26 months ago (June 2019) I started a new job, that I hoped would renew and reinvigorate my professional life, and rebalance my lifestyle. A new role with a new team in a great marketing agency, for their newest, biggest client, with a mandate to revamp and change their way of communicating with customers. Importantly, it was also close enough to home that I would save upwards of 90 minutes per day (and £££) in my commute, or I could commute by bike in less time than it took me to drive to my previous job.
As it’s turned out that was mostly right, but it has also been true in other, much more significant ways.
16 months ago (April 2020), along with 1/4 of my colleagues, I was furloughed just after the start of the first COVID lockdown. The agency were great, ensuring we received 80% of our salary even above the Government scheme, and I enjoyed the luxury of free time to cycle, improve our garden, decorate inside and out. Our home looks better, I got fitter and faster and lost nearly 10kg, and I was able to better support my family in many ways, big and small.
12 months ago this week, along with 25 other colleagues, I was made redundant from that job I had hoped would be a proper long-term thing. I was 52 years old, the same age my Dad had been when he was made redundant a generation before at the start of a recession that left him unemployed for more than a year. COVID wasn’t going anywhere, we were months away from a vaccine, I was more than slightly anxious.
The past 12 months have been a lot of things, but they have not been a roller coaster, because a roller coaster brings you back to the same point from where you started. So if you were to take the ride again, it would be familiar, and you would remember the loops and twists and drops, and it would be ‘easier’. I am in very few senses in the same ‘work’ place I was 12 months ago, let alone 26 months ago.
I Reckon a better description is that the past 12 months have been like the weather. Many things have happened, some of which I could have forecast (and could certainly better recognise them now), others that seemed to blindside me.
- a 3-month contract was cancelled (due to COVID reasons) after 6 weeks
- a 12-day project over 6 weeks gradually, almost by accident, turned into 5 days over 8 weeks
- I began to get used to the silence of delays and projects stalling, and reworking my forecasts
- I was thrilled when I helped to win a pitch, but then dismayed when nothing happened for weeks (again, COVID)
- I understood the Chilly Drought of January when December’s ‘plan’ dried up
- I rejoiced in a repeat call for a new project
- I basked in the stability of longer, rolling contracts
- I dithered about, doubted, almost abandoned (several times) and ultimately launched myself as a business
- I found belief and a way forward, with the kindness and support of friends and colleagues, and the guidance and wisdom of Paul Stephenson at Zengility
So where I’ve got to now is long way from my Old World.
- I’m mostly working for smaller brands and businesses with smaller budgets, and that’s great. The approval chains are often much shorter, and the people often seem more grateful for my efforts. They seem more willing to listen, and more able to make changes.
- I used to spend a lot of time in meetings with lots of people, talking about stuff. Now I spend far more time working on stuff, more by myself (which has good and bad points), then working out with others how to make it happen.
- Most importantly, it feels like I can make a difference more easily; to individuals, teams and businesses
- I genuinely believe I’m doing some of my best work, because I have been released from decades of learned dependency
- I’m working 4 days a week on rolling contracts, with a financial ‘buffer’ that is slightly more than the redundancy money I received 12 months ago
There’s more that I’m proud of in working terms in the last 3 months than became real in the previous 36. But there’s also more recurring anxiety because, when 12 days become 5, that’s 2 months’ mortgage payment.
It’s still stormy, but I’m beginning to believe in my skills and ability to weather the storms, to respond to the conditions, and steer a course for brighter, calmer waters.
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