Small, brave things

I started writing a post the other day only to realise I was beginning to write about a recent dentist appointment. I paused and thought to myself what's going on here? What am I not talking about?
I have a habit of disappearing from this space when life gets a bit crazy and I don't know how to process it. I don't like to come here and complain.

The thing is half of the people I work with are being made redundant. This is the direct result of a massive funding cut and the process behind it has been rumbling on for about two years now. To say it has begun to take its toll is an understatement. The people leaving have been my mentors and friends for the last seven years of my life. The resulting atmosphere in my place of employment is shocking. It's bad. There are arguments. Tears. We are all tired. The staff that are left are facing a massive restructure.

And all this means that i'm circling my life, questioning things, wondering what i'm doing. It is not comfortable. It is hard. Things have been the same for a long time. In July I will have been in my flat for three years. The flowers I planted in my garden are spreading, the delphiniums and poppies growing taller with each passing year. In happy moments I would say that it's been three years of healing and creating and unearthing myself from beneath layers and layers of crap. In these happy moments I would say I've been building a life. A real life. One where I don't need to make myself small. One where I can be myself. In bleaker moments I would say I have built a fortress. With armoured guards and a high city wall. I would say I have been hiding. Hiding from people. Hiding from the world. Hiding from my potential. I know this voice in my head is not to be trusted, it's the small, scared part of me trying to keep me safe.

These thoughts have been rolling around my head since before Christmas and my first response was a typically dramatic one: I need to quit my job! I need to move somewhere new! I need to get out of this small town!

But of course the problem isn't where I live or what I do. It's how I approach my life. I'm sick of being someone that things happen to. I want to feel like i'm creating the life I want. I want to be awake.

So, being someone naturally inclined to making plans and taking practical measures to fix things, I have drawn up a list. It is called Rachel's Awesome List Of Small, Brave Things To Do In 2013 None Of Which Involve Massive Lifestyle Changes Or The Dramatic Quitting Of Ones Job. I wrote it down three weeks ago and here it is, unedited, exactly as my brain spewed it out.

1) Get the tattoo. Seriously woman, stop procrastinating and just do it.
2) Go to a retreat, specifically this one in October.
3) Travel somewhere by myself, even if it's just to Birmingham shopping.
4) Take an e-course. One for me. So, not Manual Handling, Safe Use of Display Screen Equipment or Health and Safety in the Office. I have taken all of those e-courses this year and they don't count.
5) Blog more often. Once a week. Don't censor yourself.
6) Find the most amazing vintage leather jacket.
7) Read more. Which ironically means I have to give up the book club.
8) Eat fruit and veg that's in season.
9) Flirt Goddammit.
10) Paint the living room white.
11) During the summer, when it's hot, take blankets outside in the evening. Eat outside. Light candles.
12) Invite people over for dinner more often.
13) Stop freaking out about friending people on Facebook. It's no biggie.
14) Start plotting out the novel. Do it my own way. This can include images, maps, poems. The linear way clearly isn't working.
15) Dream and write it down.
16) Buy some really cool jewellery from Etsy.

So there we have. My manifesto for this year. I've started researching number one. Number two is booked. I will do number three on Thursday. I have a week off work and plans to buy a tin of paint and I am beginning to lower the drawbridge.

So, I'd say it's been a pretty normal sort of week...

This is the view from my office window. I took this photograph in late October, the tang of wood smoke in the air, the leaves beginning to fall. There were about four days in a row like this and I remember thinking that I must try and take a picture before the weather breaks. It's very picturesque where I work and despite a workload that's teetering on impossible, I still spend quite a bit of time starting out of my window. Dogs on canal boats are one the happiest sights in mid-summer; some of them are so panicked and confused, pacing up and down, whining, others are like "yeah, I do this all the time, I'm totally cool with this moving on water thing, in fact I'm just off to find a gastro pub, do you like my jaunty red scarf?".
Anyway, moving on.
This was the sight last Thursday. Not quite so picturesque.

 For the second time in five years I found myself wading around in flood water, trying to save furniture, artwork, booze and paperwork. A dozen or so people consisting of management committee members, Mill staff, district and county council staff and the fire service all stood around in seven inches of canal and river water eating tiny tubs of rapidly defrosting ice cream is an image that will stay with me for a while.
Thanks to the extremely quick reaction of everybody we are reopening on Tuesday. But it has been an odd week. Core staff were moved to an Oxfordshire County Council building in town to undertake the massive admin that such a situation generates. It was so clean and shiny and new. We all stood there on Monday staring at the dishwasher in their staff room like savages discovering fire for the first time. Or my parents looking at my mobile phone ("yes, that's what happens when you touch the screen. What? Who have you accidentally friended?").
Quite aside from all this, I caught a cold. A really bad cold. Unsurprising given that I spent quite a lot of last weekend feeling damp and chilly. So it's a been a weekend of homemade chorizo, red pepper and lentil soup, chocolate, Lemsip, blankets and epic amounts of snot. I have also been making lots and lots of nice things- more on that when I can take some pictures in daylight.

Feeling bad about the garden and other angsty thoughts

Before

I spent the bank holiday with mum trying to tame the wilderness that is my back garden.

When I first started looking for a flat I was adamant that I wanted something with some outdoor space. A mixture of serendipity, patience and sheer bloody mindedness meant I actually got what I was looking for: a spacious ground floor flat in a Victorian town house with 2 massive fireplaces, a courtyard garden and a proper pantry. All within my budget.

I was a good girl to start with; planting bulbs, climbers and veg with care and watering every evening during the dry days of summer. However, recently I have been a bit distracted and everything, flat interior included, has gone a bit Miss Havisham.



The lettuce (left) and broad beans (has beans)

I have included a picture of the lettuce that shot. When I pulled it out it was over 4 foot. I have decided that I am no good at growing edible things. Nothing makes be feel guiltier than throwing food away except perhaps throwing food away that I have grown myself and then left to rot in the ground. I am a terrible excuse for a human being. I also felt bad about the 30 or so empty wine bottles I took the the recycling yesterday. We couldn't park the car outside the flat so I had to do the clinking walk of shame over the road to the T K Maxx car park.


After

It looks like my hours at work are likely to be cut. I have spent a fraught week doing sums in my head, desperately trying to work out if I can afford to stay here or whether I will have to move somewhere smaller. I've just bought 2 pints of milk on my credit card so the answer doesn't look promising. Remember last week when I thought something good was around the corner? Well, feel free to give me an e-slap the next time I start prodding fate with a pointy stick.