Chapter 1 – The girl who was

I’ve never really planned my career but I’ve had quite a good working life. I got a qualification, got a job, did well, got better jobs and kept doing that for a quite a long time, moving upwards, gaining skills and experience and occasionally taking little detours into new areas. Along the way I did some ‘personal development’ learned some stuff and started doing bits and pieces on the side, building what eventually became a little business.

About 3 years ago I found myself working in tertiary education as a lecturer a couple of days a week and running my business on another day (sometimes two) as well as studying for a Bachelor degree in Adult Education. My business was rewarding, I ran courses and workshops for women, mostly in personal and spiritual development, but with a bit of career planning from time to time (I’m enjoying the irony of THAT these days). I also taught meditation. People liked my courses and asked for more. It was all good, well; perhaps not ALL good…I was pretty bored lecturing. I like to teach but I’d been teaching the same courses for years and was a bit over them. It wasn’t easy to make changes in that regard due the ‘culture’ of the organisation. I felt a bit stuck. I was also totally burnt out and exhausted from doing so much. I eventually decided to leave my job.

I had plans to concentrate on my business and build it up, which would give me the freedom to be around for my children, able to do school runs and attend activities and generally have the best of both worlds. My degree was finished, I’d left my job and the world was my oyster. It was about then I had a minor melt down. I can’t explain what happened; I just didn’t do what I said I was going to do. I’d have little flurries of activity with the business then I’d do nothing. No business was forthcoming. I picked up the kids, ran the house and cleared out the linen cupboard but I didn’t work on the business. That went on for about 18 months.

It was decided that I should get a job. I’m not quite sure who decided that but I know it wasn’t me. So I started job hunting. The trouble with that was that I had no clue what I was looking for. In the end, after a number of false starts and disappointments I decided to just find some admin work to get me back ‘out there’ and then start thinking about what I would do. I got a job quite quickly and I won’t bore you with the details but I spent 9 months in absolute misery. It was the worst employment experience of my life. I hated every minute of it and that level of misery is not conducive to forward planning – not for me anyway. I had to get out so in desperation I signed up with an agency to do some admin temping. I thought doing that would allow me to keep working, pick and choose when I work and start to try and make some decisions about my future. I had a lot of skills and experience not to mention qualifications; I just needed to find a good fit for all that.

One week after signing up with the agency I was offered a temping assignment. It was for a month (that is unusual in itself for a temping job) with an educational organisation. Result.

I’ll tell you all about that tomorrow.