January Joy: Refocus your Career

'Refocus your career' was a January Joy I was prepared to ignore. Thinking too much about careers and employment at the moment does not lead to joy. However something changed yesterday. An opportunity arose, and suddenly I have a new job.

My company went through a restructure just over a year ago, which made my husband redundant and at the same time offered me a new role. I had to accept given my husband was now unemployed but it was not what I really wanted to do. I used to love my old job as a manager of people and projects, working autonomously, rarely at my desk, solving problems, planning and making things happen. Let's just say I don't do so much of that now and it makes me sad. It isn't that its a bad job, but it's not a good job for me.

I haven't really ever known what I wanted out of my career. I didn't go out to train in a specific field or go looking for a particular job when I left university, and I found myself on my career path coasting along comfortably. I worked hard, I was good at what I did, I had friends and a good team and I hope I was respected. I was also stressed, overworked, underpaid and under appreciated and would grumble about work like everyone else does.

So now I find myself in a job I'm not happy in and I have spent a lot of sleepness nights, and tearful car journeys home thinking about all the things that make me unhappy. I also understand much more about the things that do make me happy and what I do want out of my job.

There's only really two ways to deal with anything you are unhappy with- change it, or change the way you feel about it. That's what I have tried to do- I've been completely honest (not completely wise!) with my manager, with HR and with other people in the business who may help me change where I am. Time to take the advice I used to give my team all the time- if you want something there is no point hiding it! In the meantime I have done my best to stop feeling sorry for myself, and get my head down and get on with the boring stuff, make the best of the interesting stuff and find opportunities to grow and improve where I am.

Yesterday I was pulled into a meeting room with one of those 'have you got 5 minutes' that I have learnt to dread in this role. Someone with my experience is needed asap to second to a project team working with external consultants on a board sponsored program. I'll be working for my old boss, someone who is a supporter and encourager, not someone who puts me down. It will be doing more stakeholder management and project stuff, which I love, and it will open opportunities- putting me back in touch with people around the business and a network of managers and board members. Maybe. It's all a bit unknown and could also be months of awful data analysis trying to fix the unfixable, leaving behind my lovely team and the safe fingers-in-my-ears- trying - to-be-positive comfort zone.  I had to decide TODAY. Arghhhhh!

I've been looking for an opportunity and now here one is. I'm not ecstatic. Its too quick and has lots of unknowns. But if I stay where I am I will still be here in 6 months time, bored, frustrated, wondering what might have been. Where will I be in six month now I have accepted this secondment? Somewhere else and that's what I want. That's quite exciting I suppose. So I'm ready to embrace the change, lets go get the most out of this!

Argghhhhh!

January Joy: The Carbfest

I don't generally do 'girls night in'. I don't have a best friend or a group of girls I go out with while the menfolk go out somewhere else. My main friend group is a mix of boys and girls, mostly all couples now, and most of us have known each other since college. There isn't much in the way of gossip, dating, in fighting or breakups, we don't do makeovers or chick flicks or any really typical ingredients of a Girls Night In.

But Girls Night In is on the January Joy list. So last weekend the girls came round my house for pillow fights, makeovers, talking about snogging and romantic comedy DVDs. Well actually we didn't do any of that, but it was actually nice to get together with just the girls, even though the conversation, when devoid of boys, went far too far into topics like childbirth and eating placentas (!?) 

Why Carbfest? I also ticked off two other things on the January Joy list- Make bread and make pasta. I don't really do much cooking, don't have the time or much inclination so I tackled this in my own way. Before going whole hog and making actual pasta I thought I would make some of my favourite pasta dishes from scratch instead of using jar sauces and ready made ingredients. A useful life skill for my future as a proper grown up.

I made meatballs, greatest of all pasta dishes, from a recipe found on pinterest involving chipotle paste for a bit of punch. With a spicy tomato sauce I had high hopes. Then I made mac n cheese, second greatest of all pasta dishes, following a recipe found on pinterest cited as the best mac n cheese recipe ever. Who can distrust this American lady's claims, after all the USA is best at gloopy, cheesy, unhealthly carb laden foods. 

Then the accompaniment; the bread. Pinterest again distracted me from making normal bread, and sent me on a quest to replicate Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits. The real deal, from the American seafood chain are amazing warm garlic- cheese scone things of awesome. After eating these in Florida, I developed an full on obsession for these when on holiday in Canada (where they advertise on TV and then don't have any Red Lobsters anywhere we went!) Beautiful waterfalls, no bloody biscuits! Plus doesn't Cheddar Bay sound like a great place to live?

How was it? Mediocre. Not rubbish, just not that amazing. I was going to share the recipes, but I honestly did not think it worth the whole afternoon of hard work in the kitchen. Cooking for 10 people is time consuming and expensive! The Biscuits were pretty damn good and easy to make with the magic ingredient Bisquick. Bit salty because I accidentally used Garlic salt for the topping and not ground garlic, but these will be made again.

So there, 3 more things off the January Joy list! (funny 'Clean Eats' just didn't seem to fit in here)

Appreciation

"If you're unhappy, embrace change... make a difference... if you're bored find something to do - Nice one Amy for helping us all to enact this in our life!!"

My friend just posted this onto facebook following on from our facebook group. Love the sentiment, and love even more that my quest to do more happy is reaching out to my friends too! :D 

Do Interesting Things

"Do Interesting Things and Interesting Things will Happen to You"

I have an abundance of ideas, ambitions and schemes most of which go nowhere as they all squabble for the attentions of my wandering brain and busy life. Its not like I'm bored and have nothing fun or exciting on the horizon, there is so much possibility and opportunity waiting out there. It's just about getting some focus and getting on with it. 

A week ago I created a facebook group with my friends. I simply said it was a group to suggest something you want to do, such as a gig, exhibition, restaurant and if others are interested they say so and then you sort it out. Sounds simple, you might wonder why we don't we do this anyway, but actually we are all busy and see each other less and less so it seems harder and harder to plan things in.

Something cool happened. Everyone got involved, and over a weekend we have plans and ideas for plans for months ahead. From a simple night at the pub to wine tasting dinners, pub quiz, go karting, come dine with me dinner parties, camping, space lectures, weekend in Brighton and poker night. Its going to be busy, but its going to be fun.

Can't wait to do more happy in 2014!

January Joy: Try a New Trend

'Try a New Trend' is a slightly scary prospect for someone in her mid thirties who has not read a fashion magazine for years. If new trends are what I see girls wearing to the pub on a Saturday night I can do without thanks. Wet look leggings have a place, and it's not on my fat backside.

So I decided to forget about that and just go with a change. I decided to get a fringe cut. This may or may not be a new trend, it could be soo last year, but who cares really.

Fringes have been a no no since my teenage years. The thick blonde fringe I had sported since primary school started from somewhere at the back of my head and was thick enough to completely obscure my vision after 2 weeks starting to grow the damned thing out. I wore a thick black alice band for about a year as the awkward chunk of ex-fringe slowly met up with the rest of my hair. There was no such thing a long sweeping side fringes in the early 90s, my hairdresser did not seem to help me out. So cutting it back in again has never been an option.

But I am curious. Since the fringe was last around, my hair has mostly just hung about in various lengths of layered bob. Its time to change things up a bit. Collecting images of beautiful celebrities and models sporting cool looking fringes encouraged me that with that simple chop, I too could look awesome.

A Groupon deal for £16 cut and blowdry with local trendy salon clinched it. Fringe has been chopped. Well it didn't quite turn me into Zooey Deschanel, but it's new and different and I kind of like it even if my husband was mean.

Another thing off the January Joy list- Try a New Trend

January Joy: Learn Something New

This is the January Joy I have been most looking forward to. It doesn't take much to go and find something new and interesting to understand, do, or see, but sometimes you need a bit of inspiration and motivation to get going.

I am a creative person, and these days I spend most of my efforts on photography, and much of that is 'work'. I could paint, draw, print, cut, sew and craft all day, but actually can't remember the last time I made time to do it. However, this way lies procrastination.

I also like more academic learning, from science, which is my educational background, to history. I often wish I could go back to school and be more appreciative of all that wonderful information that I was taught, given over freely in handy 1 hour packages. Instead I was wasting my time learning the lyrics to Boom Shake the Room, doodling on my pencil case and pretending not to be the boffin I was. So now I'm a grown up ( I cooked Christmas dinner, I officially qualify now) I have to go out and do my own learning.

This week an opportunity presented itself to get interested in something all new and exciting to me. BBC Stargazing came to Portsmouth, bringing exhibitions, talks, and demonstrations to the Historic Dockyard one (sadly) cloudy evening. Turns out I have a few other friends already well into stargazing, and so I ended up at Winchester Science Centre the following evening for the monthly Space Lecture, learning about Mars exploration.

So this is my thing to learn more about. I'm looking forward to an evening stargazing with a friend and her new telescope soon, some more space lectures and evenings at the planetarium, and want to try some star trail photography too. Few books to start reading this weekend too.

Blue Monday

I was not buying into this 'Blue Monday" thing. The combination of post-Christmas blues, crappy weather, debt, dieting, sobriety and first day back to work is said to make this the most depressing day of the year. I was determined not to get into this negative mentality. 

But then I spent around 3 hours of my day on the M27, couldn't find a parking space and had a day full of dullness, disagreement and horrible reality.Why does that make it the most depressing day of the year? It doesn't, its pretty standard so I'm not going to let it get me down.

Tomorrow I leave the house half an hour earlier.

Reasons to be Cheerful: 1

"Life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once is a while you could miss it"

It's been a good couple of weeks so I thought I should take a step back and take it in. Since Christmas we have been busy with family, friends and enjoying being at home a lot, the stresses and worries of the past few months in suspension. With all the build up, the bit after Christmas is usually an anticlimax which drags on into a bleak cold and boring January so it's been really good to kick of the new year with lots going on.

We've seen our friends more in the past two weeks than in the past few months, from a cosy Christmas Sunday lunch, to a drunken New Years Eve and a simple night out at the pub like old times. And from these meetings come more plans, and we have stargazing, camping trips, board games night and girls nights in to look forward to. Sometimes organising things is infuriating, actually it often makes me really annoyed by the people involved and despair at humanity in general. So I am happy things have come together recently, and I will not let the flakey excuses and down right rudeness of some get me down. Definitely need to do this more often!

January Joy: Time & Planning

"I put the 'Pro' in Procrastination"

In a quest for improved happiness, productivity and getting more from my time I am doing #JanuaryJoy. First this need a bit of planning and inspiration, so how handy that a couple of the things on the list are about Time and Planning.

- Make a Calendar
- Manage your time

Not a huge change for me as my calendar already extends out to 2015 for my business, and I plan and manage complex projects all the time so I can be organised when I need to be. However, I procrastinate like a pro, and get distracted by anything and everything. This whole blog idea hadn't even formed in my brain 3 days ago, and now here we are, thoroughly distracted. I'd blame Pinterest, but before that it was Flickr and before the internet it was... actually I don't know, maybe I was super efficient back then.... Anyway....

I use Google calendar which I can access wherever I am and is shared with Jeff and can't see any reason to change that. Today I set up a new calendar app on my Android phone called Cal, which was recommended on the Play store, and combined with sister app Any.Do, a to do list app, this seems a good interface for organising my life on my phone. I've tried quite a lot of To Do list/Memo type apps on my phone and ipad and not really got into a workflow with them so we shall see how this works out.

Recently I have gone back to using a simple notepad in my bag to sort my life out and this low tech approach is working out pretty well. I am less prone to distraction with a to do list and a simple monthly plan drawn out on pages of my notepad, to be scrawled on, annotated and revised easily. Plus I've had a weird obsession since I was a little girl for stationary (God I love Paperchase) so I need to put the otherwise pointless collection to notepads to use for something. I have new rainbow pens and stickers for marking pages too. Stationary joy.

So, January Joy is planned, the to do list is made, plus some Pinterest boards along the way. I have hair appointments, Girls nights in, baking, stargazing and oh yeah, the dreaded tax return all sorted.

Make a Calendar- Complete
Manage your Time- All over it

January Joy

New years day is a rubbish day to get focussed and get achieving. Surviving the day without puking is usually the best you can hope for. I've had a whole 30 hours since I went to sleep on New Years morning, drunk and cheered by good friends and funny games. Since then I've done some sleeping and mostly monged about on a rainy day with TV, cats and social media. Sum total of useful achievement for 2014 so far has been agreeing to maybe go camping. 

So I'm going to let someone else provide me some focus to start with. Florence Finds is a blog I dip into regularly. I do not do magazines but I find FF feels much more real, personal and relevant. This month is #JanuaryJoy, with the simple concept to bring more joy to January.

Its an idea I can deal with. No crazy ambitions and unachievable goals, just a few little things to plan to do. I might not even do them all and I won't feel bad. I might add some of my own.

I'll blog some January Joy and Instagram too.  

Do More Happy in 2014

1. Do More of What Makes You Happy

Well 2013 was pretty crappy. Not devastating, life changingly horrendous, no one in my life died, no illness or horror that would really justify saying it was a truly awful year. But I was sad, worried, disappointed, stressed and demotivated for much of it. 2013 will not be missed.

Nothing has changed since yesterday, except I have a bit of a hangover and discovered a funny, sick party game (Cards Against Humanity). A new year will not suddenly fix things or change things but with all this fresh start, resolutions, looking forward stuff that is coming at me from every angle today I thought I might just get on the bandwagon.

So here we are with a blog, an idea formed in the half hour between the Star Trek DVD ending and Sherlock starting, at the end of a day mostly spent lazing on the sofa with a log fire, cats and TV. Like many of my ideas, it might not come to much, I get distracted and busy and have new ideas for my mind to wander off to, but let's try it.

The name of the blog for now: Do More Happy. With it a simple ethos: Plan, make effort, take chances, change, step back and appreciate and just do more stuff that makes me happy.  Lets do this..