Wishful Thinking

Hey you lovely people,

My blog is a bit late this month in posting as the world has literally been turned upside down and I have been amongst it.  So much has happened that it feels more than 6 weeks since I last posted.

What have I been up to? My focus has been to secure clients. I attended a brilliant workshop; in addition a huge amount of personal stuff has happened which has eaten up my work time. We scattered my Mum’s ashes. There has been a hell of a lot of sickness in our house around the same time as the coronavirus hit, with some self isolation thrown in...phew! It’s been a weird old time across the board.  All this whilst I’ve been detoxing, when all I want to do is reach for a large glass of vino...gah!

CLIENTS

I had some wishful thinking, which I publicly set out in my last blog post that I wanted to reach capacity with clients, which was my main aim.  This seems to have gone off track. I have been offered a lot of great roles of late in areas that I really wanted to get involved in but I had to turn a few down. They either offered flexibility (which in reality wasn’t very flexible) or no flexibility, which when it came down to how to practically make it work, I was left a bit stumped. 

I have the added challenge of where I live which makes the childcare-drop/commute/work/commute such an incredibly long day (on a good day 12 hrs on a bad day more like 16 hours).  Needless to say the nursery doesn’t open early enough for me to drop my son in order to get into a London office before 10am, so that adds more of a challenge. I need more of a mix of onsite/remote working to make it workable with my family situation.  I have had to return back to my original goals from the start of the year; what did I want? - flexible working, and why did I want it? - because we don’t have support around to help with childcare. It’s been very difficult to stick to my guns.

What has been ironic, given the weird time we are in now, where everyone is working remotely - a few weeks ago that was not an option available to me. So I had to say no to the roles.  Which is always hugely disappointing, as there are mortgages to be paid etc. In hindsight if I had known the whole world was going remote I would have said yes, but hindsight is a brilliant thing eh.  So where does this leave me? ….back to square one really. Making progress and connections, with the odd ad hoc client but still no regular income, which is very worrying at this difficult time.

WORKSHOP

At the beginning of March I attended a workshop hosted by Lauren Currie, part of UPFRONT.  It was a brilliant day surrounded by incredible women. Lauren is on a mission to make the world more diverse, to empower women to be more visible, and to share their stories so conference line ups don’t all look like this….

Yes that is an all male line up for a Women in Math conference....coz like they know right?!

The day was focused on instilling confidence in women, learning a lot about how to use our voice, and utilising tools for public speaking.  I had such a great day. I came away from it inspired, motivated and committed to no longer shy away from opportunities that are given to me.  I now understand how unique my voice is, of a woman, a woman working in tech, and as a mother. I also understand how important it is to show up and be seen. And, I really wanted to meet Lauren, who I have followed for a while - she is a powerhouse of a woman.  I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a fangirl….

IWD

Right on the back of the workshop came International Women’s Day. I volunteered for a local festival here in Margate called POWThanet (Power of Women), which was fantastic. The festival has grown and grown over the last 5 years since it started.  POW is an arts and culture festival celebrating International Women’s Day. The programme of events was quite something, and I volunteered across a few events.  The Tatty Devine takeover - which showcased short films directed by women, as well as talks. A Mothers Who Make event at our Windmill Community Gardens, where I took my little guy along - who loved it!  

I also helped at the Poetry Slam. We had some amazing local poets (an all female line up) compete for the prize.  I heard Birdspeed for the first time, who you should totally check out if you can...goosebumps! There were countless exhibitions taking place at local galleries across Thanet - I popped along to a few of them.  

However, the best thing I saw was the Freedom Road gig.  This was so good, with music from the civil rights movement, interpretations of music from Nina Simone, Roberta Flack, Sam Cooke, the list goes on. The band is made up of Jessica Lauren (who I didn’t know by name but when googled, as she was A-MAZING I knew all her music) Sabina Desir, Francesca Ter-Berg and Karen Vost. It was a real schooling in the movement of the time; deeply emotional, and the whole house was up by the end like a gospel church. I would highly recommend coming along to the festival next year if you can.

BIRDSPEED!

The AMAZING band!

PERSONAL

I decided that over March and April I would detox.  I do this every year now, but I particularly chose this month as I would be experiencing a few 1st’s without my Mum - her birthday and Mother’s day in particular. We decided to scatter her ashes the day before her birthday.  I wanted to be on top of my game - not masking any emotions with food or alcohol, and to be as clear headed as I could be to find the space to properly grieve.

As with all things however when you have a child, things don’t always go according to plan. We travelled to the location where the family was meeting, but my son wasn’t well.  He ended up being quite unwell across that weekend, so I couldn’t fully immerse myself in thinking of my Mum, which was unfortunate. It also coincided with the momentum of the Coronavirus and by the time we got home from the weekend we decided to self isolate just in case.  This then escalated and my poor little boy became quite unwell which warranted a trip to A&E as we thought meningitis might be at play, but thankfully it was nothing that serious. A virus infection BUT not Corona...I can breathe! The NHS team were so brilliant, he got a nice poodle balloon and some magic tricks thrown in. But what a scary 5 days….we are now being more mindful of the situation.

C-BOMB

I want to mention the C-Bomb, as it does literally feel like a bomb has gone off in all our lives. The impact is widespread and quite brutal for some. I’m not going to do the top ‘10 ways to work remotely’, or ‘how to connect with others’, everyone is doing that.  All I will say is we don’t know what our world is going to look like in a week, a month, or 3 months. We are in a state of crisis.  Everyone is freaking out about health, money, how will we survive, especially the self employed (me!) which of course we should be.  

All I will say is try to be positive.  Try not to share the dreaded news that is gonna freak more people out, try to do something that has some good energy about it.  Whether that be sending a neighbour a note, or calling your Auntie, or messaging a small business so they can run through the usual coffee charge; write a positive blog post, create a video that might help a business. Everyone is on high alert and rightly so, but we need to remember fear and panic spreads….focus on the good stuff.

I am always around for a skype/google hangout/zoom chat if anyone is bored and wants to say hi...in fact I would LOVE that!

If you have got this far in my ramblings, THANK-YOU.  More from me next month, where I really hope there is more clarity for us all.

Stay safe and be well!

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