Yesterday after I had posted I took a look through the general blog… and oh my gosh it needs seriously updating.
However, when I was scrolling down my sidebar I noticed this:
I must have hit the 1.5 million view mark recently, and completely missed it.
Holy cow.
There’s nothing like moving house to remind me that I have the upper body strength of a toddler and I’m insanely unfit.
Brace yourself. This is a long one.
The Bloke and I moved house at the beginning of January. It’s been a long time (I think about eight years!) since our last move and not one that we had planned on – our landlord suddenly suggested late last year that he was thinking of selling the house, leaving us in the precarious position of potentially being given notice and needing to find somewhere new in a very short amount of time, in an area that is very much in demand. We decided to take ownership of the situation and found somewhere ourselves, and struck lucky with a beautiful property not far away.
On Friday night I logged off and sank back into the couch. Last week wasn’t particularly bad, but it was certainly intense in the sheer volume of work that appeared on my daily lists. While everything got done I was left feeling mentally and physically exhausted.
Additionally, my sleep patterns have been all over the place (thank you, peri-menopause), and this has resulted in lots of my working hours being conducted through what has felt like a hazy fog behind my eyeballs recently.
Working for myself has a number of positives… in theory. I don’t have an awful daily commute, I can set my own hours, choose who I work with and I don’t have a micro-managing, passive-aggressive line manager to deal with (of which I have experienced many). While these are all things that I appreciate on a daily basis, I have found that as my client base has grown, an increasing level of fear has accompanied it…
Isn’t it strange how, when you find yourself in a difficult situation, the universe seemingly steps in and shows you the direction in which you need to go?
I discussed recently about the challenges that The Bloke and I have faced this year, particularly with the death of various family members and my mum being ill. We’re both tired and a bit stressed, we both struggle with depression and anxiety on occasion and both of us have found ourselves getting through the day on autopilot when things have got really tough.
It’s taken me over a month to write this. I’ve been back and forth with myself, repeatedly drafting and deleting, hoping that the urge to write would fade… but it hasn’t. So today I decided to bite the proverbial bullet and post – albeit a much more concise, less angry version of my initial ramblings – but at least I’ve transferred my thoughts and sent it out into the universe. I may decide to delete it later, but we’ll see.
My father passed away at the beginning of July.
Just over ten years ago I was writing furiously in my journal after having a crappy day at work. I was into my seventh year of teaching, hated almost every minute of it and as a result had become severely depressed. One thing that eased the dark cloud was writing my thoughts down and I had developed a habit of buying notebooks and spending hours of my evening scribbling down my frustrations of the day.
The Bloke, perhaps a little overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of my ever increasing collection of notebooks that had started to litter the house, suggested that I start an online blog. My knowledge of blogging was minimal, but I signed up for a free WordPress account and began to write. There were no expectations behind it – I was careful not to use my real name and avoided including too many personal details and discussing anything that would get me sacked should the school discover it.
After spending over a week down south, I returned home for a few days and then travelled up north to Manchester.
The main purpose of the trip was to catch up with a group of friends that I have known for nearly 25 years. It has been two years since I last saw them – they were the last social event I had before the pandemic hit the UK in March 2020, so I was looking forward to it.
I was staying with my mum for the weekend and we had a bunch of things planned around it. I was feeling quite smug when I left the house initially due to being somewhat organised for once, only to discover when I arrived that I had forgotten a whole bunch of stuff including socks, make-up and a phone charger. Who forgets to pack socks???
Socks quickly acquired, we went for a meal at our favourite Chinese restaurant on the Friday night. We’ve been going there for decades – I remember having my 18th birthday celebration there, I turned 40 last year and I couldn’t count how many meals our family has had there in between. I was delighted to see that one of the staff members, George, who greeted us during our earliest visits, was still there. There is one particular dish – a sharing platter for two – that both mum and I are obsessed with, so instead of ordering a starter and selection of mains we decided to treat ourselves and had one each without mains. It was fabulous – I couldn’t help but laugh with sheer excitement as they were brought out – but I was so full by the end I thought someone would have to roll me to the car afterwards.
I started February with the best of intentions. I had just completed a No Spend Challenge over January and was feeling a massive sense of achievement, so set myself a whole series of goals over February. One of them was to blog at least twice a week… and now it’s March and to say I failed spectacularly would be an understatement.
However, despite the storms and constant rain, February was fast-paced and pretty exciting at times with lots of both short and long-term unexpected opportunities.
Ever heard the analogy about waiting for a bus for ages and then three all arrive at once?
I look forward to Christmas every year. Since we got married (can you believe that was over four years ago already??!) The Bloke and I spend Christmas at home, visiting family and friends in the weeks before (although last year we weren’t able to do that). We have developed a bit of a routine and traditions – when we buy presents and send cards, when and how we decorate, when we go food shopping etc. Usually by now everything would be done and ready to go well in advance – the cupboards would be full, presents would be wrapped, our Christmas watchlist would have been planned to the nth degree to avoid missing any of the Christmas specials, The Bloke would have braved Marks and Spencer to grab a pre-rolled turkey and stuffing (there’s only two of us and there’s no way I’m spending half my Christmas Day cooking a massive frozen turkey that will go to waste) and I would have posted on the blog several times about how drunk the tree looks etc.
I wake up each morning full of enthusiasm and intentions and tell myself that I’m going to write a blog post today. I get up, turn on my laptop… and then it’s 6.30pm and I find myself finishing work for the day and feeling mentally spent. It isn’t that I don’t want to blog – even after eight years I still get an enormous buzz from pressing the ‘publish’ button, but it has become less of a priority as other things have taken over. I’d like to change that, especially after receiving so many nice messages from bloggy friends who were wondering where I’ve been.
As I haven’t posted for several months, there’s a lot to talk about.
Suzie Speaks 
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