Blogging Challenge Day 21: A List Of Links To Your Favorite Posts In Your Archives

My Double Edged Sword - l like this post as it's all about my identity as a single woman without any children and how it's hard to measure your worth or happiness when so much of your identity is defined by others on whether you have any children or not.

 I'd also come out of a bit of a gloomy phase and had been having a bit of a worry about what I'd done with my life - I'd been comparing myself to the 'traditional' view of women I guess so had no measure of where I stood in the world. This post is me redefining myself and confirming how happy I was not to have a 'conventional' life.

I Passed My Driving Test! - Self explanatory really. I passed my test first time at the age of 40 after doing around 90 hours of lessons in exactly 7 weeks. It was the hardest thing I'd ever done and therefore the thing I'm most proud of.

Fight Apathy - or Don't - This post is important as it's the one that caused a furore at work and instigated me going freelance. The post itself seems quite innocuous at first glance but I mentioned in it that I had worked a lot of weekends and this pissed my manager off.

My immediate manager knew that I had this blog (trusting rookie mistake), read this post and went and told her manager about it. I then got called in to his office to find them both sitting there 'wanting to have a word'. They bring up my comment about all the weekends I've done to which I reply to by telling them that, as I actually write the rota myself, it's not as if I've got a huge problem with it and that it's my anonymous personal blog and I can write what I want.

They then decide they don't really have a leg to stand on so my boss says that he doesn't want to see another word on my blog about setting up my own business until I walk in and put my notice letter on his desk. Obviously I'm furious about this so a week later he walks into his office to find my resignation letter on his desk. Prick.

After I left my job I wrote a blog post saying how I felt she'd really stabbed me in the back by telling her boss about my blog and that she could hardly talk as she used to say X,Y, and Z about him. I left the post up for a week or so to make sure they'd both read it - he wouldn't have been able to read it if she hadn't told him where my blog was remember - then I deleted it. I wanted to see how she felt being hauled into his office. Cow. 

Counting the Days to Freelance Freedom

It's been a plodding along 'doing' week this week; strange phrase I guess, as surely every week consists of doing stuff? This week however has been a series of events that are leading me to one event that which change my life in 10 days - going freelance.

I get through my job each day, then I spend all evening on my laptop researching business articles, freelance advice, marketing or reading Tweets - in fact I have become such an expert in social media, that I'm going to offer 3 packages to clients offering this service; I think Twitter is an amazing business tool and every company should be using it. You can discover and spread information unbelievably quickly - I think it's brilliant.

I'm really looking forward to spending my Summer at 5 festivals; I'm not really a festival kinda gal as I'm not too fussed about bands, am not really into slumming it, hate crowds and like my own bed! I do like working though and doing different things. When I worked at The Big Chill Festival in 2006, I barely saw one band but I really enjoyed the experience. I like the cinema tents and I'm hoping to get an outstanding tan!

So all in all, it's been a bit of a continuity week leading to this event; therefore I image next week will be the same as I prepare for financial instability and the unfamiliar place that is the World of freelance. I can tell you though; I couldn't be happier.

Don't Look Down!

I'm on the countdown to freelance at the moment and my thought have been turning to how I'll spend my time after I leave my regular routine. I want to make sure I get into good habits so it'll be easier to keep them going.

There's a few lifestyle changes I'd like to make as well as getting my business off the ground, so my plan of action so far is: 

1. Getting fitter. I've been very sedimentary these last few years; I used to waitress so ran around all day without worrying what I ate - this is not the case any more and I could do with dropping some weight. Therefore I intend to go for a 45 minute jog-walk most mornings down to the beach and back to both clear my head and gear myself up for the day.

2. Getting up later and going to bed later where possible. I'm not an early-morning kinda gal, and my job has meant an 8am start each day - I'm looking forward to knocking that on the head and only getting up before 7 if I feel like it!

3. Moving my head into a better place. Over the last few weeks I have been spending all my spare time reading business advice and gearing up for the change; I read a book last year called 'how to get from where you are to where you want to be' and it was brilliant - it really encourages positive thinking and I had the idea for my business just after I finished it. I've recently picked it up again and have found it's been good at keeping the momentum; I now read some every night as I know that if I lose my courage then I could fail at this.

4. Live in the now a bit more. People are always looking back at what has happened or forward to what they want to happen; it's important to appreciate the now and enjoy the journey. I'm usually quite good at this but can sometimes lose track of life and miss what's happening. It's good to be in the present and appreciate it.

I think that each point is manageable and should hopefully keep me moving in the right direction; it's a very exciting time but a bit scary if I think about it too hard - so my plan is to keep looking ahead and not to look down!

Unto The Breach, Dear Friends

This morning I handed my notice in at work - I've decided to jump into the abyss and see if I catch myself.

As you may recall I am in the process of setting up my own freelance PA business, so I've decided to accept a position with a company I used to work for and assist them at 5 festivals around the country this summer.

I'll be helping with stock control and other admin; and as the contracts are only for half the month, it means I can use the other half to network for more business. On paper an ideal situation...

With the recession, other freelance PA's have said they are really busy; people don't necessarily need a full-time administrator but they still need their paperwork doing, so this way they can hire me by the hour and not have to worry about agency fees or employment costs - I just have to get them to use me now!

I firmly believe that I can do this and be successful at it; it's just a bit scary as to whether I can do it in the financial time-scale I need to (and I am not easily scared) I know I'm very good at what I do and I'm hoping it'll turn out to be the best thing I ever did. I'm extremely excited about what's going to happen; I know it'll be really hard work, but then I have never been a person to shy away from hard work.

So here I go jumping into the abyss once more; I have always caught myself before, lets hope I do it again!

I've Got a Feeling I Don't Want to Know

9am and I'm debating whether to get up; It's still pretty early in my book - it's a shame you need to eat to survive really as I guess I should get dressed to go to Sainsbury's (just being a snob now; most people don't bother) otherwise I suppose I could just drag myself to the corner shop and buy a packet of chocolate Hobnobs.

The whole Bank Holiday thing is again passing me by as I had to work yesterday; the 2nd Bank Holiday and 5th weekend in a row - I'm hovering on the edge of self-employment and can't wait to get out of my job. Shame really as it was once my dream job and now it's just a lot of hard work for no reward whatsoever. I could care less if we reached our target; we don't get anything for it except a bigger target.

No, I think I'll wander down to Scummerfield or some other multi-conglomerate soul destroyer in a bit to recreate a scene from Dawn of the Dead then come back and do some work for my client whilst watching Star Trek and old Hollywood films all day. Then again, I could just make myself another Lavazza and stay in bed...

Time Off For Good Behaviour

I'm all happy this month as I'm doing very little work - because of lieu days and annual leave, I'm working 3-day weeks for the whole of February... hoorah!

I intend to spend a lot of that time focusing on promoting and marketing my freelance PA venture as I've seriously slacked off lately and am quite disappointed in myself. I really want to work for myself this year and nothing happens just by itself, so I have to make it happen.

I've discovered that trying to put together material for a website is MUCH harder than I thought it'd be and getting the time to do both marketing and freelance work around my full-time job, whilst also trying to have a social life and blog my thoughts here is proving to be trickier than I expected as well.

Of course, during my time off I also intend to catch-up with friends, chill out, and see some more movies with my unlimited cinema pass; so far I've seen Bolt in 3D, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Reader, Seven Pounds, My Bloody Valentine, Underworld, and Slumdog Millionaire - just lovin' that pass! So I'm really going to try to savour and make the most of this time off as I'm sure it'll be over in the blink of an eye!

Put The Gun Down Lady

This blog started off being called 'Cashier Closed' as I'm one of those people that get narked about lots of small mundane things; I try not to, but I just do. I decided recently though that I was going to try to be a much more positive person and stop letting those day to day annoyances bother me and attempt to 'let it wash over me', as being annoyed about things all the time is, well... annoying!

This week however I'm feeling a bit arsey; I go back to work on Monday and I don't want to; what I want to do is get my business off the ground and work for myself, I want to find love and not be single anymore, I want to have more money and not be constantly on the verge of poverty, I want to be 30 again and not age anymore, I want to be a stone lighter and want to love exercise instead of hating it. 
Some of these things are doo-able and I'm working on them, and some of them I can't do anything about - but today I'm having a whinge about them.

I've decided that this week I'm going to wallow in my arsey-ness and demonstrate the things that piss me off and then I'm going to shut up about them and get on with it. I'm sure you'll recognise some of the following...

Make It So

 

Last Saturday I decided to set up my own business; it all started by me mentioning to a friend that I was looking for some PA work, her husband, a professional juggler no less (well this is Brighton after all) needs someone for 4 hours a week. 

Lying in bed that morning it suddenly dawned on me: 40 working hours in a week; I had just sold 4… if I sold another 36 then I could work for myself!

I sell a venue for a living – if I can sell some one else’s venue then I could easily sell myself; I leaped out of bed, bizarrely cleaned the house from top to bottom, then got down to work researching the idea and working out how to do what I needed to do to make it happen. It was like I was suddenly possessed - I just KNEW I could do this, in fact I knew I could do this really well... I could be a freelance Personal Assistant.

I’m still running on that momentum, I’m researching like crazy, I have someone designing my stationary and business card, I know what I want my website to look like and I’ve started telling everyone (except my employers) what I’m doing. If I can manage both together for a while then I can decide when to make that massive leap of faith into the unknown… to give up my job and work for myself!