As The Saying Goes…
Originally published at The Apochrypha. You can comment here or there.
Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I’ve talked about it and, surprisingly, I’ve joked about it but above all I’ve stressed about it. Today I handed in my confirmation letter for voluntary redundancy.
This isn’t me. Well it is obviously but I don’t do things like this. I’m completely out of my comfort zone on this one.
Grant MacDonald @ Flickr
Ten years ago I couldn’t have lived without a wage coming in but it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. I was still living at home with my parents and even bringing home £40 a week would have been enough to survive on. Five years ago I had a mortgage and wasn’t particularly happy at work but I stuck with it. It was an easy job for the money and in all honesty once your in the civil service unless you quit yourself it’s really hard to find a way to end up without a job. It’s safe. This was all compounded when I met my wife and I took on some of the financial responsibility of her son. That job I had was money in the bank. And then not one but three babies came along. That need to provide for them come rain or shine kicked in hard. After a lot of disappointing times at work I finally found a post that I enjoyed but it was a lot of work and between it and my home life my health started to suffer. I was stressed beyond belief and really not enjoying life. A lot of opportunities were passing me by that I wouldn’t, no make that couldn’t take because I refused to leave the safe money.
Fast forward to earlier this year and suddenly after months of denying the restructuring at work would come to this they offered up a voluntary redundancy package to us. Those that know me better than most will know that since gaining that job I enjoyed I have been diagnosed as being dyslexic and almost in the same breath lost out on making that job permanent. I’ve since been sitting in limbo helping out our Accounts teams doing the most brain numbing of tasks. Despite the best intentions my work have been mostly unsuccessful in helping me deal with my dyslexia and our redeployment team just don’t seem to care.* Needless to say I’ve lost all hope/want/desire to carry on working here. Don’t get me wrong. I am completely behind the work we do overseas and I will really miss that feeling of no matter how shit a day I’ve had at work doing the most menial task imaginable I will have still done my part to make the work we do possible. There comes a point however where it just doesn’t balance.
I could write for days on where I go from here. I’ve got university prospectuses to read through, a house to redecorate, a garden to fix, business plans for a new business, funnily enough, to help my wife draft up and even with all of this new things are showing up almost daily. Last night we went out for a family dinner to celebrate my brother in laws 18th birthday to a very popular Indian restaurant in Glasgow. As is our custom we baked a cake to take along although this time it was myself that did the work rather than the joint efforts we usually put together. The owner, at least I think he’s the owner due to the newspaper interviews with him at the front door talking about his friendship with Micheal Jackson, took my wife aside and asked if we had bought the cake or made it ourselves. In the 30 odd years in the catering trade he said it was the best cake he’d ever eaten and gave my wife his business card in case we were interested in in going in that direction.
I am completely terrified that this isn’t going to work out. The UK’s unemployment numbers are starting to bottom out and house prices are starting to rise again but what if I can’t make any of this work? I’ll have gave up a safe job with an OK salary for nothing. I do have to say though that the fear is no where near as debilitating as the stresses from the work itself.
I’m actually looking forward to the change. All my life I’ve needed to have my life planned out. When I was off sick not knowing what I was going to do the next day drove me up the wall. When we go anywhere new I need to know exactly where we’re going and sit with the map on my knee as my wife drives us there. There is no road map from here on in only the hope that just around the corner and with a little bit of work there is a destination that is going to make us all happy. Sure we might take a wrong turn here or there but even if you hit a dead end you just turn around and retrace your steps until you get back on road you were on before.
I can’t wait to get that journey started.
* By this I mean they are in no rush to help us out with anything and so far I’ve asked two out of a huge list of questions I had for them. One question I finally received an answer on two weeks after first asking and the second question I’m still waiting on an answer. They seem to be telling other folk in our office one thing and then not telling us anything. As for helping me with my dyslexia I waited six months for them trying to get me a secondhand PDA only to be told they they’d finally binned the last of them a month ago and forgot about me and anyway as my psych report doesn’t mention a PDA specifically, instead it says ‘all possible use should be made of electronic aids appropriate to Robert’s work’ and so they were going to give me a laptop to do the same thing. Where is the point in that? A PDA costs far less then the laptops we use in the office.
-+ For the record this started out as an email to Wil Wheaton…Don’t ask me why…but it got a little to flowery and I lost track of the point I was trying to make somewhere along the way and instead ended up with this. It is far better as a blog post than as an email to some celebrity that will likely never read it and in all honesty it’s much more cathartic this way.+-
