This is a short retrospective!
I meant to write this blog a year ago, but my head was too busy exploding and my world spinning that I didn’t have the time.
Then I got into the purpose of our year and that was to travel, so I was having fun doing that.
Then dad died and so we unexpectedly found ourselves in the UK; then we bought a campervan and decided to travel around Europe in the winter, instead of being in the middle of a warm, cheap Asian country. We must be crazy!
Yup, that’s about my year in a nutshell ;)
So here I am, feeling like it’s still a blog I want to write, for no other reason than to try and capture the record (as best as I can) of the crazy few weeks when my head felt like it was exploding.
I’ve always had a bit of a ‘wanderlust’ and in 2018 I persuaded Chris to give up the teaching job he loved and come travelling.
We were both very open about our plans with our respective employers and halfway through the year put our money where our mouths were and booked flights to India for January 2019….as soon as the prices post-Christmas and Kiwi-summer holidays got cheap.
So far, so good.
But My Head Nearly Fell Off in October
The only thing was...in October 2018 my job got dis-established (that means....I got made redundant, but with no lovely pay-off). In our travel planning we’d budgeted for my salary until early January, so this was a big chunk gone. And, because I wasn’t planning on applying for any of the newly created roles, it put me in a bit of a limbo-situation as I was going to be without a job or money for three months. Eeek.
Eventually, I went and talked this dilemma with my CEO and boss who were understanding and said there was project work I could do until the end of the year. I could have taken this option, but the reality was the project work was far removed from my previous role and not what I was passionate about - promoting and growing the Christchurch tech-sector. Also, as with many organisational-changes, the environment was a pretty negative one at that time and not helping my frame of mind at a time when I wanted positivity in my life.
So, I realised “I need to take control of this situation”. I started putting the feelers out gently to some of my contacts about the potential for 2-3 months contract work to see me through to Christmas.
Holidays!?
This might sound crazy to think that this was a cause of a bit of stress, but I had two weeks of holidays scheduled in October that couldn’t be shifted.
The first week coincided with the Ozzie school holidays and friends came over to tour in a motorhome around the South Island with their three girls - small but with huge bundles of energy! We joined them camping along the way. It was awesome to be seeing NZ through their eyes - time spent “pokling” fires, picking stones up on the beach and walking to ("not another") glaciers in the rain were fun times. Not to mention sampling the local wine with Tammy while the boys did the driving and kid-entertaining!
Moving House
Knackered from a week with this tribe we drove straight home and started packing up our house!
We had to get the contents of house and all our toys (bikes, kayaks, climbing gear….) into a storage unit before the end of the week and to keep enough clothes and possessions to take with us to our friend Ruth’s house where we were renting a room for the rest of the year!
I think the thing that most challenged my mind, was knowing what to pack into the storage unit and what to keep on hand. Should I keep out any work-clothes, or would I be spending the next couple of months honing my mountain-biking skills?! What were we likely to need for our Christmas holidays doing the Milford Tramp and what would we need for our round-the-world travels that we shouldn’t pack into the back of the storage unit where we might never get at it again!
What Happened?
During this fortnight I was also providing contract proposals and chatting through potential options of work with various contacts.
The response to my ‘feelers’ blew me away.
As things started to solidify, my mind started racing with all sorts of possibilities and opportunities while looking for the contract work - putting together proposals, thinking of pricing, creating budgets….all very sensible and good ground-work, but it added a wee bit of stress to start with. I occasionally pondered whether I was mad to be starting these things when I could have taken the ‘easy’ option and just ridden things out at work, but I was excited about the future and felt this was the right move for me.
"Why didn't I do this sooner?!"
In fact, I actually kicked myself for not doing this earlier. Perhaps committing to a finite time for short projects was easier for people to get across the line than if I’d been after long-term work, but I felt that had I wanted to make a go of this in the long-term I could have. This is a confidence thing I need to remember for the long-term!
I really want to thank Mariann and Tobias at Catalyst IT, Dave and Neil at Canterbury Tech and Marian at Te Ohaka / Ministry of Awesome. They were all fantastic and I enjoyed working with them and their teams on interesting projects.
As soon as I had committed to these new pieces of work my head-spin stopped and I started feeling in control again!
I certainly felt ‘challenged’ by what I was doing and how it differed from having a permanent job. In fact, the biggest donk-on-the-head-realisation (that I know is not news for people that do short-term contract or freelance work) was the need to actually deliver on things very quickly! There's no time for learning curves - you need to hit the ground running. I’d agreed certain deliverables and I needed to ensure I was able to achieve them before Christmas. My credibility was on the line and more importantly, I genuinely cared about the organisations who I felt had taken a punt on my and thrown me a life-line when I needed it.
I think I shaved my hair off for charity somewhere in there too!!
This last year had thrown up all sorts of new challenges and as we continue to travel I am still on a massive learning-journey. It’s hard to write a reflection a year later, but I just wanted to write something for my own records.
There’s a podcast I listen to and one of the presenters uses a great phrase which I think is really useful when your head’s about to spin off…
“It’ll be alright in the end
And if it’s not alright - it’s not the end”
I just need to remember that if I ever have another similar experience!