Amazing Grace!

Life has certainly been very interesting the last three weeks.  It’s no secret my place of employment was not ideal.  That after four months of unpaid maternity leave I was not very keen to go back there, but I did becasue the reality is that we are not in the position at this stage to be a one income household.

I went back with a heavy heart, not entirely just because i was leaving Kade at home.  Because I just didn’t love working there anymore.  I was tired of the unethical behaviour.  Of the backstabbing, the lying, the cheating of our clients, the bullish behaviour of our directors.  But while I was back, I did my job.  I fought as hard as I could for my staff, I took control of my division again and got it back on track.   But if I’m honest, I was merely going through the motions.  I was just getting a job done.  I was demotivated and not interested.  And the more my bosses revealed their true nature to me, the more disinterested I became.

I became blase about my job.  And three weeks ago, I made a mistake.  I sent an email to the wrong person.  That email was not supposed to be seen by the person who got it.  It caused an upraor amongst my bosses and my client.  I was told that I was going to be taken to a disciplinary enquiry and was most likely going to be dismissed.  Unless “I did the right thing”.  I was told that I needed to to be hirable again and that a dismissal would make that challenging.  Again, those words “do the right thing”.

I resigned.  With no job lined up and no savings in the bank.  I resigned. 

Anyone else would have felt a surge of panic, but I felt calm and controlled.  I had in me the peace that surpasses human understanding.  I just knew that everything was going to be ok.  That I had nothing to worry about.  That God HAD this.

The next day I told my team that I had resigned that that I was leaving in 2 days time.  They were really upset and couldn’t understand what was going on.  That same day, Cliff logged onto a career website and sent me an advert for what sounded like a great job.  That same day, a girl Iworked with gave me details for her employment agency that she’d been dealing with who had a job that they were looking to place for.  That same day I logged onto a different career website and matched my resume with a job.  All three the same job.

I saw the agent on a Friday.  The following Wednesday I went for my first interview.  The next Friday I went for my second interview, and today I signed my contract of employment.

Everything so amazingling lined up and perfectly slotted into place.

That peace that I felt in my heart?  That was God telling me He had something better for me.  I will start my new job on the 01.03.2012 – I get to spend some more quality time with my boy (getting to see him crawl for the first time FORWARDS was amazing!), I get to have a bit of a holiday and soon I start my great new job earning a substantial amount more than I was at my old job.

God is so good – all the while He was working in the background, laying the path to my new career.

What amazing grace!

What’s on your desk?

Today as I was furiously arranging for my team to receive stock and merchandise it all correctly this week I looked at my desk and thought to my self – Blimey!  This desk is M-E-S-S-Y!

It’s not normally like this but today for some reason – it is… It looks like this today:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So what’s on your desk today?

New Beginnings

Today marks the start of my new beginnings.  I cannot tell you how excited I am to know that the new beginnings of today hold so many possibilities for the future.

One thing  I will say for this new beginning is that I *seriously* underestimated how hectic the traffic would be to my new office block… I knew I was getting myself into a more hectic traffic pattern but oh my golly gosh!   My poor body is taking strain – firstly after nearly two years of only waking up at approximately 07h00 and leaving home at 08h00 to miss all the traffic on the way to work, this morning I had to kick start the habit of waking up WAAAAY before the sparrows fart at 05h40!!  Then I left home at 06h45 thinking that this would give me more than enough time to get to my new job on time… to hit hectic traffic!!  I only got to work at 08h10!  That equates to and hour and 25 minutes in the car people…

So now the plan of waking up action has to be amended slightly to waking up at 05h30 (oh my soul) and leaving the house at 06h30… I’m going to see if that 10 minutes grace makes the difference… (it’s weird but it really does seem to make a huge difference in most instances if one just leaves 5 – 10 minutes earlier).

That being said like I told my friend on twitter earlier today, I am just happy to be out of the shithole company I used to work for

So lift your virutual glass and toast with me – Here’s to New Beginnings!

The Secret I’ve been keeping…

I am so excited right now!!!

 

I can finally let you all into the secret that I’ve been holding onto for the last week and a bit.  You know that job that I hate?  The job that causes so much stress in my life, the job that I truly believe is holding me back in our journey to a little Clam or two?  That job is technically no more!!!  YES you heard right!  Today I officially handed my notice in and am working my last few weeks at the place I refer to as Alcatraz…

 

I find it so amazing how God has worked in my life in the last few weeks.  It’s just astounding how He closed so many doors in respect of possible employment until the right thing came along.  I mean if you consider that during my frantic job search of the last month and a bit, I applied for 48 advertised jobs.  And that my friend is no mean feat.  Especially if you think that there is a global recession on.  In the past when I’ve been job hunting I’ve always had excellent come backs in terms of either agencies who were interested in seeing me for potential clients or companies themselves wanting to see me and interview me.  Not to throw flowers at myself or anything but my CV is pretty impressive.  I have extensive experience that covers a wide spectrum of fields; I can work operationally and administratively.  On top of this I honestly believe that I am even more impressive in person.  I interview well.  I have never battled to find work because of the fact that I can impress both on paper and in person.  So I was really stumped and quite confused as to why out of 48 job applications only one came back to me.  And that one was only really a sympathy call back cos I had called to chase my application up (as I did all of them).  I was super frustrated and started feeling that I was pretty worthless.  I was down and I was scared.

 

I needed a breakthrough and I felt like it was never going to come.  Then I got a call from an old friend of mine – her company needed an account manager pronto.  Was I interested?  Boy was I interested!!  I had my interview with the director of the company last week Monday.  Now this is where God’s grace comes in.  Before the interview I prayed and asked God that if this was the job for me, if this was my open door, I asked that I be offered the job straight away.  I asked for an immediate confirmation that this was the right move for me and for my life plan.  My Mom prayed and asked that if it was the job for me that I be offered the job in the interview, and so did my sister.  And you know what?  God answered us all.  I was offered the job straight away during the interview (pending the new account signing their contracts with the company) and the HR lady was called in and told straight away what the offer was and was asked to send the paperwork through as soon as the new account signed with them.

I’ve been waiting not so patiently for my contract and paperwork for just over a week now and it came through this morning.  I’ve signed the papers and handed in my notice.  And I’m SO excited guys; I can’t explain it to you all.  The delay in getting my contract to me has also worked out just right – as mentioned recently I need to have another lap soon and this way I’ll be having my op and recovering from it during my notice period.  I really did not want to start a new job with 4 days off for an op.  This way I can go into my new job good and clean and fresh and with a clear conscience.

 

Its like all things are slowly falling right into place and I just feel that we’re finally on the right side of the rainbow.  And it feels pretty good right about now.

 

What to Do?

I used to work for a large company who at the time was riding high and was hugely successful distributing product  of a powerful globally recognised brand.  I used to hold a highly responsible position there and was under immense stress and constant pressure.  I loved it. 

Then I got married and went on honeymoon and the cracks in this organisation started to show.  Another girl who worked at the company started telling lies about me (she really wanted my job and badly) and got me into a LOT of trouble while I was blissfully enjoying being a newly wed.  I came home from honeymoon (where we had made a decision to try for a baby pretty much right away) and found myself the centre of a storm in a teacup.  But I got through it.  During the next three years I had to deal with a lot of back stabbing, jealous, highly neurotic people while still keeping my international customers happy all the while getting treatment for my infertility. 

While working my ass off for the benefit of my company and making my bosses look good, I was learning all I could about PCOS, AI’s, IUI’s, sperm counts, follicles and and and…  I was understandably a truckload little stressed out.  No wonder I never fell pregnant – I mean we all know one has to “just relax” right? 

I made the decision to leave this job, this career and to focus on what was really important in my life - my marriage and the children we so desperately wanted to complete our picket fence story.  That was June last year.  I have NEVER once regretted my decision to leave this horrible place, and know that I made a decision that probably saved my marriage.  BUT the decision initially put us under a little bit of pressure cos while I did not need the stress of that job and the career I had chosen, I did need the salary that went with it.  I used my pension payout to give me a few months to find another job, and I was quite lucky to get some good offers within a reasonable time frame.  I accepted a job at a production company (not a good decision it turned out) which was run by a very unstable character and once again found myself in the position of looking for work to pay the bills. 

A friend called me up and asked me to contract to her company while I was looking for a job and I never left.  I am now working at this place and while the job is by no means brain surgery, it keeps me out of mischief and pays the bills quite nicely.  I took this job not as a career move but as a “this will help me get my baby(s)” move.  Fate has stepped in again.  Last week I found myself involved in yet another storm in a teacup at this new company.  It was not centred around me at all but was centred around my friend who had called me into work here.  It was nasty and she ended up leaving (completely on her terms, on the day I started the spotting which led to my BFN) and then I had to deal with the loss of little number 1 and number 11.  Not a good week for me at all emotionally.  But bygones.

Part of the plan in accepting the current job was that once I had fallen pregnant and had delivered the baby(s) I would look at doing something from home (not 100% sure what that something is going to be) that would allow me to spend time with my children and to bring in some money to continue to pay the bills.  I am thinking that perhaps the whole BFN and the situation (very tense and still unstable) at work is telling me to look at this option a whole lot sooner than I had originally planned.  I am quite prepared to work my ass off to establish a business but what to do?  For those of you who work from home, how did you decide on what to do?  Did you take your other professional experience and turn it into a consulting firm? 

I just am not 100% comfortable job wise right now and really want to explore this further… but feel a bit at sea…  Any advise would be most welcome.

(PS–> by the way, the wheel totally turned on those horrible people at my last company.  The company is nearly bankrupt, many of them no longer have jobs and many of them have had their marriages fail.  I did not wish this on any of them, but in a sadistic way I am glad to know that the wheel turned on them and that they got their just desserts…)