Year in Review: 2018 - The year Anxiety won, a lot.

So as the title suggests, this year has been A LOT.

I have been through seven jobs, left three, fired from two.

I had no money till the end of the year.

Anxiety has been my enemy the whole time, from the day I had my severe panic attack in February to when I didn’t eat for a week in September. My overall health, confidence and self-esteem really took a turn thanks to anxiety, I really lost myself, isolated myself from everyone and lost trust in pretty much everything.

I lost a best friend this year, yes she was a dog but she was my only friend when I was a teenager. I miss her so much.

My relationship with my family this year was strained to say the least.
I took a hiatus from music, which let's be honest I am still in. I miss it a lot but don't have a lot of time for myself currently.

Yet there still has been some good to look back onto this year.

How my best friends are incredible, the fact they believed me more than I believed in myself. One best friend graduated with a first class Masters degree with two academic prizes, the other got an amazing job related to her field. Yet they still found time to help me, forever grateful and proud to have them in my life.

I volunteer with an amazing charity that helps children from difficult backgrounds and I now work with adults with learning disabilities which I am really enjoying, despite the long working hours. I get to help people not just for a living but also in my spare time, which is all I ever really wanted.

I went to my first ever Pride event in May, walked down Union Street wearing a bright rainbow hoodie and my ace & bi heart t-shirt, waving a rainbow flag and getting my picture in the paper. I had never felt so free and accepted that day during the parade.
I found 47 penguin statues in Dundee and explored an Enchanted Forest in Pitlochry. 

Bohemian Rhapsody came out in the cinemas and the whole world was Queen obsessed. I was so happy and proud that this movie had finally come out.
I made some really great friends this year that really helped me find myself again. <3 

Oh yeah, and I met Brian May. In Aberdeen. And held his hands. So no biggie… :O

It’s quite depressing though looking back at the goals I set for 2018, realising I never really achieved any of them, as you can see here:

1.        Gain my confidence back in the workplace, maintain a healthy balance between jobs and get fully settled in them all.

Yeah… Work and I have been a more turbulent relationship than Ross and Rachel. Let’s just say in 2019, I would like to stay in one job that doesn’t give me a severe panic attack yet makes me feel like I am doing something worthwhile. At least I have one full-time job now and a voluntary position, both of them are really rewarding.

2.        Save money, for holidays or treats, mainly to pay back overdraft. Possibly to pay for au pair trip to America.

Thanks to HMRC, I am now out of my overdraft for the time being. Got to tell you now that I am earning a decent wage each month, it is nice to have money in my account. Although it is still a little low thanks to Christmas, you know me!

As for my au pair trip, that cannot happen if I stay on antidepressants so I think that dream will unfortunately never come true. My health comes first.

3.        Organise a birthday trip away. Even if the trip has to be in July. My birthday is in March by the way.

The only trips I really had were the days in Dundee searching for penguins. I have booked the weekend of my birthday off work as a holiday so I am in the process of planning a weekend away to London with Connie & Struan, my two best friends. Hopefully, I won’t have to cancel it like I had to cancel Orkney last year. It’s about time I do something for my birthday.

4.        Sit driving test by the end of the year. Pass theory at least.

I had driving lessons from September to November, until my driving instructor stopped doing lessons so I need to find another one and get started in the new year. If I start lessons again, I would like to sit my theory test by the end of 2019. As for my driving test, who knows? Working different shifts each week will be hard to organise lessons and tests but not impossible.

5.        Start dating, eventually.

Haha. What a laugh. Don’t know why I still have this hope that someone likes me romantically but deep down inside I believe it could still happen. I liked someone for a while but we’ve both kinda gone our separate ways and don’t speak that much. I did see him recently and he made me so calm after a stressful work shift. You know me though, wishful thinking.  

6.        Travel to Orkney/Shetland? Maybe?

Yeah, I booked a trip to Orkney in January for March but had to cancel it because of money troubles. It was another thing to add to a list of bad things that happened at the start of the year.

As long as 2019 doesn’t suck as much as 2018, then I would be happy. If I achieve a couple of goals the next coming year, that would definitely be an achievement.

What I want is to stay in a job for a period of time that feels like I am contributing and helping others. I have my volunteering role as well where I would love to build on the friendship I have with this child and have some fun activities to look forward to with her. I would like a break away with my best friends to thank them for everything they have done for me. I want to be happier, more relaxed and look after myself more. I am turning 25 this year, where I will be an official adult so I do not want to spend my adult years unhappy. At the same time, I don’t want to spend so much time under so much pressure just in order to prove myself to everyone. I just want to be me, Eilidh. A silly yet kind ginger haired bi asexual. :)

Not the longest post compared to previous ones but December has been an insane month for me, literally no time to rest properly. I hope everyone has a happy Hogmanay & New Year celebration, I will be working New Year’s morning so I will spend my Hogmanay night watching Jools Holland’s Hootenanny then going to bed not long after midnight has passed. Hope your 2018 has been great and that you are looking forward to, hopefully, an amazing 2019! Stay safe yet merry. :)
<3 HEARTS TO EVERYONE! <3

Getting fired...

I am writing this a while after this happened to me. Thankfully, I now have other employment where I feel like I am helping people in a way that’s personally less stressful overall. But after a completely isolating and difficult time, I felt it would be good to share my experience in the hope it helps someone who has been through something similar.

In August, I left my minimum wage job to start a new exciting adventure with an amazing sounding project. I was really excited yet nervous that I was taking this big step.

Three weeks later, I was fired.

It. Was. Horrible.

I am not going to go into full details of how and why I was fired, because it was a complicated situation. Part of me still feels disappointed and humiliated that this has happened to me but you can’t go back and change time. Maybe it was fate telling me that this was not the right thing for me, I wasn't mentally prepared for the stress and anxiety or I should not have rushed into something else so quickly after leaving a role in a similar field previously. It's a field I have great passion in so I constantly felt pressure to succeed in this, yet at the same time be financially stable that it affected my overall health and employment. 

This was in the same year where I left freelance work because I had a panic attack so luck really wasn’t on my side. I have learnt a lot from this though, realising I need to focus more on my mental health rather than on what stage in my career I am in. And what helps my mental health is being able to support and help other people, which is what I do at my current work and through volunteering. 

Here are some tips I have come up with from this experience that I hope will help someone.

1.     Go to the Job Centre and get JobSeekers Allowance (Universal Credit/Housing benefit at local council) – It’s not enough to cover rent but at least you will have some money in your account and you will get support to help you find other work. The staff who helped me were incredibly reassuring and gave me a boost when I felt the worst, it was through them I found out about a recruitment event and was able to get an idea of a long-term plan. It's something to help you this next while if it takes a period of time to get back into work.

2.     Apply for new jobs as soon as possible – Sounds bloody obvious but go to Indeed, Gumtree Jobs, look for council jobs, apply to loads of job vacancies to get yourself back into work. If you applied to previous jobs and got offers from them, get back in touch to see if something can be arranged. Luckily a relief job offer for me turned into a full-time offer. It doesn’t have to be full time though, there are a lot of part-time and temporary jobs out there.

3.     Volunteer – I love volunteering, I am currently volunteering for a charity that does incredible work for children in Aberdeen. Through this period not in full time/part time work, I had this responsibility to contribute something positive to a young girl’s life and it’s been incredibly rewarding. I also had relief work in an after-school club where the children I worked with put a smile back on my face during a difficult time and staff were incredibly supportive, so it helped me a lot.

4.     Look after yourself – The week after I was fired, I didn’t eat, my anxiety was at its worst, I isolated myself from friends and family for almost a month because all I felt was the shame. Don’t follow by my example. No matter what happens, your friends and family love you and think the world of you, even when you don’t fully believe in yourself. You'll be surprised by the amount of support that can come your way when you least expect it. Try not to punish yourself too much because it’s not going to get you anywhere. Look after your physical and mental health, exercise, learn breathing techniques, I recommend the Calm & Headspace apps for meditation, they're amazing. 

5.     Take this time to think what you really lot out of life – For me, I wanted to work on my mental health and stop piling on the pressure on myself to be on a certain step on the career ladder. After a period of working 3 or 4 part-time jobs in a row, my brain was exhausted and my body was achy, sore and stressed. Now I have one full-time job, one voluntary commitment and one important project which is my driving lessons.

I can completely understand how soul destroying being fired could be, whether you have been in a job for a short while or a long period of time. You feel that hardly anyone can comprehend what you are going through.

Nine times out of ten, being fired doesn’t mean that you are a failure in life and you can soon pick yourself up. They often talk about Steve Jobs originally being fired from Apple, then he was soon rehired as the CEO where Apple is the biggest company in the world.

There's my story, I have made a lot of mistakes in 2018. However, if I didn't make these mistakes, I wouldn't have learnt all of these lessons and have found the fulfilling opportunities I discovered after this employment, financial and emotional struggle. 

Stay strong and focus on bringing yourself back up again. You can get there, believe in yourself.