Walking in circles

Its never a good thing when you have to start a post by saying you are blogging because you thought you'd better- not because you have something to say. That is though what I am doing. Its nearly two weeks since a flurry of posts at the start of the month and nothing in between. Just a quick post then for proof if nothing else that I have not fallen off the planet.

Where am I? I am at a crossroads of sort. No. Actually I am walking in a circle, an eternal circle. An endlees loop. Maybe even a mobius strip. Crossroads would suggest I had different paths to take and a choice to make but that is not the case and that is the problem. Lacking direction and inspiration. I am trying to look forward. I try to see where I could be in 5 years time, or less. I cannot see anything except an old fortune teller staring into a cloudy crystal ball with a puzzled look on her face. There is not direction except around and around in the same circles. For that I only have myself to blame.

The woman from the job centre last called last month and I agreed to a telephone interview this month even though I don't need to now for at least a year. The appointment never came. It shows though that I am willing to look forward. I just don't know where to. I've spent so long not being able to look past my small world that now I can start to look beyond I don't know what I want to be doing. I'd love to say I would take anything just to work and it may well come to that this time next year. I have that time though to try to carve something out for myself like I have seen other people do. I have the time and I have always had that time but just don't know what to do with it.

I think back to the last time I knew. That was when I was made redundant from my last work place. I signed up for an online course which cost be £1500 of my redundancy money. A Web Design course in which I was promised there would be no exam at the end and a guaranteed job at the end. Everything looked good. My anxiety was at its worse and I was housebound but I was going to train for a job I was sure I would love and from there be able to work from home- self sufficient. Also at the time I thought I just needed a break from the long drives, boring days at work and all the rest. I was sure that by the time I finished the course I would be back to my old self and ready for a new challenge. On that front I had never worried. I'd spent a long time before that in IT contracting where I had to constantly be studying new technologies. Even in that last job I had a lot of proper study with 10 or more exams in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London finishing with certifications of CCEA, MCP, MCSE and MCDBA. As it turned out though the course for web design was a waste of money. I was told it could be done in a year which was bullshit and after over 2 years they changed the course asking me to start from the begining again. There was an exam which I could not have gone to anyway. And ultimately there was no job at the end of it. By the time I gave up on this after wasting a lot of time and money my anxiety was so bad I didn't care about a career- I just wanted normality first and foremost.

When I talked to the job centre last month I was looking for inspiration. Not easy for them given I cannot go to a workplace and would, ideally, have to work from home. She did have some ideas though. One was calling elderly people to make sure they were OK and having a chat with this- a friend over the phone. A nice idea but unfortunately not the job for me. My people skills are not good and I hate phones. There were some other jobs but all along the same lines involving phones of some description. I was hoping there would be some company needing bulk data inputs or something like that. Its a mundane task but one I would not mind doing if I was supporting myself and my family doing it. I am pretty nifty with a keyboard, have a laptop and Internet access. I  could quite easily spend 8 hours a day inputing data for a wage. Nothing like that on the go though. A pity. There must though be work out there like this when you think about all the documentation in paper form which needs put into digital. For this though there are services with use imagine and character recognition to do the work in a fraction of the time.

What I would really like though is to find something I could do and enjoy. Computer programming came to mind. I used to write programs all the time and so have the basic know how. I just don't know what is popular now. I have asked on different forums but opinion seems to vary. The work seems to be very niche. And there is of course so many platforms now with the mobile markets and I would imagine all of these are saturated with programmers. The world is a smaller place now to. Workers come from all over with a better knowledge and more experience. I just don't know. Its a question I will have to keep pondering but not too long.

Aside from this aimless pondering there has not been a lot to talk about in the past 3 weeks. For reasons I would rather not go into the opportunity to go further afield has not been there. That has meant my world is pretty small again. I have though continued to keep pushing those boundaries and when I haven't been doing that I have at least been maintaining the new perimeter. One of the highlights was not going further afield but one of my usual walks. It was a highlight because I was home alone with my two girls and usually we would just sit in but this time I decided to take them down the park. Once out though they wanted to go another direction. Its a walk I can do, sometimes, on my own at a push. I don't do those walks as a rule with anyone because I like to make a quick exit and don't want to feel the guilt if I have to turn back. But we went that way over bridges and railways and round corners and lots of different little places. The image above was taken from a bridge. We had previously been on the bridge in the background and even that seemed to excite the girls. To my surprise the girls really enjoyed the whole walk a hell of a lot more than I expected. What I predicted were moans, sighs and when are we going homes? A yearning for some electronic screen never surfaced strangely.

It took me back to when they were young. I used to take them on walks mostly around the block and we turned it into a little adventure. Its been a while since I have gone anywhere with them just on my own. I said I would take them somewhere else. I will do. I have a place in mind. Trouble is I have to do it myself first and cannot yet despite trying. I will keep trying though and at some point take them too. Then I'll look for somewhere else. Hopefully scope for more interesting posts ahead if nothing else.

Lastly something that came to mind. Talk of endless loops and computer program. To say it was BASIC would be apt I suppose:

10 Print "Walk in a circle, stop and look bemused ."
20 Goto 10

Oh, not lastly. This is lastly. The pic above only shows one bridge because there is no vantage point to get both in. The next place I want to take them is below. I've been on the green one in the background, the David Livingstone Memorial Bridge, but always got there by car. The one in between is one I have seen lots of times but never thought of going to look for. So I have a many pointed plan which includes locating the nearest and getting to it and getting to the further one after as well as walking it a good few times before taking the kids there.