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Identity Crisis

In 1996 I took my first tentative steps on the career ladder.  Clueless and without direction, I started working in an office.  As an Office Junior in an Estate Agents, I got my first taste, of full time work.  It was a day-release program so every Wednesday, I would attend college.  

It was scary and great at the same time. Back then, working in an office, automatically instilled a self belief of intelligence.  The wages were horrific.  The men were rude and lazy.  The women were more difficult to define.   Some older and wiser ladies, would look down their noses in disgust at me.  Others would mother me and be kind.  The young secretaries were also divided into two camps.  One didn’t even make eye contact with me for the first month.   The other started a few weeks after I did.  To this day we remain really good friends.

Another office job followed, then another and another.   Junior Administrator, Revenue Officer, Senior Administrator, Customer Service Manager, Sales Office Manager, Operations Controller.  It was 2009 at this point and I faced my second career redundancy.  The job market was tough and after months of rejections, I landed a retail position.  I spent 6 months as an Assistant Manager, working in a clothing store.  Retail was definitely not for me so back to the office I went.  Tele-marketing, Claims Handler, Executive Assistant and finally Sales Administrator, would bring me to present day.  No matter the job, the company, the field, the location – I would park my ass at a PC for 37- 45 hours per week and look at a screen and make calls.

20 years of doing just that.  Two decades of full time work, full time wages, full time routine and full time friends.  Is It what I hoped for when I passed all my exams?  No.  I have never known what I wanted to do.  I have just floated from role to role.  Here I am, 18 months out of the rat-race and I know one thing…I don’t want to go back to that.

I hated being tied down and caged in an office.  I often referred to them as tin cans.  The years I spent going cross eyed at computer screens, wading through in trays, inboxes and work queues.  I climbed all the way to the top job and still felt empty.

At home with my baby girl, my life has completely changed.  I don’t want to go back to that life but it was who I was for so long.   I’m not sure who I am without it.  The friends, the social life, the challenge, the money, the independence and routine gave my life structure.  Now without the structure, I’m just a broke, hermit like viscous substance, that raises a baby and eats junk.  Yesterday I ate half a red velvet cake and a bag of dry roasted peanuts, leftover from Christmas.  I consider my day a success, when my house is still standing, my daughter and I have survived and I have managed to achieve the personal basics:

  1. Brush teeth and hair
  2. Wash face
  3. Apply deodorant and makeup
  4. Get dressed

There are many days I don’t achieve these, in part or at all.  Getting dressed, rarely means applying clean clothes to my body.  I sometimes pick up yesterday’s outfit from the floor, change my underwear and put it back on.  Sometimes I sleep in the top that wore the previous day and wear it again the next.  A proud moment.  

I have totally lost who I was and I’m not exactly holding together who I am.  I’m in this wilderness of bad hygiene and no sleep.  I’ve gone from professional to post natal to this.  I’m not sure what this is.  I know I’m a mummy and that’s wonderful.  I feel guilty just thinking this but…is this it?

 

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