Usually I start writing my blog with the subject idea, a basic plot and a point to it all.  I then find a way to pull out a heading for the finished work by looking back in at what I have written.  I’m breaking the mould.  A title popped into head last week and I’ve been dying to get typing ever since.  I have no idea where this will go as I only have a title and an idea of the kind of thing I wish to write down.

I have been double busy over these last few weeks.  A lot has happened.

The second ‘legal’ fight I have had in the last 12 months has been won,  and I am pleased to say it was won by me (Hooray!).   I now have a professional licence issued by the (in)competent authority even though they said they were not going to issue it.  They even paid for the issue of it by way of an apology.  The fact that I am some 5 months behind where I should be because of their extremely slow, disjointed, unprofessional and ultimately incorrect stance on the matter, is the part of the shallow victory that grates me.   But it no longer matters.  I have the qualification and licence that has taken over the last 5 years of my life, and I have it in my hand – a crappy piece of A4 printed paper that represents just about every failure, every triumph, every penny, every loss and every piece of heartache I have felt since November 2014.  I am totally underwhelmed by it.  Of course, I did not expect a gold leafed, framed scroll on 200 year old parchment paper, awarded to me by HM Queen Elizabeth II herself, on the lawn at Buckingham Palace – but it would have been nice if they would have sent it recorded delivery instead of 2nd class mail and to spell my name correctly on the envelope would have at least shown attention to detail.

Anyway, no matter.  I am applying for jobs like a man possessed, simply to see what is out there.  Am I going back to work?  I don’t know yet, I just don’t know.  My cousin came up with an extremely valid point the other day.  “You have just crested the last 5 years and have survived the last 2.  You are not in prison, you have just beaten TWO legal battles alone and with no money, your licence is yours, your head is ‘almost’ yours, (he said it in jest) your spirit is still here and we’ll find your heart later – but now you need a rest; do not go straight back to work, you now need down time buddy”.  I know he’s right and I even have a plan for that idea – see my blog Long Drag for the plan.  BUT, and it is a big but, I am dying to get my brain active again, I am dying to get my hands busy and my career and a life back on track.  I’m dying to be tested, to be challenged to be pushed and to learn new things.  I suppose I have to work out if I can reign in that passion for a while and take a step back and trust that fate will bring the job when it brings the job.  It’s funny because while preparing documents on PDF for possible employment, I came across a final report for a qualification I did for a year after leaving school.

As a teenager I loved tinkering with electronics and always saw myself ending up in a white lab coat with a soldering iron in my hand, standing by a green illuminated, pulsing Oscilloscope fixing something important in a government communications research establishment somewhere.  It never happened because another particular love of my childhood took over and I disappeared into military service almost immediately after gaining a ‘Distinction’ in my City and Guilds Electronic Engineering diploma, way back in the late 1980’s.

The report read “Rhys is a willing, keen, motivated and intense individual who showed ability to use his own initiative, this will stand him in good stead for his chosen career in the Armed Forces“.

The word that stood out to me more than any other was the word “intense”.  I know I am … but I’ve never been called it before, except of course by the Education Director nearly 30 years previously, which, I had totally forgotten about until reading it on the shiny electronic pixel generated screen of my laptop computer.

That intensity and passion to get on and get going is what has driven me to apply for more than 40 positions in less than 2 weeks.  I’m thinking that maybe I should take heed of what Ian the Education Director said all those years ago, turn down the ‘intensity’, and go and have a rest.  My qualification lasts for a year before I have to sit another ‘currency’ exam, so I have about 11 months ahead of me where if I’m going to rest, I can.  Thank you Ian, wherever you are now.

Something I realised just last week when talking to a friend I haven’t heard from for a while is this.  The last two years have been Hell for me, but nobody* cares.  There is a reason that I have an Asterix * next to the word ‘nobody’ and that is because I have many wonderful people around and about me that do indeed care, very much.  What I mean by nobody* cares is that the rest of the world that do not know in detail about what has happened, are under the misapprehension that everything has been going fine.  “So, you been busy mate?” he asked .. not knowing anything about my situation, my legal battles, my mental health issues, my parents deaths, my partner walking out, losing my home and all my belongings, being bankrupt and having no job … “Yeah”, I replied “pretty busy”.  I don’t hold it against him, he genuinely doesn’t know, and why should he?  But what it did was highlight that simply the world goes on despite any complications in my life.  The world goes on.  Nobody* cares.  Everybody (else) just gets on with it and the world continues to revolve at about 1000mph, which in turn orbits on an axis of about 23.5 degrees around our nearest star at give or take 67’000 mph, which then travels about a million miles a day slowly around the centre of our Galaxy.  In around 250 million years we will back roughly where we started in our Galaxial spiral.  We will however be in a totally different location within the universe itself.  Nobody* cares.

I received another call from one of my best friends just yesterday.  I haven’t told him much detail about my situation, but he calls every couple of months to see what’s happening.  Yesterday at the very end of the conversation and totally unprompted, and weirdly out of context of our conversation which involved drinking an Ale called Sneck Lifter and walking in the Derbyshire dales, he simply said “The Universe is unfolding as it should”.  I think I shall just let it.

You’re a better man than I Gunga Din. 

 

“The Universe is unfolding as it should“

CBS – 12 Oct 2017