Last week I finished working at the job I’ve been working at for 5 years. That’s a long time and a lot has happened in that time.

The postives: got another cat, got some new cars, made progress on my Mazda, visited some new places (Amsterdam, Paris, Hamburg, various places in Wales, Cornwall), got married!

Negatives: Got Cancer (and covid); spent the last year working through a company that had gone through multiple acquisitions culminating in me going off on stress leave for around a month.

Enough is enough!

I’ve been engrossed in watching or learning about Cerro Gordo Ghost Town (see Ghost Town Living) and it’s been a really interesting experience watching someone who had no real life experience of living alone in the middle of nowhere. Needless to say he had the quick realisation that he was the only person who could determine anything that happened there, and he’s got some great philiosophical insights. One thing I’ve really taken away from that all is what he said and that is that if you don’t like something, do something about that. And that’s what I did!

Work got too much and after the big C, I have a different outlook on life. Making the most of every day and life in general is important, and I’m not going to spend it being unhappy, so I spent the time I had taken during the absence of leave finding a new job. Big priorities were ensuring it was another remote working role – I’ve been working remotely since around the beginning of the pandemic and I’ve enjoyed it. You do get lonely at times, but at the same time the pros outweigh the cons. Not having to get stressed in rush hour traffic and shout at other drivers is a bonus. That is one good thing that has come out of the pandemic really, and something that I could have done for a long time (working in IT) but it took that to wake a lot of people up.