I'm not sure what happened to the last month. One minute it was all Christmas sparkles and New Year champagne, and suddenly it's Friday, it's February and a reminder that time has just as much potential to fly when you're not particularly having fun.
On Wednesday I had a post published on the excellent Any Other Woman about wedding planning and keeping it balanced with the rest of your life and work. As a follow up to that, it turns out things get an awful lot more difficult when you add trying to move house and find a new job to the equation, plus the normal pressures of work, commuting (I don't think First Capital Connect have run a train on time since the dawn of train travel) and trying not to forget anyone's birthdays.
Things get particularly frustrating when you feel like you have no control over the situation. We finally received an offer on our house - not as high as we'd hoped for but we accepted it anyway, only to be told at least a fortnight later that the person who had made the offer had decided he would only proceed with our house if he couldn't get permission for a loft conversion with a different house. Sure, that's fine, we'll just hang around here until you work your building plans out shall we? I hate the idea that no matter how many houses we might see that we might want to make an offer on, the whole process of buying a house means being subject to somebody else's whims and fancies.
And then there is the job hunt. No progress here either, and although it's so long since we had a proper holiday that I'm beginning to look forward to having a couple of weeks off, my thoughts keep turning to what happens after that. Conversations with recruitment agents are beginning to wear me down - I've uttered the line about not being in a position to move somewhere like Leeds so many times that I start seriously wondering about the possibilities of us moving away from London (even though right now I would be very reluctant to do so). This week, I've even been mulling over the idea of taking a job in Frankfurt, tempted by the idea of an adventure, despite the fact that almost every single practical aspect doesn't work - Alan wouldn't be able to come with me to live, Frankfurt is just that bit too far to come out every weekend and neither of us speak German. Realistically, it wouldn't be much of an adventure if we weren't out there together making the most of being abroad. Unfortunately it feels like this is one opportunity which has come at exactly the wrong time!
But what else is out there? I am being pulled downwards by clicking on a recruiter's advert only to find that yet again, it's for a job in Newcastle, or it's the same job as five other recruiters have already posted. Is there no more efficient way that firms can advertise their roles?
This is perhaps a slightly depressing post - it wasn't intended to be but sometimes it just feels like the world is against you and you have no control over things. On the positive side, the days are getting longer (if not brighter) and our wedding is getting closer - and the fact that we have each other is not to be underestimated.
Here's to February bringing the way forward.
