The job interview

I decided this year to embark on a new career path.  Having checked out my yearly forecast with Jonathan Cainer (and my husband for financial reasons), I was assured by JC that this was in fact my year for change due to some astro-theatrical manouveres playing out, up above.

Charged with this information and a bonus in my bank account I decided to join a small catering company.  The pay was crap, the offices... well it was a desk in a warehouse surrounded by dusty files but I love food and cooking and cook-books and so I welcomed my new job with both hands.  

I enjoyed the walk through the car mechanic dominated industrial estate every day and tried not to get intimidated by the beep beep of the white van drivers.  Clutching my latte, I arrived every morning to embrace the world of food delivery.  I'd worked as a PA in the media industry alongside some of the big hitters for over a decade and a half, I truly thought that all I had learnt along the way, would itself add value to this struggling company.  The owners, short of cash and energy embraced my ideas but this was short-lived.  The ideas that had been so readily eaten up in my first or second week were left sitting in emails and in-trays.  But ever the optimist I kept believing that all their hopes and dreams for the company would become reality, sadly it never happened. 

And so after many months of utter boredom and situations that I don't think legally I can put down on paper, I left.  A comment from one of the owners, one that previously I would put down to his utter lack of sense, made me realise that there was more to life than this.  I cleared my desk.  Said goodbye to the only person who was still there at 5.30pm, the utterly faithful kitchen porter and texted my boss, "I quit".  I duly asked for my P45 to be posted out when they had a moment.  It was completely liberating and so off I went past the car mechanics, timber merchants, linen launderers and hopped on the first bus home.  I was unemployed again.

And so we come to today.  Looking once again for something new from my previous long-term role, I was approached and asked whether I had considered a recruitment consultant role in the industry I'd spent most of my working life in.  First interview went well, the second interview was awful.  The upshot is that I didn't get the job.  The feedback I was given made me feel totally useless and I am back to, what to do next?

The role of a PA is a dutiful role and one that requires a lot of organisation but little change.  I want a change and want to do something different and I don't think I've left it too late to change my career path.  However what I have found is that now I'm married, and of the age where I Should Be Having Children, it's a given that I will be starting a family and therefore why would I want to do something different?  

Well I do, and I don't want to have children.  What I do want, is the opportunity to learn and do something different.

Tomorrow - dress hunting in Westfield, being a flat-wife (we live in a one bedroomed flat) and if I have time "How to get fit in 30 minutes" (as per Harper's Bazaar September Issue).