New year, new start

Hope you all had a lovely New Year! It’s pretty clichéd but I always like to use the New Year as a new start: a chance to get reorganised, (buy new stationary), and to prioritise what’s important. After having a pretty trying year last year, I’ve got a lot of things to look forward to this year; so while I do have a nice new pile of notebooks and diaries, I’ve decided against making my usual list of resolutions…



Being a compulsive overachiever, I always have an ever-growing list of things that I want to accomplish, and I know that I'm at my happiest when I'm busy. But then the flipside of this is that when I'm not busy or being productive, I cause myself anxiety. While looking for a job last year, I felt as though my life had reached a static point. I was working in a part time job I found neither enjoyable, challenging nor stimulating, and in between that I was completing (what felt like) endless amounts of internship. In addition to this, I was filling in countless applications and most of the time being met with nothing but silence. To try and combat the demoralisation and frustration of rejection, I started to throw myself into new challenges: I started learning French, I increased the number of hours I practiced ballet for, I returned to my old textile roots by taking up pattern cutting classes. All the while, I still kept interning in the hope that something would come up. Taking the classes helped because while I didn't feel like my career was progressing, at least I could be physically productive in other ways. In particular, I found the problem solving aspect of pattern cutting was very therapeutic; and it was rewarding that after finishing the pattern you could then use it to create something.

Despite the new skills I was developing, I still felt as though I was in a rut. The more jobs that I applied for, the more responses I was getting telling me that although I was a strong applicant, I just didn't have the experience they required. And the more I heard that, the more I felt like a character from Catch 22. How was I supposed to get this elusive experience without someone taking a chance on me? Eventually though someone did, and I’ve found myself working for a company that supports and believes in me while helping me to develop. In the New Year I do want to keep up the plate spinning (my friends joke that I’d get too bored if I stopped running around, and they’re probably right), but I won’t be making lists of resolutions. Instead, I’ll be spending the year grabbing every opportunity that comes my way, and enjoying every single minute of it.