The Journey Begins

I feel like I’m going to throw up and I’m wondering who thought this was a good idea.

Oh right – I remember, it was me. I graduated quite a few years ago now with a less than pleasing 2:2 in English Literature. But with all I had going on in 2009 at the tender young age of 18 – moving in with my fiancé, a wedding, two jobs and a full time undergraduate course; I look back and find it no surprise that I just missed the 2:1 I’d been hunting for.

So it’s been at least 5/6 years since  graduated and lots had changed. We’ve moved a total of 7 times since living with our parents. We’ve had pets come and go. We moved far away to chase dreams, and had dreams dashed so we ended back at square one.

We have two beautiful children that I’m so thankful for and blessed to have, equally I have been awarded the sometimes restrictive title ‘Mummy’.

See being a Mummy as an individual ‘job’ can be wonderful. If you give yourself fully to become servant and lord of the home and all in it – I think being Mummy can be a fulfilling and life affirming job. But there’s a problem I have – and I know many others suffer it; the need to work.

Whether it’s to save your sanity or because you can’t survive with a whole family resting on a single wage, (I suffer from both,) Mummy’s (and daddy’s)  must pull themselves away from the safety of home and throw themselves back out to work.

Beforw finding out I was pregnant with my first I had a wonderful, all consuming job as a college GCSE English tutor. I loved my job and I was finally good at something. But as often happens, situations occur and we are forced to make choices. Long story short Joel and I ended up back and my dads house with with no job, no house and me up the duff. At that moment I thought I was lost forever. My career hopes gone. Left full of mistakes and regret with only my first born as a guiding star through all this chaos.

 

Ive worked so many jobs since having my daughter. I’ve been a home tutor, a waitress, a school assistant at a autistic school, a preschool teaching assistant (where I found myself pregnant with number 2) and I’m now a fish and chip server.

I have been so lucky to find jobs that’s fit my life- childcare certainly hasn’t been consistent or easy. But with work in the evenings and Mummy and wife in the day, I feel constantly like I’m lucky to get through the day – do you get that?! Like when my daughter asks what we are doing tomorrow I’m just filled with bemused unknowing as I try to explain I’m still trying to get to the end of this day first lol.

When it was time to return to work after my first I worked into the night and rarely slept. I used to set her down with the to on and toys around her and sleep in my uniform. Once she bought me a knife she had reached off the kitchen counter and I said ‘thank you honey.’ Took the knife slipped it under my pillow and went back to sleep 😱.

ao when it came time April this year to return to some decent hours after my second baby, I knew I couldn’t do all that again – it was going to be so much harder with two and I couldn’t be falling asleep constantly. An accident will eventually happen and be all my fault.

I got a great few hours and the chip shop across from me. I knew the staff and the boss is the kindest I’ve probably ever had. But for some reason, once I had completed my interview and got the job, I came home and cried.

I cried so much. Not because of the job but because again my skills, My dreams were going to waste. I’ve been watching the years go by, wasting time until the kids are in school. Working unsociable hours for minimum wage or whatever I have been doing,

I couldn’t bare it. I needed more. So I started searching for something anything to make me feel like me again. That’s when I found my Masters course. It’s something I really like doing and I took a little in my undergraduate course so I thought why not? Waste another year or two in a job I didn’t want to do, or try something new. Just for me.

Then guilt sets in – it’s time away from family and work.

But here I am waiting for my first class. I’ll tell you about the application process and just how easy it was and the funding available on another post – because I’ve gone on for ages!!!

I’m so nervous this isn’t what I think it is and I’ve risked so much to be here but equally I’m so ready for something new and more than watching In The Night Garden on repeat!

Thanks for sticking with me – see you on the other side. X