Things, they are a changing....

I’m having one of those days when you feel about 150 years old and ridiculously tired. I had a rubbish night’s sleep, goodness knows why, and woke up as tired as I went to bed. As we all know, when you’re tired any physical aches and pains come to the fore (a sign of aging, sadly) and even the most mundane of problems seem too much of a mountain to climb.

It’s interesting that over the last year, when I haven’t done any shows or had much of an involvement in the theatre at all, I seem to have been as busy as ever and possibly more so. Goodness knows how I found time to appear in shows, let alone direct them with all the preparation and thinking through that involves. A year or so off of what has been my hobby for almost 40 years seems to have done nothing for my stress levels or energy.

In the spirit of remaining positive (mentioned in this blog last week) I’m trying not to let feeling totally knackered all the time get me down. After all, chores are getting done, the dog is getting walked (and I mean walked. I certainly don’t intend to go jogging with her), the house and garden are in good order and I’m managing to have some sort of a social life (although rather reduced from what it was). Paperwork and bureaucracy are being dealt with and I’m enjoying the radio presenting.

I thought your busiest times of life were meant to be from your mid to late twenties to about forty, when you had young children about the place and were climbing the greasy pole at work. So not in your fifties, when you might reasonably be expected to have reached the zenith of your career, to be able to slow things down a little and take some more time for yourself. But I’m exhausted.

Definitely it’s time for a major life change. I fully intend to have a ripe and fulfilling old(er) age and carrying on as I am really isn’t an option if am to achieve that. As I sit here now I can feel my shoulders aching due to computer work, my back playing up due to an uncomfortable train journey this morning, my sinuses congested due to the stuffy office atmosphere with no fresh air and my eyes wanting to nod because I sleep badly. All minor ailments, none of them life threatening or serious, individually hardly worth mentioning but collectively they really drag you down. The mental effect of cumulative small physical problems is significant.

So, plans are afoot which, if they come off in nine to twelve months time, will push me in a completely different direction and much, much closer towards what I want. I’d like to be free-er with less stress and angst, be able to do something creative, be able to work as much as I want, when I want and have a life with less moaning from others and more satisfaction. I’ll be so, so, so skint, but I’ve come around to the view that money isn’t everything and keeping the shoulder to the grindstone to achieve maximum pension or a house in a posh area or another promotion simply isn’t worth it in so many other ways.

The Hubby and I don’t entirely agree on this. Being more attached to Blighty than I am, he wants to work on with slightly different longer term ambitions. And for some bizarre reason, he thinks working in the public sector is worth it because it makes a difference (hmm - debate!). But he has been very supportive of my proposals and it’s safe to say that in the medium term (definitely not as far in the future as the long term) things will be very different. I have mixed feelings – “what have I done?” being one, bravery another and excitement underpinning it all.

But this time, I’m gonna do it!

Clever Clogs, but what for?

At the weekend, my very clever Daughter Two obtained her degree (as in, went to the ceremony and put on a silly hat and collected her certificate).

I’m sure she won’t mind me saying this, but a few years back none of us really thought she would go to Uni because she just wasn’t interested in being part of extended academia. Daughter One was the one that got nine ‘A’s and a couple of ‘A*’s at her GCSEs and went on to do the academic ‘A’ levels, and The Hubby’s Son One and Son Two were the ones who went to the posh Reigate Grammar School, so we thought our two eldest would get there first and Daughter Two would do some good job instead.

But to her credit, D2 stuck at it, studied hard and got her Degree in Business in the autumn, the first of our five children. This weekend was just the shindig and palaver which goes with it. As regards the others, D1 passed her vocational professional qualification in the autumn too, but that doesn’t have any ceremony attached to it, and S1 is now in the Metropolitan Police dealing the with miscreants and villains in Westminster. S2 is at university in Cardiff doing something clever with IT (although actually, from what he says, he spends much of his time DJ-ing and drinking), and S3 is just about to take ‘A’ levels then wants to go travelling before starting work.

Goodness knows what D2 is going to do now. She has a permanent job, in Morrisons in Oxted, and she is desperate to advance through the ranks to management where she can actually use some of the knowledge and skills that three years at university (and the associated debt) has bought her. They didn’t want her on their graduate programme last year, so she is trying to do it the hard way. But you can’t magic up vacancies, and competition is fierce. Maybe she’ll try for the graduate programme again this year, we’ll see.

D1 and S1 are already in work and both doing OK, although D1 struggles managing on her own with my grand daughter. Her employer reasonably understands, but Ruby starts school this year and that means shorter working hours to accommodate school hours, and less money. It’ll be hard, and she will need us all there to support her.

As for the others, well it’ll be a year or two before we have to worry, and they say employment prospects are improving, but I can’t say I see any real evidence for that. The Hubby has now been out of work and actively looking for another job for almost five months, and there is virtually nothing out there even if we set our sights lower than we really need. I feel some difficult times and tough decisions coming.

We all know things will get better eventually, and it is much better that our children have spent time doing something meaningful in academia which may give them an edge in the future rather than sitting around watching daytime TV because they can’t get any work, but it will take time to come back from the precipice we have all been teetering on and we are in for a few lean years. There is much talk on the TV of ‘the bank of Mum and Dad’ but in this direction the bank is already run dry, so they will have to manage on their own (or tap up their other parents, of course).

Let’s just hope that we can make it through the next year or two without anything disastrous, then that villa in the sun beckons. Roll on!

Back to work today (briefly) before a few more days off. I'm really struggling to motivate myself, it all seems so DULL.

I'm sure the worthy residents of the wealthy central London borough where I work deserve to have their local authority open today, but actually it all does seem rather pointless. Most teams only have a skeleton staff available and things will just tick over. Nothing will actually get done.

I know lots of people feel really motivated and proud of their jobs, and indeed I used to feel like that. But more and more I can't really see the point of it all. After all, I'm not really making any difference to these people's lives and they are increasingly ungrateful and rude. It seems that the more we try to do for them, the more they expect and the less we get thanked. But perhaps I'm just feeling slightly jaundiced about the whole thing; I'm sure some of them think we are doing a good job and certainly if you work in the social services (for children, families, the elderly and the vulnerable) you really can improve and change people's situations. But planning, in Knightsbridge and Belgravia? Please! They're all filthy rich and most of them are foreign!

I've opened up my laptop today to 68 e-mails (not bad, but that's since 5pm last Friday), about half of which are rubbish, and half of the rest are whinges. I'm getting sick of it. Once, just once, it would be nice to open up an e-mail that says thank you.

I should be working now. Dealing with the problems and writing the reports no one wants too read. But I'm not, I'm writing this. The trouble is, jobwise I'm not sure what else I could do, and once you start to earn central London money, it's very difficult to move away from it because you take on commitments to match. I'll just have to make the best of it, won't I, and bide my time until I'm old enough to retire and do the things I really want to do. But by then I'll probably be too old and decrepit to do them!

So 2012 is a year of resolutions. I am shedding my commitments this year and focusing on ME! Weight, fitness and other general interests and leisure activities are coming first. That's my resolution! Let's see how long it lasts.