I get the idea for Born59

Darling A

How are you?  I have been so sad not to speak to you over the week-end, but I realise it is something I have no control over and must banish to the back of my mind and get on with my own life.  Where exactly is your new job so I can look it up on a map?  Where will you be living?  What exactly will you be doing?  Are you getting paid?  More or less than the last job?  How long is it for?  Who is it with?  What do you hope to gain out of it as part of your long term ambition to make your own wine?  What is the latest with Ben?  Your extended visa application?  Has the parcel arrived?

It has been a seismic week for me.  I describe it as such because for weeks you can go on and nothing seems to change and then things happen and pulled all together they move you to a new place.

For months I have been thinking that I have no big goals anymore.  I had the house, but apart from carpets and a wood burner, which is just about getting the cash, the house is finished.  For some reason the new goal is starting to come together with a bit more clarity and determination than I have ever felt before.  I want to have a real stab at self-employment before I die.  I’ve tried with varying degrees of success and part success over time, and when thinking about it over the last week or so decided this was in part because I depended on someone else to bring their part to the mix to enable fruition.

The other contributing factor to the mix is my anxiety over future income and how much harder it gets as you age to keep getting new contracts.  In all honesty, I can also see a point when I am too tired to commute anymore, work full time and keep all my other balls in the air.  I get very tired these days.

I also had my probationary appraisal this week so had to think about new stuff I wanted to do, what I could bring to the mix, what I felt so much passion and interest in, it would not seem like a job.  I have been reading around self -employment/ business ideas for months now.  I also have to think what Peabody might be interested in. Anyway, I don’t really need to worry because as far as my boss is concerned I am doing fine and have a job as long as I want, (but these things can change overnight).  Let’s just say, I don’t have immediate worries.

The plan is, as part of Peabody’s drive to get their employees utilising social media (remember the training I went on) I am going to start a blog, which will be my own, but with a Peabody blessing and I am looking and have been reading a lot about how you can make money out of blogs so how might I set it up in such a way that this is a possibility from the start.  It will be part of a website set up in my name but the blog will be ‘Born 59’ and have a strap line, ‘thinking community, seeing a bigger world, learning through people’ and categories which will include community development, entrepreneurial, Cameroon, Sri Lanka, inspiring to me and relationships.  I will incorporate some of my old writing when I get stuck for ideas and need to keep up the consistency of output.

What I will find most difficult is exposing myself publicly.  I found it very difficult when friends forwarded my emails from Cameroon for example, as I saw these as very personal.  I have read that in order to be credible your readers have to know about you, so it will need my picture (imagine how I hate that) and be linked to my linked in career details. Watch this space.  The challenge will be to keep my confidence levels up, not my ability to apply myself, nor my writing.  My boss has already commented on how excellent my style is, and I know it is more suited to a blog than a book.  I am not an author in that sense.

So – in the midst of all this coming together I spent two evenings exhausting myself cooking cookies and cakes with a large amount going in the bin because J2 took over and in the bossy mix half went in the oven without either self-raising flour or baking powder.  We had a long talk about his temper and he fed back how he could not understand how I can hold it all together when stuff is really bad like the burglary and fall apart over cakes which made me laugh.

I got sick with nerves about taking my cooking offerings to Louise who is such a superb cook, but she was lovely as I sort of knew she would be and helped me put it together ( a dusting of icing sugar was all it took) to look consummately professional and it actually tasted delicious.

Yesterday FB and I spent the day in the sunshine going round all the 5 houses in the Shakespeare Trust because my new Muslim work colleague from Sandwell had a 2 adults year pass and lent me it – £50 saved.  FB and I are good.  We still drink too much, but every week that passes there is more trust and ease between us.  He is great in a social setting for me as he has a wide-ranging knowledge and interest.