Its a funny old life…
I decided to take a little time out to relax and re-focus before throwing myself back in to the job market, Housing seemed like a poor choice given the financial difficulties at the time so a change of direction was what I was looking for. I was doing a few jobs for family and friends at the time, a little gardening and landscaping and I quite fancied working outside, with trees. So I booked on a basic Chainsaw course and learned to fell trees, at the end of the course I was told about a web forum for arborists, I posted a message and 2 days later I started with a Tree Surgeons business. I’m still with the same company now, although I have moved away from the manual work and in to the office/management side.
Having 9 months out of work placed a lot of pressure on my personal life and relationships and unfortunately, they reached breaking point. During that period I separated from my partner of 12 years, with whom I had 2 wonderful children. This again was a hugely emotional and difficult time which I won’t go into further detail about. We manage to maintain a mostly amicable relationship although there have been difficulties along the way and I love spending time with my kids and get to see them regularly.
Also during this period I have re-discovered my love for adventure and the outdoors. Now don’t get me wrong I am still an innately lazy person and the battle to drag myself away from the TV and Sofa is a daily struggle. However I have been much more active than the preceding many years, I have progressed as a whitewater kayaker, got back in to mountain biking and rock climbing, I have vastly improved my swimming prowess, walked and biked up and down mountains, gone skiing and tried a few new sports too. I have travelled to the French Alps on 5 occasions and fallen in love with the area, 3 times for a kayaking holiday and twice skiing. I will be heading out again at the end of June for another 2 weeks of climbing, kayaking, biking and general fun and merriment in the sun with a great bunch of friends, however this time there is one BIG difference.
I have recently met a new partner in crime (Laura) and while our relationship is still fairly new we seem to have enough in common to give us things to do and enough differences to keep life interesting and give us something to talk about. So with all the fun of a new relationship anyway we also have the added attraction of heading to the Alps together on our first holiday (all be it with about a dozen other people!) Laura is pretty active anyway and we first met during our time with Scouts as activity instructors, many years ago. Laura is mad about horses, to the point where she ditched the 9-5 to make them her life and livelihood, as a Coach she is developing her business and living life on her own terms (you can see her exploits here: Laura’s Blog ) However she has now resigned herself to the fact that she needs to get back in a kayak and get some boat time in before the Alps and is making great progress in such a short amount of time.
[…] I was once again reminded by Facebook that it was on this day in 2012 that I finished a career which I had been in for nearly 10 years, it was the kicking off point for roller-coaster period in my life which I talked about here: https://wetandmucky.com/its-a-funny-old-life […]