2024 Week 50: That Time of the Year
It's nothing so major as last year's mini renovation, but this week I decided to consolidate all the boarding rabbits to one room (4 playpens = 4 bunnies/pairs of bunnies) and move my stuff into Jon's study.
A few reasons for this: he now works from home 2 days a week, I have been doing more freelance work and need a desk, and Miaou5 has comandeered this room for his personal use. Blocking off his access would be mean to him (not to mention noisy to us, since he complains quite... stentoriously).
I'm quite happy that my bookshelves and desk fit so tidily in this corner. I also enjoy working in the same room as Jon.
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
December is peak rabbit boarding season and I had expected to have my hands full with pet care. But, this hasn't been the case. I actually have plenty of bandwidth to work on other projects.
My main one these couple of weeks has been to help Gerard set up a personal domain, website, and blog/newsletter to assist in his transition out of employment and into freelancing. I made his personal site using Google Sites and I think it looks all right. We are still working on the blogging platform. I'm now testing Beehiiv as a less irritating version of Substack.
This internet stuff is easy peasy compared to the emotional and mental difficulty of such a transition in his context. He has been an employee for over 40 years, after all. Of course, he is technically highly competent in areas like facilitation, training, counselling, writing, etc. which are all transferable into a freelance portfolio. The real obstacle is adjusting to the needs of going solo, the most unpalatable of which is probably the need for self-promotion.
However, he's been game about all kinds of technologies. Incorporating Otter and ChatGPT in his workflow was his idea, and (despite strong instinctive misgivings) he's open to trendy content platforms. That's pretty inspiring isn't it, that someone in his 60s is keen on innovation (and not in a paying-lip-service kind of way!).
-
I've noticed that I generally feel happy and satisfied of late. I was looking at Manfred Max-Neef's fundamental human needs and thinking, hmm I'm pretty satisfied on most of these fronts right now. In that earlier blog post, I hypothesised that increased commitment to the co-op would help with that - maybe I was right?
More broadly though, I think that my experiences over the past year have helped to build up some resilience. I basically set out this year to Find A Meaningful New Job. Ha, easier said than done!
I spent the year on several ventures. Test driving social work, switching to volunteer management/support role, growing the petsitting biz, becoming a researcher/writer, being a book editor (😎)... all of which failed to some extent! My reaction to failure has evolved dramatically. With the first disappointment (social work) I was shattered; with the second, I numbed out; as the third, fourth, fifth came, I found myself moving on more briskly.
These experiences seem to have modified my response to failure. So, although my latest slew of job application rejections stung, the pain didn't linger. After a night's sleep, they were forgotten - easy as that. In the past I would have been either defensive ("pah, never wanted you anyway") or delusional (transmuting pain into "learnings"). But now I am able to feel the pain, quite sincerely and honestly, while being able to move on. My skin has gotten thicker, I hope.
-
.jpeg)
Comments
Post a Comment