A new direction

I’ve not been posting as much lately.

Things have not been easy – both at home and work.

Home I can deal with – just. Penny is finishing uni at the end of this month and is not coping well with the thought of it finishing. Panic attacks, depression and anxiety. We can get through it together, helping her through this difficult time. She is accepting of help, so that is one big hurdle we have got over.

Work – I have not been coping with. My lovely manager retired just over a year ago. The new manager is nice, and we get on ok. There has been lots of change, but I am not averse to change for the good. She does delegate a lot of work to me, and I mean a LOT. My colleague has been off on long term sick since July last year and retired in March. I have been coping with all HR issues basically on my own since July. Penny has come in and helped out with some basic admin, but a lot has fallen on my shoulders, especially with the new manager delegating so much down to me.

Then we took on a new colleague to work with me. Only it hasn’t worked. She doesn’t want to do what my old colleague did. She wants to be in charge. She talks down to me at every opportunity and belittles me. It has got to the point where I haven’t been sleeping and dreading going into work on a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday when she is there.

We had a mediation session with our manager to try and work things out. It didn’t help. I ended up in tears. I won’t go into all the ins and outs, but after heartfelt discussions with Hugh (and with his 100% support) I decided to resign.

It wasn’t an easy decision, but at the same time I didn’t feel sad about it. I thought I would as I have worked here for 7 ½ years. However, I have been so unhappy recently that the thought of leaving is a release.

I am changing direction.

I am retraining as a medical secretary.

I am a trained secretary already – it is what I used to do. I just need to do a short course to transfer my skills into the medical field.

However, I will have no job from Friday 12^th June. That is a scary prospect.

We can cope financially. But I hope it won’t be for long.

 I will do temporary work once I have completed the course with a view to getting a permanent position once I have some experience.

There is a whole new world out there. And it is exciting, exhilarating, something to look forward to, but scary!

But I feel happier now than I have in a long time. I didn’t realise how much I wasn’t enjoying my job anymore. And medical secretarial work? It is something I have been thinking about doing for a couple of years. And if I don’t do it now then I think I won’t ever do it and I may regret that.

What I don’t regret are the years I have spent in HR. They have taught me a lot and I have made many good friends here who I will miss. The best friends I will still see. And in fact, my old manager and my old colleague are taking me out to lunch on my last day which I am really looking forward to. We still meet up regularly and these are the people who mean the most to me.

And so I hope that life will settle back to something less stressful which will allow me to do more of what I want to do and not spend my weekends stressing about work. I find that scrapbooking does help me to relax, but some weekends I am just too uptight to do anything but the most basic household chores.

That is going to change. I am going to change. Not too drastically. I will still be Becky, but with improvements – I hope!

Anyway, if you have read all the way down to here well done! This journaling is something I needed to get written and I will probably do a layout and print this out to go with it.

So, in three weeks time a new chapter will start in my life and I am VERY excited!

I took this selfie at the weekend and everyone has been saying how relaxed and happy I look - hmm, I wonder why!