A Change of Direction.

I couldn't write this blog before Christmas.  Actually, I couldn't write at all before Christmas.

Last year (2013) wasn't a good year for me.  One emergency operation in March derailed me (not long after I'd celebrated my 40th birthday).  It took another one in August to put me back on track.  And then it happened.

    I was made redundant.

    I worked for an organisation for 12 years, over a quarter of my life. I worked for a disability organisation whose primary aim is to promote independent living, and I enjoyed my job.  Being diabled myself was a handy bonus because I could be all empathic and mean it.  Plus I loved working with people.  But like every place of work, the word "restructure" means job losses.  I'd been through two before and "survived" (if you can call it that).  And we're not all like Keannu Reeves, we can't always dodge bullets.  The third restructure hit me hard.  The Council had cut funding which meant that there were going to be severe changes in the organisation.  Which meant that my job, which I loved, was no more. 

    Losing a job is like being pushed out of a plane at 40,000 feet (however high that is).  You go into freefall.  You want to scream but you look around and you find that there are lots of planes up there and lots of people being pushed out of them.  And the horror on their faces matches yours: Oh god, what am I going to do now???

    When you're in employment, everybody says what a good thing a redundancy package is.  Its money and its tax free.  Well... yes.  But its not a job and that money will run out.  If you're smart, you'll try and save what have because when that rainy day comes (and we've had quite a few of them) you'll need it.  Being in work puts a person on the side of Right. You have a status and You're Making A Positive Contribution To Society.  The media and politicians all over are quite happy saying that they working for "the hard working people".  There is a whole stigma attached to "people who don't work".  It terrified me that I was not one of those people any more.  Did that mean that I was not one of those people that David Cameron was going to help?

    What people don't talk about is the emotional effect that losing your job can have.  It's like a tidal wave, lifting a person up, taking them away by force from everything that they were comfortable with and dropping them in the middle of nowhere.  And unless it happens to you, you don't know what it feels like.

    For me the most difficult thing I found was that I couldn't write.  We're not talking about CV's or application forms here.  Those I wrote.  In fact I made looking for work a full time job with added hours for evenings and weekends.  The new Birmingam Central Library became my second home.  I was making my sandwiches the night before as normal and taking a thermos of coffee in the morning.  The old Central Library used to be my second home but its becoming a fading memory, like my old job.

    When you start looking for work, you have to think, I'll do anything (within reason and within my capabilities.)  I can't walk a tightrope in my wheelchair.  I can't walk two parallel tightropes because I'm afraid of heights.  But I will Do Something.

    But I couldn't write.      Writing is a passion for me.  Actually, well its not.  Living in worlds inside my head are a passion as are getting them down on paper.  But I had to change that channel, because until I'd found a job I wasn't going to be comfortable with using my keyboard for anything other than writing application forms.  I wanted to write, but I couldn't find it in my heart to think about writing. 

    Every day presented a new challenge because the current climate tells of more people going into free fall.  And those are the people that I go up against to find work.  These aren't good times that we live in.  I found that there is a paradox with looking for work, because whilst employers say that they "are looking for people with skills in", what they're really saying is that "they want people who already have experience of doing ...".  And you can't get experience in an area without somebody giving you a job.

    But this story will hopefully end optimistically.  Because just before Christmas, just before Christmas... I was offered a job.  So the next I write, after this, will be my letter of acceptance.

    And then maybe 2014 will see my life and my writing move in a different direction.

    I hope that your lives have a positive start to the new year as well.

    Take care

    Joe.