough redundancy money to keep me going for at least a year (more if I'm economical) so I don't plan to rush about trying to get any old job immediately.  When I do take another full-time job, I'd like it to be interesting and worthwhile, as Kew was.  In the meantime, I'm very unlikely to get another chance like this to stop and take stock before I reach retirement age.  So take stock I shall; and maybe I will carry on as before, and maybe I will change direction completely.

Unlike many people, I have been lucky enough to have some experience of what it's like doing things that are fulfilling to me, instead of merely paying the bills and praying for Friday each week.  My five years at art college were ultimately a dead end, since my work was neither commercial enough to earn me a liveable income through sales, nor "Art World"-y enough (i.e. bullsh*tting enough) for me to get gallery interest and commissions and Arts Council grants.  But it was a fascinating dead end, one which I will never regret.

Now I've returned to a passion even older than my love of painting and drawing.  For the last few years I've been doing quite a lot of creative writing.  I know I could have done far more, if I'd had a) the self-discipline, and b) the time.  So - until a really interesting new job arrives, I've decided I'm going to fill in the time by focussing on my writing.  I have completed novels I need to revise; and uncompleted ones I need to finish and then revise.  I need to have a stab at e-pulishing, too.  It may not get me many readers, but any readers is more than the precisely-zero who are looking at the work on my hard drive.

I've got an idea for a second blog, too, about cookery and diabetes.  My diagnosis has really revived my interest in cooking.  Maybe some of the diabetic-friendly recipes I've invented would be useful for others; so why not share them?

And I'm planning to spend September travelling in mainland Greece, and blogging about my travels.

It's quite scary to actually say that, here in writing where people can see it and hold me to account over it.  Now I really do have to go ahead with this crazy idea!  But I do want to do this, crazy or not.  It's something I've dreamed about for years.  The chances of getting another opportunity like this are pretty slim, at least before I'm in my late sixties, by which point I'll be worried about being a bit old for such shenanigans.  So now's the time.  If not now, when?  (Hmm, is that cliche number six?).

I'm going to take my beaten-up copy of Pausanias' Guide to Greece (the old Penguin translation; I'm no classicist these days!) and travel around and visit some of the places he visited, and draw and/or paint them as they are now, and write about that.

This will take a bit of planning; and I'd better brush up my rusty Greek, too.  It's never been more than basic tourist level, but even that much could be useful if I revised and practised a bit.  I need to find out lots about public transport (I don't drive) and plan itineraries, and pick likely spots for overnight or longer stays.  I need to sort out a lot of details while still leaving room for the unexpected and the spontaneous.  I'd do well to get back into the habit of taking quick sketches on the fly; so I need to carry a sketchpad around with me this month.  And I may need to get a better camera - my current options are my Zenit B, which is a tremendous camera but is older than me and, of course, for 35mm film only, and the little toy digital camera I bought about 18 months ago, which is handy and very compact but not terribly good (it can't do a close up to save its digital life, and is really thrown by strong contrasts and by anything white).

I am a raving Philhellene and have been for as long as I can remember. It's not my place to pass judgement or pontificate on the present situation in Greece (a situation which alarms and saddens me dreadfully, and which I wish I were able to help in some way).  But it seems to me oddly fitting that I take myself there now, in such a time of transition in my own life.

So that's the plan.  Which leaves me with plenty to do during August.  Watch this space.

Strange week

It's very odd to be, as I currently am, in my last week at Kew.  For all its peculiarities, for all the stress and pressure it's put me (& many others) under over the years, I have loved working here and have been deeply committed to the place.  Up until just a few months ago I honestly thought I'd be here till I retired.  The evening of the day I accepted I would have to leave, I cried for hours (all over a very patient friend whose forebearance and loving-kindness I aspire to have one day).  It seemed beyond belief; and in many ways it still does now.  Yet at the same time, part of me just wants this to be over now.

This last week is so weird.  Each day, when I go out at lunch for a stroll, I know I am saying goodbye.  I am losing my connection to these places, these trees and flowers and historic buildings; when next I see them I will just be another visitor, no longer one of their people.  I am saying goodbye to little hidden corners, to short-cuts behind the scenes, to all the secret places that have given me refuge and a moment of peace on hectic days. 

And, of course, I am saying goodbye to people. 

Many of my friends have left already (or been made redundant); many others are away on annual leave at the moment.  Yet others do not work on Fridays; and still others for various reasons I don't see often to begin with.  By now it's very likely I won't see them again before the end of the week.  And I finish on Friday.

I'm trying hard not to get depressed.  I'm also trying not to brood over-much about what will happen, going forward, to this venerable place as it struggles to modernise without killing itself.  It's simply not my look-out anymore.  I have to let go.

But I look at the big, bountiful shapes of trees, cushiony with foliage, delicate with their many-textures of leaves large and small and bark silken or rough; I smell the perfume drifting down from the lindens as they flower in the midsummer warmth; I see the Rose Garden at last really come into its own, six years after being completely replanted; I talk to people I'm fond of, people I've never told how much I like them; I listen to their sense of humour, I laugh and hear their laughter rolling along with mine.  And I miss everything that has been good about Kew.

I won't miss the stress; I have to be honest about that.  I won't miss some of the really arcane and circuitous decision-making practices, either, or the frankly lousy internal comms.  I won't miss waiting in fear to see if the next difficult, business-essential round of cuts will hit me.  But I will miss the place, I will miss knowing I'm contributing to something of real value in the world, and I will miss the people. 

Well, very soon now my life is my own again, to do with as I will.  And who knows what the future holds?  Not me.

My week in Crete, last month, was so blissful and restful that I'm sorely tempted to do it again.  There are (unsurprisingly) some very good special offers around at the moment for trips to Greece.  I'm sure foreign tourism is too important to the Hellenic economy for them to risk anything impacting on visitors from overseas.  I would take cash with me because I always do take cash anyway.  And I could be sitting on a terrace somewhere with a good book, with a long swim in the sea already done and a good supper of fish and salad to come, putting all this behind me for a week.  I know my few hundred quid of spending money is a microscopic drop in the ocean of the Hellene economic woes, but it would still make a tiny scrap of the difference to the individual restaurants and cafes and shops where I spent it.  And I would have sun on my back and pine trees to walk under, the sea to swim in, and  xiphias and sinagridha and horiatikisalata to eat and a glass of good wine or two. 

On the which note, it's extremely silly of me, but I'm enormously encouraged to discover that the person in charge of the Greek Government's economic negotiations at the moment is Euclid Tsakalotos.  I heard him mentioned on the radio a couple of mornings back and did a double take, and stood in the kitchen with a mouthful of cereal, and a silly grin spreading across my face as I listened.

A long time ago - a very long time! - I used to deal with him in my then job; he was an economics lecturer at UKC, and I was the economics buyer at the Uiversity bookshop.  He was a nice man, always courteous and helpful, and friendly, even to a shopgirl like me (he was also terribly ornamental - I had a dreadful crush on him).  I'm very happy he went into politics.  The world needs politicians who have some empathy with people who work in dull jobs.  I know it's completely idiotic of me, but I do feel reassured now I know that he's working on something so vitally important, for a place I love so much. 

Go well and good luck, sir!

Holiday

I know it's a bit redundant to say this when I haven't posted anything for over a month, but this is just a quick one tosay I am off at crack of dawn for a week's holiday.  Going to be slightly different to any holiday I've had in my adult life, as for a change it's important I still stick to my diet, instead of letting myself take a holiday from that as well.  But my BG readings have been good, and pretty steady, for the last few weeks, and my weight is much better than it was a couple of months ago.  So I'm fairly confident that I can keep healthy in Crete.  Yay, Crete!  Mountains and sea; and if the forecast I've seen is at all accurate, good, calm weather.  I have a sketchbook and a notebook and a couple of novels to read.  I have two bathing costumes and plenty of sunscreen.  I have healthy snacks for the plane. 

I have pre-flying jitters, too, but although I know how silly that is, they are a regular visitor at this point before any holiday.

I wish anyone reading this a good week!  I'll be back on Tuesday 26th.

A time of change

This has been a very strange month-and-a-bit.

In early March I finally accepted voluntary redundancy at work.  Paperwork took a while to come through, as the wheels of HR do turn exceeding slow, and consequently the official stuff wasn't actually signed till the end of March.  I am now in my notice period and I will be leaving Kew, where I've worked for the last ten years, at the end of June.  Ten years is a long chunk of a life.  It feels very strange.

Then a day or two later, feeling I had nothing to lose now, I finally told a chap I've had a roaring crush on for well over a year (& a slight crush on for a lot longer) how I feel.  I knew he was in a relationship and wasn't interested in me in that way, and he confirmed that.  He was nonetheless incredibly nice about it.  If I ever find myself (unlikely but even so) in the position of having to tell someone I like them as a person but-not-in-that-way, I now have a superb example of how to do it; with kindness, compassion, respect and even a sense of humour.  I've been rejected before, but always with the unkindness of grave embarrassment, or even with anger and disgust.  Never like this; he was just lovely about it.  I wouldn't have believed it possible if I hadn't experienced it.

Of course, the downside of that was that it made me like him even more.  It confirmed to me why it is that I've come to like him so very much.  He's intelligent and articulate and interesting, yes; but he is also a thoroughly likeable and old-fashionedly good man.  Whoever his other half is, they have a good 'un there and I hope they treasure him as much as he deserves.

Then a few days after that, and no "finally" about this one but a huge shock completely out of the blue, I was diagnosed with diabetes.

So 2015 is turning out to be a year of change and challenges.  I am determined not to be broken down by all the things that are being turned upside down; my committment to Kew, my casual assumption of my own continuing health...   I'm on a diet, and have already lost over a stone in weight; I'm on pills that should support what pancreatic function I still have left; and with an end in sight now, my stress levels at work are decreasing.  It's all very strange, though, very strange indeed.  Things have been taken from me that I had thought were entirely stable, and my world is changed utterly.

I went to the theatre tonight.  I had supper out beforehand (I am working my way through the various Superfood Salad options of the main chain restaurants; to my relief, so far most of them have turned out to be pretty good) and then I went to see The Nether, by Jennifer Haley, which has come into the West End from the Royal Court for a limited run.  This was, funnily enough, on the recommendation of my crush; and I can see why, too.  What an extraordinary and thought-provoking play, and what a brilliant piece of staging.  Although the subject matter is disturbing it's handled with immense delicacy, and it addresses some very powerful and challenging ideas.  It's on for just a couple more weeks; if you like an evening out that makes you think, rather than just entertaining you, then I recommend this highly. 

Not a good time

There's a lot going on at the moment, and I'm afraid a lot of it isn't good.  It's hard at such times to keep looking towards the light, to remember one's hopes and loves and moments of happiness.  It's painfully, shamefully easy to slide into depression. 

I don't want to fall apart and blurt out a great bleurgh of self-pity here, but I'm afraid I am finding my own life pretty hard going just now.  And so much of what I see around me in the wider world is hard as well.  There have been a lot of goodbyes lately, and a lot of losses.  There's been a lot of change, too, and much of that is hard to cope with, and harder to be unshaken by. 

There are moments when one just thinks "My life stinks!" and doesn't see anything wrong with shouting that to the skies; and there are moments when one looks at the things others endure, and the way they are enduring them, with a grace and honesty one can only pray for - and one feels a crushing shame.  Shame on me for thinking my pain is of any import, compared to what others must bear. 

Shame doesn't help.  Nothing seems to help.  Shame leads to guilt, which makes one feel even worse, but doesn't have any lessening effect on the world's woes.  Nothing seems to help at all for any of us.

Still, one endures; one must, after all, even if one cannot do it with selflessness or grace.  But as Marge Piercy puts it in one of her poems, "Nothing is won by endurance but endurance."

I'm just having a bad patch; one of those phases when every day is a struggle.  My awareness of how fortunate and privileged I am really, when you look at the grand scale of things, just makes the struggle worse, because it adds a deep self-disgust to the mixture.  I have nothing wise to say, nor any profound or even useful thoughts to offer you.  There are things I want to say, but I don't seem to have the words for some of them; and other things I will need to say soon, but which I can't say yet.  I am tired and I want to cry.  The optimism and sense of purpose of my last post, back in January, seem pathetic to me now. 

This is not a good time.

I've been in places like this before.  I know these things pass.  I have experiential knowledge of that. 

I wish I were looking around me and seeing hope and love and life and happiness.  I wish I were not reading about wildfires destroying homes, good and gifted people dying, other good and gifted people losing their jobs and seeing their careers torn in shreds, racism seemingly becoming more "respectable" by the day, harmless dogs being poisoned, whole communities being oppressed and ignored.  Dear Gods, what a world it is, when one looks into all that pain.

What is one to do, in the face of this?  There is so much sorrow and loss, so much cruelty, so much injustice, so much destruction.  It feels as though Kali is rising and destroying every well-meaning human heart, terminating every scrap of hope that those hearts had nurtured and clung-to. 

I'm being over-emotional, I know.  This agony of mind, this too shall pass.  And in the meantime, one does endure.  People are tough, and so is the spirit of life.  Hope and love and happiness do still exist, even when they are invisible, even when they are absent for a time, even when one sees them taken from the innocent and harmless and thrown on the garbage heap.  The spring is still coming round again.  Even when the wheel of the year seems to be grinding my face in the mud and breaking my back, it is still turning; and the leaf buds are still swelling, the myrobalans are still coming into blossom.  I will come out the other side of this.  Eventually.

I resolve

...to be a good friend, to care for myself and for those I love

...to do something creative every day, whether it is writing or drawing or sewing or baking or making chutney, or whatever else comes along

...to be patient with myself and others

...to eat healthily and spend time outdoors regularly, and to have solitude and company, each in good measure, when I need them

...to keep moving along my own path

...to do what is necessary, and remember that pleasure is also a necessity

...to remember I am not responsible for everyone else's feelings

...and to follow my bliss.

It's amazing to realise, writing these things down, how quickly the self-censoring inner voice starts up, expressing shock and misgiving about such a self-indulgent, self-absorbed collection of new year's resolutions.  Why, almost all of them are about me! 

Begone, inner critic!  I am what I am, and I too have the right to be happy.

I am a single woman with no children and no dependents.  I'm an introvert, yes, but I don't live in a vacuum, nor do I want to.  I have a lot of love to give, and I can choose to whom to give it; and I do choose, and I do give.  But the best way I can give that love actively and usefully, the best way I can be a good friend to others, is if I am in good shape myself, mentally, emotionally and physically.  So this list, designed to help me remember to do what hakes me happiest, is not self-absorption but self-acceptance. 

I hope these resolutions will be moderately keep-able. 

Happy New Year!

It's been an odd one, has 2014.  There was a lot of stress and disruption in my life, most of it dropped upon me out of the blue rather than wished-for or chosen by me.  There were troubles for many others, too, and for the world at large.  If I were just a tad more New Age and dippy I would say 2014 had pretty difficult vibrations.  I've often found myself wanting to be able to be a better friend to someone than I actually had the energy for, which is a sad feeling. 

There have been jolts and shocks, and losses, some of them bitter. 

But there have been good things too.  Big ones, like new friends, a new place to live, my mother's bad leg gradually improving (she's not there yet but every bit helps, as someone-or-other's adverts are fond of saying), at last making a little headway on the problems at work...  and little things; the singing wrens, the perfect roses, the fascinating lecture, the afternoon spent making damson jam...  I've written quite a lot, though I could certainly have written more if I were better organised.  I've been to a lovely wedding, and some terrific exhibitions at the Dulwich Picture Gallery and the V&A, and I've just about managed to keep up with my friends.  I've been to the coast a few times, and I've seen some very good ballet and contemporary dance and some very good films.  I've had a couple of very pleasant restful holidays, too (though I could have done with both of them being twice as long!). 

But I reach the turning of the year hoping very much that at least some of the drawn-out struggles and miseries of 2014 will be resolved in the coming months.  Here's to a year which really does bring renewed hope and life, and opportunities, and friendship, and love.  Here's to good health, physical, mental and emotional, for all my family and friends; nay, for everyone out there.  Here's to writing and drawing and singing and good books to read, and laughter, and spending time with the people you love. 

Here's to a happy new year.