2012

I have been intending for several days to write a final post of 2012, summarising my year's major worries and advance-mentioning some upcoming concerns that I predict I shall be worrying about in the New Year.  However, it being the season of extreme gluttony, it has been difficult to tear myself away from the temptations of the kitchen to concentrate on the laptop for any real period of time.  So I have chosen today, 31st December 2012, to finally cast away the Jaffa Cakes and write some choice words to sum up the year that I have had.

In an uncharacteristic display of optimism I have decided not to focus on the negatives of the year gone by (and believe me they are many and varied) and try instead to remember the wonderful moments and the occasions by which I would prefer to remember 2012.

Firstly, the birth of several nephews and nieces (of the non-genetically linked variety): so many of my friends chose 2012 to be the year to produce offspring (or more offspring) and Christmas has really reminded me of the delight that is to be had from spending time with my friends and family and their progeny, safe in the knowledge that I can give them back afterwards.  Ten years ago I would have imagined that I would be sharing the early years of their childrens' lives with children of my own, but this has not been the way my life has panned out thus far.  I'm sure that I will not always be the barren Aunty who visits and dotes upon everyone elses' children for want of children of her own, but for the time being it is a joy to see others' little ones and know that I am glad to be a part of their lives.

Secondly, the awesomeness that was a summer of British sporting success with the Olympics and Paralympics.  I have written in earlier blogs of the life-changing experiences London 2012 brought to me, and I hope that for the rest of my life remembering the year 2012 will induce memories of the warmth, togetherness and healthy patriotism that the Olympics and Paralympics instilled. 

Thirdly, the rediscovery of my love of swimming and the personal challenge I undertook to raise money and awareness for Rheumatoid Arthritis.  I refuse to let RA become the bane of my life - it is something that I have and will have forever so why let it ruin things?  Sure, some things just aren't the same and never will be, but I am proud of the fears that I have overcome this year through swimming.  Our final total raised for NRAS is a few pennies short of £1,400 (+ Gift Aid) which is a truly staggering sum for a very normal 29 year old girl and her family to raise by swimming a mile each.  It shows the overwhelming generosity and love of our friends and families and, believe me, every minute that I was swimming I was thinking of all the donations we had received and how this was my chance to show that peoples' faith and support in me was well placed. (OK, every other minute I was thinking about this.  In the other minutes I was thinking about how stupid I was to have EVER suggested such an idiotic idea, and how was I ever going to get to the end?).

Fourthly, this blog.  It may not yet have reached the dizzy heights of other more well known, more highly favoured blogs, but it is my personal triumph.  I love to write it, even if the subject matter is at times a little sketchy, and I love to know that people are enjoying my writing.  If I could just find a way to generate enough income from sitting at home with a cuppa and my slippers on while tap-tap-tapping away at a keyboard I would be a truly happy person.  True, I may find myself a little starved of human contact if that situation were to arise, but I'm sure people would point it out to me if I started to take on too many cat-like characteristics, or lost the ability to string a sentence together in conversation (though some of you may argue that I struggle with this already at times...)

My Dad shared a letter with us over Christmas from his consultant - in two lines saying the best news I had heard in a long time - that he has beaten the myeloma cancer cells that had invaded him.  I managed not to cry in his face - after all it is a happy letter, and one that I feel could be framed, or brought out to cheer up a particularly depressing evening of rubbish TV.  But I think that might be the biggest success of 2012 and puts all and any minor moments of misery that I may have experienced into perspective.

So on that note, I wish you all a Happy New Year! May 2013 bring you all the joy and happiness that you deserve.  Please be assured that I shall resume my normal worrying and cynicism soon and put all this nostlagic cheerfulness behind me.

K x

Writer's Block

Believe me, I do not suffer from writer's block in the classic sense: I can write/talk at any time of day or night at length on almost any subject.  Neither have I been short of subjects worthy of my worry these past few weeks.  The reason for my relative inactivity for the past few weeks has been a combination of a) job hunting and interviewing (so far to no avail, but I have hope) and b) the inability to discuss the most pressing worries in public.  Not, you understand, because I don't know what to say, but because they are not my business to be sharing.

Over the past few weeks I have been deeply involved in some very fraught and upsetting troubles and on many occasions I have wished I could vent my worries and fears on here.  But the Jeremy Kyle-esque temptation to broadcast the woes of others is not my style and not, ultimately, the purpose of this blog.

I have read with interest and revulsion about a US judge who stated that the woman who was raped 'couldn't have protested hard enough' because the female body would stop sex from happening if it really didnt want it.  He admitted he was no gynaecologist but... NO.. no, you are not... clearly.  (idiot)

I have watched with horror the unfolding story of Newtown, Connecticut and the atrocities that happened there; I have read and agreed (or disagreed, depending) on different opinions about what could or would turn the tide of gun crime in the USA in the wake of this horrible tragedy.

I have silently congratulated Wills and Kate on their happy news, actively avoided any involvement in X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing or I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and indulged my obsession with Homeland.  I have cried as I left my job and colleagues for the final time, taking that inevitable step towards my possible future unemployment; I have worried myself to distraction about how I am going to find a new job in this unsettled economic climate, about how I am going to pay my rent and bills next year; I have been through another set of spinal injections and still feel no lasting difference to my daily pain and discomfort.

But for all the petty worries that I may have had, I have been completely unable to write about them as they have been shadowed by something so much more personally troubling. You know who you are, and you know what I am speaking about, and believe me I wish that my writing about it could solve any of the hardships that you are currently suffering.  In the past few weeks I have gone from joyful and positive through utterly speechless to appalled, disgusted and heartbroken for you.  Somehow today I have found myself able to write, albeit in a guarded way, about this pain and I applaud your strength and hope that a happy resolution will be made quickly for you all.

In the meantime, selfishly, I hope that this temporary 'writer's block' of mine may be eased by this blog and by the catharsis of accepting the reasons for my lack of productivity.  I also hope that a work-from-home job paying 40k lands in my inbox tomorrow, begging me to accept.

K x

Actually Finding a Job

I have been accused of being a little "ranty" in my last post.  Well, in fairness, I was very ranty and intentionally so as that was how I felt at the time.  Now I am more concentrated on worrying about getting a new job than the reasoning behind the loss of the original one.
Nigh on every single job I see online is advertised through an agency, and once you get down to the nitty-gritty of it all there isn't actually a real job at the end of it (or it has mysteriously already been filled, despite the advert only being posted that morning).  I have completed several applications directly for jobs that not only fill me with interest and enthusiasm, but seem to fit precisely to my skills and attributes, only to have no response at all, not even a rejection email.
Unless I feel so little self worth as to start applying for jobs which a monkey could do, or joining the ranks of Eurostar call centre staff, it seems like there is so little out there for someone like me who is, ultimately, completely unqualified.
In hindsight I really should have done a different degree, like teaching for example, or physiotherapy.  I would then be qualified to be an actual teacher, or an actual physiotherapist.  Rather than my very enjoyable Film & Television Studies degree which qualifies me to be absolutely nothing.  It doesn't even qualify me to be a film or television critic, because they want people with a journalism degree for those jobs.  I really wish I had paid more attention in the 'careers' lessons at school and college, but I doubt they told us anything useful like that; if my likes and dislikes at age 15 can tell anyone what career I should plan for, then I take my hat off to them.
So, with several years of customer service experience, management experience (albeit with small seasonal teams) and a fluent foreign language, I am struggling to find anything much out there that isn't either depressingly badly paid or requires an extra experience that I don't have - like online marketing, or web design.  I don't think yell.com's web-builder for small businesses counts as web design.
I have a job interview this week, for a job that seems to fit and they obviously like my CV enough to think that I am not completely unsuited for the job. But in a month of appliations this is the first interview, and as the days tick away leading up to my imminent unemployment, my inbox is not filling up with offers as I had hoped it would.
So I keep plugging away with the applications, in the hope that someone will see me for the wonderful person that I am and the amazing skills and benefits that I could bring to their company.  And still keeping my fingers crossed for that lottery win...
K x

My Imminent Unemployment

Hi there campers.  Sorry its been a while since I last updated you all on the delights of my neuroses, I am afraid I have been somewhat sidetracked.
First of all there was the charity swim - for some reason I said I would swim a mile for Rheumatoid Arthritis charity NRAS, then suddenly it was a few months later and I had to fundraise, not to mention practice swimming.  Both were done succesfully (raised £1,400 and managed to swim a mile without causing serious physical damage to myself or others) but the build-up to the event did rather monopolise my evenings for a while.
Then, of course, there was the self-imposed rest period following the great event: I shall just eat this takeaway because I did do something great for charity last week; I shall just leave the washing up today because I did raise loads of money last week and I am quite tired etc etc.
And now there is a whole other something which is taking over my mental capacities - job hunting.  My current employment was always billed as 'temporary': a 12 month maternity cover contract, then a 6-month extension to help on a project, then a 6 month extension to cover someone's secondment to a different department.... it goes on.  But, because every time the "end of contract" date loomed closer the company extended it by another stretch, I had never really truly prepared myself that one day I  really would run out of job.  But here I am, preparing to leave a job that, although of course I am biased, I do rather well.  Being a generally modest and unassuming type, I don't like to blow my own trumpet, but I am good at my job and I can think of several people in the same office who truly are not.  There is something terribly soul destroying about the unfairness of incompetent idiots being gainfully employed in a job I can do better than them, more efficiently than them and, importantly, more quietly than them, without the need to broadcast my every action to my colleagues (if you work in my office you know exactly who I mean). 
I don't mean this to become a childish tantrum, my cheeks reddening as I stomp my feet and declare angrily how unfair everything is, no doubt blaming my parents for ruining my life and then slamming a few doors for good measure (my bedroom door in my teens wouldn't slam... it was such an enormous disappointment).  But the economy and the job market at the moment are not in the best of health, and desperately seeking employment is not a happy place to be.  I am disappointed in an employer who recognises my worth and my abilities but resolutely manages NOT to "talent manage" in any kind of effective way.  I now dread every day: not because I dislike my job, but because every day I am reminded that however hard I work, however efficient, organised or exceptional I might be, in four weeks time I will not have that job anymore.
And so I trawl the job boards for possible alternatives, delaying the inevitable calls and emails to the agencies who will then bombard me daily with vacancies which almost completely do not meet my requirements.  All the while keeping my chin up, my upper lip resolutely stiff, telling myself its 'onward and upward'...

K x

Vulgarity

As an aside before I start this post I should mention that I did have the epidural anti-inflammatory injection, a 2 foot needle was inserted into my actual spine for approximately 17 hours.  OK, thats an exaggeration but it was one of the least pleasant medical procedures I have ever experienced, not helped by the fact that I had to listen to the elderly gentleman in the next bed have his before me. (It comes a close second to the electrical nerve testing, which basically amounts to being electrocuted over and over again.)  I heard his every groan, every yelp, every cry of discomfort.  All good solid preparation for my turn.  So far, after a week, I can report no discernible change to my own physical situation which does make me feel a little cheated after such a long wait and such an unpleasant experience.  I had acupuncture again, and again no change.  As far as I am concerned, medical professionals just feel the need to stick needles in me at the moment (speaking of which, flu jab this week, joy!) and no-one seems to be able to fix the problem.  Maybe one day one of the needles will actually make a difference...

So, vulgarity.  Not other people's vulgarity, my own.  There are certain people with whom I am able to speak frankly and use whatever language I feel is necessary, if not always wholly appropriate.  My problem is remembering which friends are which, which friends would not take kindly to me discussing certain topics or using certain words at the dinner table.

A few weeks ago myself, A & M went for dinner in a very exclusive "the place to be right now" type restaurant.  It was beautiful, it was tastefully decorated and subtly lit; the waiting staff were attentive yet conversational and the food was mmmmmm yummity yum yum.  We began with cocktails, then a nice cold bottle of dry white wine; we delved into the menu and chose several delightfully delicious sounding plates to share in a 'modern south-east Asian tapas style'.  I mentally prepared the perfectly worded opening sentence of my restaurant review and politely enjoyed the first few plates and the first few glasses of wine.  I do not know at which point it became appropriate for us to start discussing the relative hotness of our waitress, which foods were most arousing or for me to turn my laundered linen napkin into a crude interpretation of a penis.  I truly hope that the couple on the next table who ordered the tempura vegetable dish that we had originally scorned (vegetables on sticks? who wants those?) didnt hear us when we bemoaned how good they looked and said something along the lines of "why didn't we order that shiz? For fucks sake those veg look fucking amazing. Bastards".  Needless to say I didn't ever write the eloquent, descriptive restaurant review that I had planned; it was all over after the first bottle went upside down into the ice bucket.

Then, the evening descended into what can only be called a wine-fuelled furore.  We went to a wine tasting... except we weren't really tasting.  We were nodding and smiling as the wine purveyors earnestly described the grape variety and taste of the wine; and helping ourselves to as much as possible whilst literally tearing lumps of cheese from the cheese table.  We visited the Venerable Association of Bordeaux Wine Fanatics (not their real name) table, had a few tastes and then I asked the Lord High Venerable Wine Taster for his wine afficionado medal, wore it, posed for a photo in it, told him it was the shit and I wanted a medal.  I am so surprised they didn't ask us to leave.

I spoke French to the only Frenchman there, and told him I wanted to 'degouter' his wine.  Degouter = to disgust, Degustation = tasting.  I then had an argument with the cheese man about whether his cheese was ewes milk or cows milk; good god surely he would know?

All in all, it was one of the best nights out I have had in a really long time, with people who I can be as vulgar and debauched as I wish without feeling like they are judging me.  The trouble is toning it down when with other people, who may not appreciate my line of humour or constant swearing, like at work for example.  When something goes wrong it seems only natural to exclaim 'oh cock' or complain quietly about a rude colleague as being a bit of a 'cunty bastard'.  A friend of mine works in an office with her mother, which can only be a swearer's kind of torture: not only may the words be inappropriate but to say one of them accidentally infront of one's mother must be horrific.

So I apologise in advance if my language ever offends you, it is never meant to be intentionally offensive or hurtful (unless I am looking directly at you and trying to insult you, in which case I am probably drunk so just ignore me until I go away).  I just like to use our wonderful language in all its colourful beauty, and sometimes those words are a little bit more colourful than might be your preference.  But remember, if a word can be used by Chaucer, then it can be used by me (and I have one, which he didn't).

K x

HealthCare

I have more opportunity than most to worry about healthcare; not because I am particularly accident prone or sickly, but because I suffer from a chronic immune disease.  This is not a "wah wah, poor me" blog post, I have no room for sympathy in my relationship with my unruly immune system.  If I'm having a shitty day and all I want to do is curl up and feel sorry for myself, chances are that what I actually need is a large glass of wine and some cheerful company, or failing that an early night and a snuggle with the cat; what I really don't need is to sit down and think/discuss how shitty my day is.   I am not really one to revel in my misfortune and dwell on all the misery it may cause.  To borrow someone else's favourite turn of phrase: I prefer to "man up" and get on with it.

Anyway, what got me started worrying on the healthcare issue today, was a visit to a new physiotherapist.  The occupational health department at my work decided to trial a visiting physiotherapist over the next few weeks, and as I have some mobility issues I thought I'd sign myself up.  Several months ago (like, May) I started getting some really nasty back pain.  Floored me for a week or two, I could barely move.  My rheumatologist, and rheumatology physiotherapist agreed that it was down to inflammation in the small joints at the base of the spine, and irritation to the nerves caused by a disc prolapse (not the first time).  I saw a second rheumatology physiotherapist after several months of waiting, who agreed with the above and arranged to carry out a spinal epidural to ease the pain and swelling and get me back on my feet, so to speak.  I had waited 3 months to get to this stage and the epidural was booked for next week.
So I went to see this new physio through work and he announed (after 2 mins of looking at me and a quick prod) that its not the disc, its not the joints, its just muscular; he proceeded to acupuncture me in several places and declare that I "probably won't be needing that epidural after all".
WT actual F?  I will have waited the best part of four months for something I don't need, when your two little needle pricks could have fixed this months ago? Obviously I didn't say that, I politely agreed that I hoped the acupuncture would make a difference and would be pleased if the pain eased. 

Sadly, the pain hasn't eased much and I will still be having the epidural as planned.  But it worries me that healthcare professionals can come to such hugely varying diagnoses of the same set of symptoms.  Would it be cynical of me to suggest that the first person agreed with the second's diagnosis because it meant the problem would not be their's to solve?  Or that the third person based their's on the notes of the second, rather than on a thorough investigation of their own? And did the new physio, who clearly is a acupuncture enthusiast, tweak his diagnosis in favour of something that could be helped with acupuncture, as opposed to the disc prolapse, which couldn't.

I am often accused of being too cynical for my own good, but I can't help but wonder who is right and who is wrong in this story - because they can't all be right! And just imagine if this was the American insurance system, and my treatment was based on what my non-medically qualified insurance broker would agree to allow me to have?  Thank goodness that the grand old NHS is in safe hands, or who know's where I'd be going to next....

K x

Disability

I have been a little quiet of late - I can assure you this does not mean I have not had anything to worry about.  Anybody who has any kind of contact with current affairs can see that there are plenty of things to be worrying about: questionable cabinet re-shuffles; continuing desecration of our social welfare system; the appalling choices of presidential candidate in the US (more on this to follow, I am currently unable to put into words my concern over some of the men chosen by one of the most powerful nations in the world to represent them on an international level).

This week, however, I have been basking in the most glorious after-glow of a day at the London Paralypic Games.  Not only is the Olympic Park awesome and the venues well designed and attractive, but the atmosphere of the athletics stadium was one of the most intensely exciting and indescribable experiences I have ever had.  We sung the National Anthem patriotically (and politely stood to all the other nations' anthems too), we cheered on every race and every throw and every jump, and we yelled and screamed and jumped about as David Weir came storming home to win gold in the final race of the night.  It was an absolutely unforgettable experience, and one which I am very glad to have been able to share with someone very special to me.

In the lead-up to the Games I was excited to discover that there would be athletes taking part that suffer from the same chronic immune disease as I do - specifically Leigh Walmsey for Team GB archery.  I started to realise that although suffering from RA does not make me look different to other people - I have all my limbs and my mental faculties (most of the time) -  as a sufferer myself I didn't truly consider it a disability - I had never before truly considered myself disabled.

The Paralympics has shown Great Britain and the world that people with disabilities can be superhuman, showing incredible strength, courage, grit and determination to achieve their goals.  I hope that one legacy of London 2012 will be greater understanding and compassion towards people with disabilities, and I am proud to stand up (gently) and be counted as one of them.  I may not be comparable to the stars of the Paralympics, but in my own small way I hope that I might be part of the legacy and help keep the spirit and overwhelming positivity of the last ten days alive in myself and those around me.

K x