Saturday, 18 June 2016

A year on...

I'm moving to central Oxford next weekend (goodbye commute).
I'm two weeks into a new job (hello a lot of travel).
I've become one of those people who checks their work email on weekends.
I'm flying to Finland for a friend's hen do/wedding three days after.
Nick is going back to Cyprus for a month at the end of July.
If Brexit happens, I might lose my job and everything will literally go to shit.

The last month has been a whirlwind of emotions and this week, Facebook reminded me that I graduated exactly a year ago. Things seem to be settling into where I want them to, minus the whole Brexit debate, and it's making me feel calmer, happier and more energised. I've gone from being bored, annoyed and wanting to hand in my notice to being busy, and both excited and nervous about my job. My boyfriend has noticed a massive difference in my moods (I am no longer grumpy as hell when I come home). I imagine this will get even better after next weekend when I can say goodbye Witney and hello to Oxford, and a 10 minute walk to work. When I'm in Oxford that is, since my new job involves a lot of travelling around, and I'll only be working in Oxford 1-2 days a week. But that will still cut 2 hours away in total from my daily commute and it will mean I don't need to survive with 5 hours of sleep if I want to go dancing mid-week and stay until the end.

My new job is still at Waterstones, but instead of being a shop based bookseller, I've taken up a head office role as part of the shop operations team. That won't say much to anyone, but it involves me ensuring that the 11(!) shops that I've been assigned to do all of the operational things right. Most people would probably think it's incredibly dull, but I love it. I was working in operational role as a bookseller as it was, but now I get to go around and make sure everyone else is doing a good job as well. In the nicest possible way, of course. It's slightly scary, because everyone else doing the same job that I have met has almost a decade of experience within the company and has been a shop manager, whereas I haven't even been in the company for a year. But as I keep telling myself, I got the job, not the other people who applied, which means they think I am capable, and better suited for the role. There is a lot to learn and take in, which is why the past two weeks have flown by quicker than I can quite fathom. I'm starting to feel more confident now though, and I'm excited for what the full 12 months of my secondment will bring.

I'm trying to get back into blogging, but I'm finding it very hard to decide on how I want to do it. I don't have problem with creating text-based content, but photos are proving tricky. Photography was a big part of why I started blogging in the first place, so I don't want to do away with it. I don't want to carry my big DLSR with me everywhere, but at the same time I'm not happy with just using my iPhone 5S for photos.