Bad Decisions? That's alright...

Welcome to my silly life...

It's been a minute (okay, several thousand minutes...) since I wrote here. 

So much has happened in the last year that I can barely believe it. 

I have...

- Left the job I loved for a more mature career in the financial sector
- Took a pay cut for that job that I ultimately ended up hating
- Dated a bit of a dick who I ended things with quickly (but not quite quickly enough)
- Started writing three books and I've got ideas for others
- Left the aforementioned job in the financial sector for a job that sounded incredible but actually turned out to be a scam
- Become unemployed because my mental state couldn't quite take standing outside for seven hours in the cold just in case I made a sale... 

So yeah, it's been quite a year! 

In 2018, I was amazing with my money. I budgeted, I saved, I bought a Macbook. 

I was so proud of myself. 

In 2019, the pay cut and the addition of a car into my life meant a lack of money and new worries that I really struggled with. 

In 2020, I'm hoping to get my life back on track but the lack of a job a month and a half before January is worrying me. 

It's not all bad though. 

I have an incredible boyfriend and wonderful friends who are supporting me in any way that they can at the moment. 

If I'm being entirely honest, they're the only reasons I'm getting through this. 

I mean, I say this. 

I have been officially unemployed for two days. 

That's not very long but it's enough to be driving me insane. 

The worst part is that there's so much I'm afraid/embarrassed to talk to my closest friends and family about. 

I'm embarrassed I made a really stupid decision and took a job I would end up having to leave due to how awful it was (seriously, it was advertised as an amazing opportunity to be a sales and events management trainee but it was actually just a trick which ended up being more like unpaid labour... Okay, it was exactly like that. You go into their office for 7:30am, spend the morning practicing your 'pitch' (which was really just a script to entice people to buy into whatever you were selling), leave the office in groups of three for about 11:30am, go to wherever you've been sent (I was sent to the freezing cold main street in Portobello), spend the next six hours there trying to get as many people to talk to you/buy into the thing you've been assigned to sell before heading back for 6:30pm - 7pm for a debrief. 
I didn't make a single sale (only one of our group of three did) and it was then that I realised that you only got paid if you did make a sale...

After I found that out, it was pretty hard to find the willpower to continue.

I had to walk away because I was so close to having a panic attack at the realisation that I'd just given up a job that paid me consistently every month for one that would pay me if I forced people into signing up for a direct debit for a charity I'd never heard of. 

I'd been semi led to believe that there would be some sort of base wage. 

I was wrong. 
So. Wrong. 

The next day, I went in for about an hour and then I said I had a headache and I left. 

I got in my car and started driving towards my mum's but she didn't answer so I headed to one of my best friend's flat. 

I couldn't believe I'd been so stupid. 

That night, my boyfriend came over and he was so good to me (he has continued to be so incredibly kind to me despite how sarcastic he usually is) but it wasn't enough to curb my anxiety and I couldn't face going in the next day so I texted my 'mentor' and said I was ill again. 

On Monday (yesterday), I quit. 

I told him I needed a job that would be guaranteed to pay me every month instead of one where I stood outside in the freezing cold for several hours without any guarantee I would get paid. 

He accepted it but told me he was 'sorry I saw it that way'. 

I didn't know what other way there was to see it. 

Since last Thursday (when I left with a headache...), I have been frantically applying for jobs. 

I have maybe three weeks before I'm going to seriously worry about money so I'm desperately hoping I'll find something soon.

As for why I'm embarrassed? 

I made this decision. I got myself into this mess. 

I can't blame anyone else but myself for this. 

And, if I'm being completely honest, if I let myself think about it for too long, I probably will have a mental breakdown. 

So why am I writing this all down here? 

This blog has always been where I've come to with intense feelings. 

I wrote here when my mum (nanny) died. 

I wrote here when my cat died.

I wrote here when I was happy too. 

One day, hopefully one not too far away from today, I will look back on this experience as a mistake that I overcame. 

I don't want to forget how massively I messed up or how devastated I was at the result of my actions 

You can't ignore the mistakes you made but nobody ever learned from having continued successes. 

This was a horrendously bad decision that I made but it was a failure I am going to learn from and come out on the other side wiser from it. 

I know that. 

Now, the other thing that I'm too scared to talk about with my friends... 

My boyfriend is brilliant. 

He is smart, successful and he is miles ahead of me in the game of life (that saying 'Don't compare your Chapter 3 to someone else's Chapter 13' comes into my head whenever I think this). 
He wants to be with someone who is equally successful and I'm miles away from being that person. 

Now, it's been years since I was that girl who thought she knew what love was and who didn't believe she was good enough for the boy she wasted that 'love' on. 

But my boyfriend is so unbelievably brilliant that I oftentimes find myself wondering why he's still choosing me every day. 

He's there when I'm at my lowest and he comes over to be with me when I'm struggling. 
He makes me laugh and roll my eyes (often in the same sentence...). 
He's not perfect but he makes up for his mistakes without me asking him to and he always comes through for me without thinking I'm crazy. 

I'm not saying I'm not good enough for him because that's not fair on me and all the work I've done in the last couple of years to improve my opinion on myself. 

I'm just worried. I don't think I've ever been this scared of messing something up. 

Anyway... 

That's just my life at the moment. 

Honest, raw and completely a mess. 

But I'll fix it. 

I have to. 

Love, 
Jess
xoxo

New Job, New Plans, New-ish Jess.

Okay, so, wow... I haven't written in a long time. To be fair, I was a mess after Cory died. Even though I didn't know him personally, I couldn't stop thinking about everyone else. Friends, family, fans... If I'm completely honest, I'm still not over it. I still cry every couple of days when something reminds me of him in a particularly potent way. But I accepted that I would never get over his death a while ago. And, really, the fact that it does still hurt shows how much of an incredible person he really was. He'll be remembered forever in our hearts. So he's immortal in that way. As Cory once said 'Love is how you stay alive even after you're gone.'.
Anyway, change of topic. I'll start with each headline.

New Job
I got a job! I had an interview at a Hairdresser's on the Tuesday after Cory died but that didn't work out. I'm not surprised nor was I upset. I was a mess at the time, like I said, and I don't know if I would have been a very good hairdresser anyway. I'll leave that to the more beautiful and stylish girls of the world.
I got an interview with a private nursery in Colinton, Edinburgh and I got the job considering I got a place with Carousel Training. I got that place and, after a long time, I finally got a start date.
I start next week on the 23rd September.
I will be working with babies and toddlers part-time every week while attending a college course with Carousel Training once a month.
I'm very excited to begin. Can't wait actually.
My senior year of High School, I felt like everyone had a plan but me. They were going to university or college or something. I had nothing. No idea.
But, now, I have a plan. I know what I'm doing for the next year and a half or so. It'll be hard and I might even hate it some days but I'm committed to it and I'm going to work hard.
I'm just glad to have a plan.

New Plans
Which leads me onto my next point... :)
I have made a few plans which will probably change as the years go by but, hopefully, not by too much.
For one: I want to move to America. Preferably, San Francisco. I love the atmosphere and the people and the scenery. It's gorgeous. If not there, I'm thinking Michigan or something. I'll figure it out.
Another thing I want to do is become more involved in charity work. I have a few specific things in mind that I would like to help out and volunteer for but I need to find out the main organisations in the UK.
For now though, I'm happy to stay in Edinburgh.
I'll work it out from there.

New-ish Jess
To be fair, it's not so much 'new' as 'retro' Jess.
I've been wearing skirts and dresses on a pretty constant basis all summer which is something I used to do before I started High School at age eleven. I love dresses and skirts. I was a big girly-girl growing up and it was nice not to have my legs covered in jeans which have been a staple of my wardrobe since 2007.
I love jeans, don't get me wrong. Skinny jeans make me smile and they're warm and I don't find them uncomfortable. They're also very... I don't know. They're homey. Does that even make sense? They're comfortable anyway.
So, I decided to wear more dresses, etcetera. This means I'll have to buy more and also tights or something for Winter but, like my life, I'll figure that out as I go along as well :)

I don't really know what else there is to say. The Fringe was great this year! Loved the Comedy shows!
Going to leave a couple of pictures from the last two months here...
xoxo