I’ve been psyching myself up for the next chapter of my life for….., at least…..., two, three, ok more years. Totally psyching myself up. Em, yeah, totally. I am dusting off my CV, getting motivated about starting a pension plan (not so much) and trying to figure out (again) what I want to be when I grow up.
My teenage offspring, known as Teen1 and Teen2 are now both in secondary school: I have no more excuses and even longer days where I don’t want to clean my house. So it’s time! It’s time for me to go back to paid employment after 16 glorious stay at home years.
I also realize how privileged I have been to have had the opportunity to stay at home for so long and will never forget that.
Oops! There was A LOT of dust on that CV :-)
I started out my adult life in office admin because I really had no clue what I wanted to do for work when diabetes came charging in. When I met beloved husband, I decided to retrain as a mature student and try my hand at graphic design but I never felt confident at it. And, by the time I graduated and moved back to Ireland Teen2 was getting ready to enter the world and the return to work plan was put on pause.
As the children grew up, I reclaimed some of my days and filled it with ideas to find more and more people with diabetes, bring them together and now we/I’m at a crossroads where we/I’m deciding between turning organizing events for people with diabetes into a business or charity or doing something completely different that has nothing to do with diabetes.
The last couple of months have been a huge challenge and filled with a lot of anxiety but they have taught me one thing for sure: I need to get out of the more than once a week to meet humans, staying at home all day, every day is not good for my mental health.
I’m nervous because it’s been a long time since I’ve worked for someone else and while I have done a couple of interviews over the last 16 years it didn’t matter if I didn’t get the job. Now I want the job. I’m ready for the job. But will it be what I hope and what does that mean for all the things I passionately volunteer with?
I’m sad because I will no longer have as much time to make stuff happen that matters to me and for other people with diabetes. My first priority is to make sure I still have time to keep my local support groups happening because I need that face to face support for my own survival. So the support groups are number 1.
My second priority is to continue volunteering on the Diabetes Ireland Advocacy Group because this is just getting started and already it’s making a difference.
I’m not sure what will happen with my own personal blog. It will be difficult to maintain it while working full time but it’s always been therapeutic for me to write about diabetes and I still have time on my hands while job hunting so it will continue for the time being.
There will have to be some grown up decisions made about the future of Thriveabetes which may change the way it’s viewed but I am determined that it does have a future.
So for the immediate future I will continue to post, while I research what’s next and what I need to do to make it happen. So, for now, I’m not going anywhere just yet, and keep you posting about living with diabetes.