Monthly Musings: August 2016

To be entirely honest, I'm not really sure where August began and where it ended. Was I even there? To be fair, it's really hard to keep track of time when you're not in work or school. I very rarely know what day it is anymore. Roll on the start of my first semester back at uni!

But, for all that, it's been a pretty good month. My baby niece turned seven (seven!) and, partly because I want to be the coolest aunt ever and partly to wind up my brother, I bought her a six foot unicorn. I finally renewed my gym membership and went for a swim for the first time in about 10 years (I felt as if I was going to drown after a mere two laps, but, hey, I'll get there eventually). The sun finally came out a couple of times and it was even warm enough for a dip in the sea!

So all in all August has been an excellent end to my summer!

Magical Moment

Here's a picture of my touching a cow. A cow! I've been terrified of cows for most of my life. Nobody (including myself) understands why. It's not like I endured any bizarre cattle-related trauma as a small child of anything, but, whatever the reason, even the knowledge that there could be a cow somewhere within a three mile radius was always enough to send me into hysterics.
I knew I had to deal with this fear. After all, it's not acceptable to turn 25 and still have a crippling fear of lumbering herbivorous farm animals.

So, when my friend Beth and I went to a local country park and came across a miniature farm, I repressed my initial instinct to flee, arms flailing at the mere thought that there could be cows lurking nearby. In fact I looked them square in the face, sidled up to their enclosure and touched one (after a great deal of hyperventilating and crying).

I'm Back (And in Desperate Need of a Latte)!

I'm back! I've crawled out from the corporate rock I've been stuck under for the past few months. I've thrown off the shackles of business meetings, conference calls and tossing and turning in a pool of sweat at 3am wondering if my new shoes for the office strike the right balance between 'I'm a corporate highflier' and 'I'm a Margaret Thatcher look-alike'. I'm slowly weaning myself off the 5 gallons of caffeine a day it took me to get through my working day without falling asleep at the wheel (sure, there's still a lot of twitching going on, but slow progress is better than no progress).

 I'm finally starting to feel like myself again!

 It's been a while since I last sat down to write a blog post so I apologise if I'm rusty. It's not that I purposely discarded my beloved blog or forgot about all you wonderful people who enjoy a little dose of my madness every week. The truth is, I was so swamped at work that, slowly but surely, without me even realising it, my blog ended up in in the pile labelled 'things I used to do when I had the time'. It was a hefty pile. Yoga was in there too along with reading, going to the gym, spending time with my fiends and, increasingly, eating meals and sleeping.

 There weren't nearly enough hours in the day!

 

So, I took the plunge (for better or for worse), discarded my 'sensible' boring, black, low-heeled shoes, and quit my high-flying, corporate job. As tempting as the image of myself as a fancy business woman with a bank account healthy enough to justify a closet full of Laboutins was, at the end of the day, I'm not a fancy business woman. I hate graphs. And schmoozing. So in September I'm heading back to university to train as an English teacher. Because what could be better than talking about books for a living? Except, of course, talking about books for a living and getting paid enough to justify a closet full of Laboutins.

 But, hey, you can't have it all!