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I’ve been for lots of interviews this year, some for jobs in publishing, some back in IT, lots of general office jobs. I had one interview last Thursday which I was looking forward to. I’d spoken to the MD on the phone and done my usual tell them all about me, suggested that they google me before they interview me etc. He actually said he didn’t give a shit about that but thanks for telling him. He said that he had read one line of my CV and knew that I could work well for them. I have a really bizarre mix on my CV of commercial IT and publishing. It doesn’t make sense to most people but sometimes it just works.

So, I went for the interview. Really liked the people. Had a good feeling.

Towards the end of the first hour the MD sat back in his chair and said, so how does this all sound? Are you going to join us? We talked about hours, salary, roles etc and came to an agreement then and there. He took me into the main office, introduced me to everyone and I start next week.

Exciting!

Its not full time, but its enough money to make me not panic about my rent every month while at the same time giving me my hours to work on my freelance work that’s building up nicely.

Its funny how people who own their own businesses all shake their heads at me when I say that I’m not going to run my own company again and look at me as if I’m a child. I really mean that though. I’m happy freelancing and now that I have a perm job working for someone else I’m even happier. Its all good.

I do know that some of you reading this won’t be happy for me and will continue to follow me around and haunt me forever but that’s OK. You actually can’t hurt me any more, because I’m not doing anything wrong so carry on if you want to. I’m OK, and I think its a little sad that you’re not.

I picked up a book yesterday that was recommended to me last October by a painter and decorator friend of my ex husbands. He is a fascinating man and I tried to find the book at the time but couldn’t get it anywhere. It went to the back of my mind.

Yesterday was a crap day for lots of reasons. I was meeting a potential customer for dinner in Braintree Freeport and had a few minutes to wander around before they got there. I was in the Works rummaging through the cookbooks (as you do) when I found THE book hiding behind some slow cooker recipe books. It was £1.99

Seemed like fate to me, so I bought it.

The book is The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.

I’m a chapter into it and its a little bit totally life changing. Maybe I needed it more yesterday than I did when it was first recommended to me. Who knows. I”m glad it found me though and I know there will be a lot I can learn from it.

I’m not feeling very well this morning, but saw this on twitter and wanted to share. It’s long, but watch it all the way to the end if you can. It’s very powerful.

bullying

Hello everyone, I hope lots of you have found the link here today. This is my blog which the powers that be in the Ravelry group that hates me didn’t want you to find out about.

Some of the moderators of the group have been visiting here regularly, see? But they’ve never told you about the site in the group - I don’t know why. Maybe you can ask them. Maybe its because the group is all about slagging me off and nobody wants to read the painful truth that I write here, who knows. Ask them.

That group is pitched at being the shining light of truth, the one who shows all these poor innocent people just how evil I am. But in fact that’s quite the opposite. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you are a member of that group you are responsible in some small way for the failure of my business which you all hold me up and hate me for. Because words can kill, people and businesses and no matter what you think of me, your actions have been much, much more shameful than mine ever were.

So, make yourself at home. Comment if you want to, ask me anythign you like. Here are a few facts for you :

- I do not run a company, I do not employ staff. - I am freelancing, earning money to pay my rent and feed my kids. Nobody is being hurt by this.
- Everyone who I work with knows about my past mistakes. Very few people seem to care. You are the ones who look stupid when you send your emails with your links in to my new customers and friends.

I am finally happy for the first time in years. I won’t let any of you spoil that for me. I’m not hurting anyone. Please go away and leave me alone.

 

Edit - if you’re new here start reading with this entry which sums up a lot

and then move on to one of the ones below. Or just read everything. Its a scary yet honest look into my mind. You won’t like it much, but that’s not my problem.

 

here

this one

 

Lets talk openly for a few minutes about failure shall we? I could write you all a list now of the reasons my business failed last May, and it would be a long list. Most of the items on the list would be my fault, but one of them would be the fault of the lovely A who has been visiting here but not commenting, obviously. I’d love to name her properly, full name, email address, postal address and Rav id but I won’t. Because that would be bullying. And I don’t do that.

The emails that she sent to my advertisers and bank, factoring company and printer and the phone calls that she made were the nail in the coffin. They were the reason that my exit plan from the company failed and that we went into administration. Its a matter of public record that I had been negotiating with buyers for the magazines which would have given me enough money to pay creditors and staff but her constant barrage of emails slagging me off to my customers and trade suppliers and co-incidentally one of the people who I was negotiating the sale of the magazines to meant that nobody had faith in me to let me carry on for those few extra weeks / months until the sale could be completed. At least it helped the magazines be sold off by the administrators at a fraction of what they would have been sold for, bargains to be had.

Never mind, hey - shit happens.

But what makes this all so difficult is that she denied sending the emails on her Ravelry group when my lovely best friend got a bit over zealous and went all shouty at her, maybe embarrassed that people knew what she was doing? Whatever.

She is at it again. Or at least someone is sending similar letters to the customers of people who I work for. That’s the big difference here, I don’t own a company for her to to try and destroy so she is going after other people’s companies who I work for. My best friend, my parents - anyone who admits to hiring me is fair game it would seem. That’s actually illegal you know, as well as totally morally wrong.

And yet again, no mention of this is made in the group.Funny that. I get lots of links to this blog from private messages that they are sharing about me but none from the group. So the ringleaders - or at least 3 people who I know well, 1 used to work for me - are talking about me, sending links here but not publishing this link in the group publicly. Again, I wonder why that is? Probably because they don’t want people to read the truth from me, its much more fun to read the half lies and total inventions of truth that the group posts than the sad truth that I write here.

 

This week is mental again. Its half term which doesn’t affect me too much as I have the best childminder in the world, it does mean that the kids are around more than they usually are but I seem to have countered that by being out of the house nearly all week.

With 6 customer meetings, 3 networking events, a trip to mum and dads house and the possibility of an interview for a perm job that my ex hubby found me, I’m not sure when I’m going to find time to finish off the 3 websites that I’m due to deliver this week or work on my book that I’ve started writing.

Its all very good, being so busy. The suits that I used to wear to work pre magazine days are all being dragged out of the wardrobe again and my lovely comfy DM boots have been replaced with heels. The kids have stopped asking me why I look pretty when I go out (clearly I’d spent too many months slobbing about in jeans and DMS!) and now just treat it as normal that I’ll be picking them up wearing a dress, tights and heels.

I’m still not used to it. My self confidence needs a big fat kick up the bum. Going out and meeting tonnes of new people each week and telling them all about me, and the business, and my failures and my mistakes is helping my self confidence. That sounds backwards doesn’t it? I assumed that it would cause me more problems but its shocking how many people have had similar (or larger!) failures in their past. One woman who I am working with a lot at the moment is an insolvency practitioner - that made me pause before approaching her but it worked out well. Being honest about who I am and the msitakes I’ve made is working out for me.

The half crazed internet hysteria still exists though. A lot of the ringleaders visit here regularly - I love my site stats. They tell me SO much.

Now its time to go and put on those heels and pimp myself out again, 4 meetings today. Not THAT kind of pimping myself out, I’m not that desperate any more!

I love Sundays. Its my one full on with the kids all day from the minute we wake up until the minute we go to sleep day. It is also the most INSANE day of my week, but I think that’s why I love it so much. We tend to wake up early, the first one usually climbs into bed with me between 6.30 and 7 and by 7.30 most of us are downstairs helping to get breakfast ready. Everyone has a job from setting the table to mixing the pancake batter and 8am tends to be breakfast time. The eldest is usually dragged out of bed to join us and we have a fun cooked breakfast all together. Then its whatever we’re going to be doing for the rest of the day, today it was hoovering, baking and cleaning out the pets and then lunch, trip to the cinema to see Wreck it Ralph before home for dinner, baths and in a couple of hours time - bed.

The 4 of them are at such different ages and have such different needs. Today I’ve talked my 12yo down from a best friend disaster, read stories to the 3yo, done some sewing with the 5yo and listened to my 8yo tell me all about some game on the ipad. We’ve laughed and argued and generally been moving all day. I don’t know how it works but it does. They are such a beautiful pack of kids, and I use the word pack for a reason! Despite the 5yo cutting her own hair today we’ve had such fun.

The dishwasher and I both work hard on a Sunday. Its our punishment for being lazy bastards on a Friday and Saturday without the kids, I tend not to cook for myself and then the dishwasher doesn’t go on. It usually goes on 2 or 3 times on a Sunday with 3 cooked meals to clean up after!

We’re just about to eat dinner and then I think we’re doing jigsaws and playing scrabble till bed time.

I’m very lucky. Wouldn’t swap these guys for the world.

Not the kind of cheating that you do in an exam or when you’re playing scrabble, the cheating on your partner kind of cheating. Affairs. Its on my mind at the moment because this week one of my friends has found out that her husband of 10 years is on a dating website and is cheating on her. Another has admitted that she has been having an affair and cheating on her boyfriend of 3 years for the last 7 months.

I wish I could say this shocked me, but it doesn’t. There are 3 sides to every affair and I’m not really proud to say that I’ve been on 2 of them.

I’ve been the one who has been cheated on. The one who wasn’t loved enough for their partner to not have sex with someone else while living with them. This hurts just as much as you’d expect it to, and perhaps more. I’m very cynical about this now and think I’d find it hard to trust anyone again. Obviously, I understand why it happened and I’m not actually bitter about it any more. Just because I understand and can forgive the other person though doesn’t mean I don’t think about it, and that it doesn’t occupy a place in my life. It does, just not as badly as it once did.

I’ve also been the other woman. I was single at the time, he was married. This should have bothered me a lot more than it did but I was 20 and it was flattering and no, I didn’t feel bad about his wife at all. To be honest I still don’t feel really bad, I have no fairytale idea that I was the only one he cheated with. They are still together now and I have no doubt that he has cheated numerous times in the 20 years he has been together. Shame but there you go.

I’ve never been in a relationship with someone and had an affair. I’ve never been on that third side, and I am proud to say that. I’ve never even kissed someone else while I’ve been in a relationship. I don’t think I could. To me, if you’re with someone and you love them then you won’t cheat. If you want to kiss / have sex with / whatever with someone else then that should tell you that you’re current relationship is not working and you should deal with that before you do anything else. Unless you are a lovely poly person or in an open relationship, neither of which apply to me so I can’t really comment.

Honesty in a relationship is hugely important. I do feel sorry for the people in my life who are in these complicated situations in their relationships. The woman who has found out her husband is cheating is in denial, somewhere that I remember being very clearly, I couldn’t have been told it at the time and seh can’t be told it now. She’ll realise one day that there is no point in settling, but right now she is panicking and not wanting to let go of what she thought she had. I don’t know what to say to the other person who is cheating because I actually don’t understand that mindset at all. I understand being unhappy, but not making someone else unhappy as well.

I wonder how my 2 friends lives will pan out over the next few months. I’m trying not to get too involved with either of them, selfishly I can’t face looking after other people again. Mean, huh?

 

Happy day of love people, I hope you all have an amazing day.

I am working all day today, then off to dinner with a friend tonight followed by off to the cinema ON MY OWN to see the new Die Hard film. This is the start of a new, brave, independent me.

Bring it on!

I had a really good day (and night) with ACE42 the other week, I haven’t been a member since last April, obviously if you don’t own a company its very difficult to be a member of a group for business owners but I’ve kept in touch with them and received some great support over the dark months of last year.

I was excited to be invited to part of their annual retreat, along with lots of other ex members, and had a great time. I will be totally honest and say it bought to the surface some things that I thought were over and done with (clearly not) but it was a valuable day. As well as everything that it taught me officially it also taught me the following :

- people who have run businesses understand me. I am not judged for my mistakes amongst this kind of group, I am valued for my contributions. This is still something of a shock to me at times.
- Something that was definitely a good idea a year ago is now less of a good idea, but I still did it. God damn it. I weighed it all up and somethings are just too valuable as they are to risk rocking the boat. Is all good. Probably. Sigh.
- Sometimes a good walk is needed in the morning after a lot of gin the night before.
- I need to be more aggressive at insisting the snooker table belongs to US and not let myself be bullied off by car salesmen.

The main focus of the afternoon session was purpose. I can’t remember the name of the speaker (which probably says something about him….) but I thought he was OK. Purpose is a fascinating subject to me and one that I’ve put a lot of thought into over the last few months.

What is your purpose in life? Do you have one? Can you articulate it? What do you do at work? How do you do it? Why do you do it?

The idea was that if you knew what your purpose was then making decisions was simpler because if you could be sure that every decision you made was in tune with your purpose you would never make the wrong decision. Bad decisions, yes, if your purpose was bad, but heartfelt decisions. We looked at our insecurities and strengths, why are those your insecurities and how can you use them to help you make good decisions.

It was a little bit of an airy fairy subject, and the debate around the table was good. It reminded me of the old days of the group when the meaty business subjects would be debated in a very different way to the fluffier ones. I like a bit of fluff every now and again. I’m also proud to say that this was the first retreat (including mid year retreats) where I haven’t cried. The last 2 or 3 retreats I’ve ended up standing in front of the group and sobbing like a girl. I know that I am a girl but not many other people in that room are, I’m sure I made them all feel uncomfortable although they never made me feel that way about sharing my emotions. Not this year though, there were no tears from me at all. To be honest, I’m not a member of the group any more and so therefore there were no challenges thrown at me but it was still refreshing to be able to wear mascara and not end up with it everywhere!

Outside of the working session and over drinks, dinner, games, more drinks etc I told my “story” so many times. I haven’t seen many of the people in that room since the business failed, and business failure is never easy to talk about in a room full of very successful businesspeople. Add to that a marriage failure and a horrible dark summer and I felt like I was just depressing everyone with my “and then the business went into administration, and then I lost all my friends, and then I left my husband, and then I ended up queueing for food stamps to be able to feed my children, but enough about me, hows your year been?”

It was only when a couple of people said that they could see something in my eyes that they’d never seen before that I realised that it was OK to be me there, that I could talk to them about what had really happened and not feel ashamed at all. It was obvious to them that I am happier than I’ve been in a long while, and that’s all for the good. I’m getting my reading and writing mojo back (can you tell from this blog this week?) and that’s brilliant. There are still a few bits to sort out but I’m getting there.

I know what my purpose in life is, do you?

And then after an amazing 24 hours where I felt like a normal human being again, I went to visit some of the very most lovely people I’ve ever met on twitter. None of whom turned out to be axe murderers so that story has a happy ending too. But that’s a blog post for another day.