Writing my hundredth blog post

I don’t often write here about my work work - or ‘what I do for a living’ work - because it’s, well, pretty mundane really. For the past twenty odd years I’ve ‘done the admin’ for our wee business while Alex and the lads have done all the difficult, demanding, and hard work. Don’t get me wrong, I know my job’s essential for the smooth (or not so, at times!) running of the business - keeping up with the paperwork, paying the wages, doing the VAT (yeuch) etc, etc – but it’s never been quite enough, and I always knew that when the kids grew up I’d need something else.

There’s a common misconception that if you work from home you don’t do a ‘real’ job. I learned a long time ago that it’s better just to laugh along with folk - who make jokes or playful digs about the fact that I work from home; most of them insinuating that I sit around all day drinking coffee, twiddling my thumbs, watching the telly or going out for long lunches – rather than try to explain what I do actually do. I used to find the jibes a wee bit hurtful, but when I accepted that it doesn’t really matter what other folk think, I also accepted that I should never feel undervalued. (Incidentally, just for the record, I don’t ever sit around all day drinking coffee, twiddling my thumbs and watching the telly, but I do hold my hands up to sometimes enjoying a long leisurely lunch!) I’ve been incredibly lucky to have a job that’s allowed me to suit my hours around the kids while they were going through all their different ‘growing up’ stages; I’ve been there for all their different activities, for running them around, and I was usually at home (sitting in the office, but still at home) at the end of their day to listen to all the chit-chat after their school bags and shoes had been chucked off.

So,  although my work work’s pretty mundane, it’s suited me, and it’ll continue to be part of my life for as long as we have our own wee business (and that’ll probably be until Alex is very old or getting carted off site in a box!). However, instead of now fitting work work around the kids and their activities, I’ve reached the stage where I’m fitting it around my own activities. Over the past while I’ve completed several Open University modules and a couple of COSCA modules, I’ve started working in a couple of new voluntary roles and have gradually been doing more writing. This blog was a product of advice given on one of the OU courses: "writing a blog will encourage you to write more often without getting too hung up on the technicalities of what you're writing" - and here we are, one hundred posts and over six thousand views later! I’m really enjoying the whole process of - in typical mid-life fashion - ‘finding something else’, especially as I’ve met some really interesting people, made some great friends and found a whole new family (in the shape of a choir!) along the way.

I’m hoping that all of this, sometime in the near future, will lead to something that’ll have some sort of financial benefit attached; further education courses are great from a personal fulfilment and development point of view, but they’re also a bit of a drain on the old coffers! However, whatever I end up doing, it’ll have to be something that allows me to carry on doing my work work for Impressions in Stone – and, of course, will hopefully be something that allows me to carry on partaking in the odd very long and very leisurely lunch!