It’s taken me a while to get to the point where I have space to write. To be fair, I’ve made a few notes about stories I want to write but that’s about it. I was also incredibly industrious and put a training plan together and that is where it ended up… in a notebook and nothing more happened. That’s not to say that I didn’t train, in fact I’ve done more in the last few weeks, just completely unstructured. Well sort of.

I’ve literally had the busiest few months, to the degree that I’m due to go to Canada on Tuesday and I can’t quite believe it… seems as if it was ages and ages away and now it’s Tuesday. Of course I have a world of prep to do… so my team have been taking the piss out of me about how last minute my packing will be… it’s one of those situations where I won’t win!

It’s funny, I met a colleague from my Mercuri Urval time this week. Now this was a time where I was trying to make significant changes in my life, I’d moved to London, left a very very bad relationship and really wanted to cast aside the recruitment aspect of my career. Nothing against recruitment, I was just tired of it and wanted more. A lot more. It was also a time where I was struggling with Karate. The clubs in London, well they were different and it got to the point where I was seriously considering London a failure. So when I joined MU I tried to be so structured and “on it”…. it didn’t work. I realised that I’m best in the flow. Structure isn’t natural for me, (unless it’s a high risk situation) and so when I left 3.5 years later I think I’d managed to properly get to know myself. Of course ’cause MU was a psychometric assessment house full of consultants who analysed your every move… well then… there literally was nowhere to hide.

There was one night when it all came to a head, I was in London by the Hays Galleria, which is beside the Thames. I knew a few people in London mostly through Karate… I remember it being around Easter and I wasn’t happy to have so much time off as I had nothing to do and I really didn’t know anyone at that point who I could drag out for a walk etc. Then the tears started… but afterwards a strength. I think I got to the “fuck it”, point and from there well I just decided to go with the flow. Things started to happen after that, slowly, but they did happen… I met a Karate colleague in Edinburgh who directed me towards Goju-Ryu, I finally made the move from consultant to in house HR roles and I’ve never looked back.

I remember the first in house role and the feeling of not being good enough and probably the infamous “imposter syndrome”… but I’m really stubborn and was determined to push onwards until I got to the point where I felt comfortable. I actually found I was pretty good at it… well at least I thought so.

Which is where my constant feeling of lack of focus comes from… also, IMHO, this might not be a bad thing… I need to content shift a million times a day, deal with the myriad of information that hits me constantly. What I can do, is micro focus. Basically, get a problem sorted out and move onto the next. Like I’ve just realised I don’t have a visa for Canada. It was at the back of my mind for ages… but it was never an urgent topic… well until now.

I’m going to take the time in Canada to refocus… time out of London will be good for me. I’ll still work, I can’t switch off but that’s for another blog. For now… I have a basic structure as to what I’m going to focus on for the next week… right where to get this visa thing sorted…