Right Then – Back to Business!

You might want to look away now as I am about to do something I don’t normally do – VENT!!!! I don’t usually like to use my blog for this purpose, but I thought hey – what’s the point of having one if I can’t use it now and again to clear my head.

What a few days! After a nasty cold which knocked me out (you’ll find people that don’t get sick often, turn into utter baby’s when they do), my darling gran’s passing, being without my husband (my rock) for almost three weeks, being railroaded into a job that, things just got worse yesterday.

I caught another nasty cold which had me on my mum’s sofa feeling like my sinuses had turned to stone (with Long-Suffering Sister getting me and the kid’s dinner, bless her). I turned up for my induction for the new job only to find that I am not doing the job I was tricked/pushed into doing, but that I have been slotted into one of the jobs that no-one wanted and I specifically said I was not interested in. I am sorry to say I came back to my desk and swore loud enough to be heard across the room. I had to stop my manager from barging over and speaking to the new manager. In the end I said I’d think about this and went home. I had myself and the kids in bed at 9pm, thinking I’d sleep my cold off and the toothache I could feel coming on. I woke up at midnight to Little Man’s crying and as I got up to investigate he threw up all over the bed, so I had to clean him up and start stripping the bed.

I’m ready to write a blue’s song about it all now:
Da-nah-nah-nah
My baby left me
(to go Pakistan)
My job is the pits
(I’m sick of typing man)
Da-nah-nah-nah
My head is full of cotton,
My nose is leaking too
My kids are all sick
My teeth are making me go boo-hoo
Da-nah-nah-nah

I felt terrible. I thought how could it be that after ten years of hard work and doing so well I was now worse off than at the beginning of my career. How had things gotten so bad? I could see me paying for my home for the next 20 years and having to work for the next 20 years whether I liked it or not (if you ever have to wake up on a bitterly cold and damp December London morning, get the kids ready and then trudge along on public transport you might know how I feel). I wanted to call my husband and cry down the phone about how bad things were and how it was okay for him with his family taking care of him, but I was alone with the kids, we were all sick and I needed to rest and I couldn’t stop feeling cold. But I knew none of this was his fault and that he was proud of how strong I could be. In the end I did not call him.

I prayed Maghrib yesterday with tears of frustration. I wondered why nothing evoked real passion in me the way life should and used to. Then I realised that passion doesn’t come with a great job, or having the people you need around you or from doing stuff you enjoy (although that undoubtedly helps). Passionate is a state of being. It’s doing each thing with all your energy and attention – even if it’s crappy old typing.

Anyway as President Pullman says in Independence Day:
"We will not go quietly into the night!
We will not vanish without a fight!
We're going to live on!
We're going to survive!" etc etc.
I have decided to pick myself off the floor and do something.

I will speak to a contact in the new section to find out what they do and whether it would interest me. I know my manager is keen to keep me and if I decide not to go, I will negotiate with her to stop doing any more typing for Councillors. I have also noticed that a number of more senior policy jobs are being advertised within this office and I intend to apply for a big bunch of them as well as a few I have found in the civil service. I am also going to do some research into Civil Service reinstatement and what the possibilities are there. Where there is a will there is always a way – I just need to shake this cold somehow insh’Allah.

“Allah puts no burden on any person beyond what He has given him.
Allah will grant after hardship, ease.” ~Al- Quran 65:7

“Surely with every difficulty there is relief.
Surely with every difficulty there is relief.” ~ Al- Quran 94:5-6

“Do you think that you will enter Paradise without any trials while you have known the examples of those who passed away before you? They were afflicted with suffering and adversity and were so violently shaken up that even the Messenger and the believers with him cried out: “When will Allah’s help come?”
Then they were comforted with the words, Be aware! Allah’s help is ever close.” Al-Quran 2:214

“… Those who endure with patience will be rewarded without measure.” ~ Al-Quran 39:10

“When Allah has previously decreed for a servant a rank which he has not attained by his action, He afflicts him in his body, or his property or his children.” ~Abu Dawud

” There is nothing (in the form of trouble) that comes to a believer even if it is the pricking of a thorn that there is decreed for him by Allah (something) good or his sins are obliterated.” ~Sahih Muslim