Out at Sea

So much has changed in the last three years.  When I stopped blogging I had been caught up in a wave of redundancies that swept through London as the financial crisis hit.  At the time, I had been working for a small company where I'd been part of the organisation for so long that I never considered the possibility that there might be a day when I wasn't there.

But suddenly there I was, sitting before the office director as he told me that my job was being eliminated.  As he spoke, he began to tremble and tears streamed down his cheeks. The funny thing is that I didn't cry - not then nor in the days that followed.  It was a strangely liberating feeling to suddenly be set free of a job that I had outgrown ages before but couldn't bear to leave because it had become too easy.   The flexible hours and years of seniority suited my young family even if I was bored senseless. So whilst my boss sulked and my husband lamented the loss of my paycheque, I sat down with my computer and started thinking about what I was going to do next.  

And that was the hard part.

When I finished university, I didn't have much time to think about what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go.  I just knew that I had loans to pay and no place to go - my newly divorced mother was living in a flat with no room to spare.  So I took the best-paying job I could get and stuck with it, determined to stand on my own two feet.

But things were different now.  I had years of experience but wasn't sure if any of it really useful beyond the little pond where I had been a big fish for so long.  And then there was the added concern of juggling a  new job with two small children at home - could I really be successful without feeling detached from my kids? It was daunting to be on the job hunt again, but this time for completely different reasons.


I must have re-written my resumé a thousand times in the months that followed my redundancy.  I am sure I could recite it in my sleep and the whole thing was feeling hopeless, but giving up was not an option.   There had to be a job out there for me and I just had to find it.

And then one day it just happened.  After waiting what felt like an eternity, things started to fall into place. At first it was just a brief conversation with an agency, but then a much longer chat followed.  A week later I was sitting face-to-face in an interview.  I met one person after another and I was certain that at any moment the dreaded thanks-but-no-thanks call would come.

But it didn't.  Instead a large white envelope landed on my doorstep.  An offer had finally arrived. 

Looking back on it, I didn't really think much beyond the fact that I was finally employed again.  It didn't occur to me that I'd jumped from a little pond which really wasn't much more than a puddle to the big blue sea.

And in the sea, there are lots of fish...

Cate xxx