I have successfully rendered myself a liar this week. After calling myself “basically unemployable” back in 2018, I started a new part-time position with Source Design this week. Super stressed Jem who couldn’t possibly contemplate a 9-5 way back in 2018 is now super chilled out handling a senior dev position for one firm, managing director for another, and freelancing between the two.
At some point between 2018 and now my capacity for workload and perceived “stress” increased dramatically, and y’know, I’m pretty sure it was my diagnosis. It’s amazing what a difference it makes not constantly beating yourself up; all that mental energy spent berating myself for being ‘shit’ and incapable of handling day to day life can now be spent on chasing dreams and doing crazy spur of the moment things.
And taking on this position was spur of the moment… in part, driven by motivation to stop drawing a salary from Ultimately Better temporarily which will allow funds to build up in the business. Those funds will eventually go to hiring a junior developer, someone I can train, mentor, build up.
A decision also taken in the spirit of change. My son goes up to secondary school this year (his first choice was confirmed today!) which means that the school runs that have massively dictated my schedule – my life – for the past 10 years or so… they are no more! What better way to celebrate this massive milestone than by doing something a bit mad?
I’m hoping it’s not a decision that only works for me. I’d really like my knowledge and experience both as dev and heading up my own agency to bring new things to the table for Source; that it ends up being a partnership with mutual benefits.
Who says auties can’t handle change, right?
Lead image by Ross Findon
Due to the ongoing coronavirus / COVID19 crisis, we’ve now been isolating (“social distancing” on crack) for two weeks. Slightly longer than Joe Public because my ex is high risk and we wanted to reduce the risk of the kids passing anything on. After the initial week where negative thoughts and an absence of a)… read full entry »
What a month. WHAT A MONTH. Is it just me, or is May easily the busiest month of the year? (It probably is just me.) The end of April (that’s basically May, right?) saw this blog – well, domain – reach 15. FIFTEEN years of dodgy web design, blogging about everything from poop to programming,… read full entry »
You’d think having not blogged for over a month I’d have a huge array of exciting developments to fill you in on. Unfortunately, however, my life is just chores, bum-wiping and work, and I’m too lazy to make anything exciting up so you’re not disappointed by my very existance. But in a nutshell (for those… read full entry »
I’ve just seen this tweet on twitter (obvious statement is obvious): https://twitter.com/tattooed_mummy/status/646050199220146176 which got me thinking about spiders, as you do (and also wondering where that little guy’s other leg got to?) They’re a hot topic in our house at the moment as it’s that time of year where they seem to appear on every… read full entry »
After blogging at the beginning of the month about my belief in autonomous parenting and independent play, a big part of which involves chucking the kids in the garden and letting them get on with it… The kids are taking it in turns to "rescue" each other off the climbing frame. Taking bets on who… read full entry »
Once upon a time, in a period best described as responsibility-free and with plenty of disposable income (AKA before I had children), I had a “reasonably” popular blog. Yes, this one. As crazy as it sounds to those of you who’re new readers (i.e. started reading within the past few years), it’s true, and you… read full entry »
Although my parenting ‘method’ is very much make-it-up-as-you-go-along, I have a set of core principles that I believe are important to creating well-rounded little human beings. Autonomy I strongly believe in a level of autonomy for my children. Primarily this means bodily autonomy: the freedom to make choices about themselves without judgement or coercion. This… read full entry »
I got a little bit excited yesterday evening after Izzy told me her mouth was hurting as we brushed her teeth (oops, that sounds awful!) I had assumed she was just complaining because she was tired and grumpy, but nope… turns out she has two permanent teeth coming in. Took me a little by surprise… read full entry »
This post was originally written a week ago, so the first paragraph probably doesn’t make much sense now… Having told you all back in March that I’m blogging wrong, I then went on to not blog at all, which is probably as wrong as you can get if your aim is to actually blog. Unfortunately… read full entry »
