The new venture

It is funny how quickly you can grow up when thrown into a whole new universe of meaning.

For the second time in my 30 years, I have been made redundant. It just so happened to be on Friday 13th August. I have never been superstitious but maybe I will start to be.

So it happened again, but this time I have no job to go to and I don't have the support of a partner to pick up when it all gets too much. What I do have, is something far more exciting, rewarding and a whole group of friends who are there to keep me going and to cheer me along the way.

I have set up my own business, which is something I have been working towards for the past couple of months but I had a plan of doing it gradually and building the business and client base before taking the big leap. Life never works out to a plan though does it?! So, I have been frantically working to get my business set up, to tell as many people as possible and to win as may contracts from the old business. I got made redundant with immediate effect on the Friday and I had the business registered on Saturday night (along with a bottle of Champagne to celebrate!)

Welcome.... The Marketing Collective!

I still have a couple of weeks to go, my branding and website will be done very soon and once I can see my new identity I can start my road of marketing myself and winning business.
I also have some hard negotiating to do with the liquidators to gain some of the brands I worked on and to be fair took with me to the job after my first redundancy.

I am not finding it daunting, a little scary and extremely stressful but I know it will be worth it in years to come. I think maybe I am managing ok because of the help love and support I am getting from friends and family, so, thank you to all who have and are helping me - you know who you are!

Anyway, best get back to it... I have a business to run!

Twitter Fail

I have to say, I think I am falling out of love with Twitter.

It feels like a lot of relationships all ending at the same time and I feel a little sad about it, but at the same time, I can’t put my finger on what Twitter is about at the moment.

I have been open about how much Twitter has helped me and I am the first to admit that I have been a little addicted at times, but it has, I believe changed me in a positive way. I have made a number of friends and a few very good friends who I know will be long-term buddies. I have travelled to meet people and at times when I have been lonely on my own, or when I have had a bad day at work, I have been able to get some support and kindness from some lovely people and virtual hugs always work.

So why am I falling out of love with it? Well, I don’t think I like what it is becoming and the avenues it is used for. Sometimes I feel it is a popularity contest, yet as stated by @iamhewhoisiam, ‘It is more about the quality of followers as opposed to quantity’ I can’t agree with this more. Twitter is about dialogue and conversation, about discussion and kindness and not about bullying, as we have seen this week with Keith Chegwin. I missed most of the issues this week around Chegwen but picked up on it from Diary of a Ledgers blog. Cheggers was in the wrong but he didn’t deserve such a response.

Twitter has also made me feel sad recently because of how people air their insecurities and their troubles. I know things are said and photos are posted because of a craving for attention, which is fine but there is no need for them to be so open – people will always respond anyway because they are nice people. I don’t really understand the mentality of it. I just wish they could see they are beautiful people who perhaps need to look at making some changes in their lives to find the complete happiness they deserve.

Then there is the clique. I have noticed over the past few weeks this has got worse. Some people only talking to particular friends which again is fine, but if someone tweets you, whether you follow or not, isn’t it just polite to respond? Or embrace what the point of Twitter is and have conversations with other people as well as the same few. Twitter has been a bit of a lonely space for me and I don’t know why. I don’t think my tweets have changed and I don’t think I have done anything offensive but the interaction just doesn’t seem to be there.

On Wednesday, I had a work meeting about a one of the brands I manage and had to talk about why a game/treasure hunt that I ran through Twitter didn’t quite work. To me it was fun and easy, but with only a few responses, it was decided that Twitter is still too new and people don’t understand it. I found this hard to understand; having been on Twitter for nearly 18 months it makes sense to me and it does work both on a social and business level. But thinking about my friends, they aren’t on it, so maybe it is still new and we haven’t all worked out what it is for.

And maybe that is it. Maybe many of the people I used to tweet a lot with are now busy with their lives, that they no longer understand the need or perhaps just taking a step back to see what happens with it.

Maybe I am just getting busy with life. In any case, Twitter doesn’t seem to be doing for me right now but I know I can’t walk away.

It has power.. I will give it that!

A break in the story

I am a dreamer. And I have to say I do believe. I believe in the happily-ever-after and that good things do come to those that wait. I have to believe in that because, honestly, I have been waiting for some things for a long time, it is better to think that way than complain that life can be so bloody unfair.

I am of the conclusion that I am to sort my career out first before any of the good stuff comes along. That maybe it is my destiny to set up my own business and work for myself before a prince comes and sweeps me off my feet.

So I have been trying to turn my attention to doing that and setting up a marketing business – something small to begin with, but which gives me the freedom to explore that I can see being missed and look at new and very exciting opportunities.

It takes the focus away from something else not working out. Which has been painfully sad and something that hurts at the pit of my stomach. But I will take from it what I can, another lesson – a reason, season or lifetime lesson, which time will only tell.

In the meantime, I do what I do best and that is pick myself up, dust myself off and keep believing that my fairytale story is out there and that all will become good in The End.

Asking Orion

She looked up at the stars in hope that she would see spec of light dance across the sky. She looked up in hope that she would be able to make a wish. She needed a helping hand, an act of the universe to bring her what she most desired.

She had failed to impress on her own, failed to capture the feeling. All she wanted was to be able to hold that feeling in her arms- to love and nurture, to allow it to grow through the warmth of her soul.

In once last hope, she stood in the darkness, away from the haze of a wide-awake town with her head tilted towards a world of unknown. Her eyes flicking from constellation to constellation, across belts, scales and dippers; looking for an answer, looking for hope.

Getting it off my chest

Ever get that feeling where you just want to scream from the top of your lungs and name everyone who has ever hurt or let you down?

I want to do that.

I am not sure whether I am burning out following a very busy start the the year, well actually it is the first half of the year, or whether I am just having a 'moment', but it doesn't feel good.

I was just reading this blog post by Karen, and can totally empathize with the feeling of being a little boat on the big seas. Of late, I have been OK riding the choppy waves, in fact I have enjoyed the buzz and the 'Go Go Go', but all of a sudden, I can see a wave brewing in the distance and I am not quite sure how I am going to ride it or attempt to get over it.

What is stopping me from being able to climb the wave is my past, more specifically, past hurts.
Those that have lied, betrayed me and stamped on my heart and left me with little trust in people, a jealous eye and a barbed-wire fence around my heart.

I know this is a low spot, and maybe all I need is a holiday. It has been almost a year since I had any more than a day off - let alone a decent break. I know that I have taken a nose-dive from where I was three, even two weeks ago and I know I will return to those heights again.

But for now, a little moan and whinge and the acceptance that the past happened and I have to get over it, is all I can do in preparation for the bigger waves.

Oh, and a hug might help.

And the moral of the story is....

There was only one thing she regretted. She stood thinking about it as rested her iron back on its rest, and turned the shirt.

She didn’t regret marrying so young, nor did she regret the pain and hurt of her first love’s betrayal, for his lies and absence had only made her protect her children more and become the woman she was today.

She had never regretted that she had chosen to be a full-time mum, although at times she did wonder what the thrill of the big smoke and the buzz of the rat race felt like.

She never regretted that she had spent so much time in those early years on her own. Nor did she regret the whirlwind lust, romance and relationship with the man across the road.

She had never once regretted having a second family with sixteen years between her first and her last. Four children is a nice number she thought as pressed a strong crease down the arm of shirt. Those early years of the second family had been hard and a wedge was driven through the two sides, but she never regretted it. Her relationships with her children were nothing less than unconditional love. Special.

She never regretted that her second husband, who she loved dearly and so much more than the first, drank too much. He knew when he was wrong. She told him so. She was a stronger woman because of the first.


She never regretted that she gave so much all the time to others and very rarely got anything in return. She knew that she was loved and she knew that others didn’t always mean it.

As she hung the ironed shirt on a wire hanger, she thought about the thing she regretted the most.

Gazing out of the window, palms resting on the ironing board, she thought how she regretted that she had never, ever, learnt to water-ski.

*******

........Regret the things you've done and not the things you haven't.

.... Yourself and No One Else

Just when I thought it was all going to be ok and I was finally being given a little break from the hard stuff, something explodes.

I haven’t felt like this for some time and I thought I had finally put it to bed, that I had tucked it in under a protective soft blanket and said goodnight.

But it looks like it has awoken and proceeded to get out of the wrong side of the bed. With its angry grumpy head it has come crashing back into my life.

It once told me I am far too nice for my own good, that I shouldn’t be willing to give it away so freely.

But what could I do? I gave it to people I thought I was meant to, the relationships which are held together by it and which depend on it.

I didn’t expect them to use it and treat it so poorly and as if it can be replaced without a thought.
And now it scratches at my insides and fills my head with doubt.

Now it stops me believing.

That I will ever use it again.