Nine-and-twenty years ago

I got married last year.  But my first wedding was 20 years ago tomorrow, which is weird to think about because I wasn’t who I am now.  That nervous first-time bride feels like a stranger to me.  Not least because she chose a dress and hairstyle that made her look like a spoilt Victorian child.

(I wrote a little something about the differences between planning a wedding at 27 and 47.  Basically, if you ever get the chance to plan two weddings 20 years apart, go for it).

In 2005, that bride-to-be was the HR manager for a container services company in Tilbury (oh, the GLAMOUR!).  She found a different HR job after the wedding, then another, and then another.  She wrote the first, rubbish, draft of a novel, got divorced, and did two more HR jobs.  Then she decided to change career.

That bit happened nine years ago.

I probably wouldn’t have had the confidence to change anything, but divorce knocked me for six.  I didn’t think it would.  My family is bursting at the seams with divorcees – my dad’s been married three times alone – so I thought I knew the drill.

It had seemed easy enough to dissolve a marriage.  As it turned out, that’s because I’d been watching other ones dissolve from the sidelines, not taking part in the painful dissolution myself. And don’t talk to me about the official paperwork or the court judge.  They were brusque and admonishing, in an “I’ve been summoned to see the school head” sort-of way.  That isn’t helpful when your life is smashed to pieces and the future looks bleak, and all you want is for someone to tell you a joke.

(In particular, the paperwork made it clear that by getting divorced, you were displeasing both the UK government and God Himself.  I don’t believe in one of those things and I deeply dislike the other, but in my fragile state I cried for ages about being such an obvious failure).

Emerging from the remnants of a marriage and re-starting my life made me realise something important.  I wasn’t going to settle for a job I didn’t care about. 

So I didn’t.  I spent two months’ salary on an intensive eight-week career-change course, and I jumped into it with both feet.  By the end of the eight weeks, I’d handed in my notice at work and set up a writing website.

(My first book, Procrastinations, is made up of the blog posts I was writing as I got divorced and started my new career.  It’s a flawed book by a flawed human, but I’m stupidly proud of it anyway).

My career-change story was recently profiled in a magazine for freelancers.  It made me stop and reflect for a moment.

I just seem so pathetically grateful, don’t I?

Mostly, I stopped and reflected because the profile was riddled with present-day inaccuracies.  It was taken from my full career-change story on the Careershifters’ website, which was last updated in 2018.  As such it reads as though I’ve only just changed my career, not been a writer for almost nine years.

That profile made me think about how far I’ve actually come, since I left my last HR job in 2016.

It also made me think about how I owe most of what happened then, and next, to that ringleted bride from 20 years ago.  It’s because of her that I’m me, so if I could nip back in time and give her a massive hug, I would.

(Yes, that’s her in the photo).