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Its been a long time since I wrote here and a lot has changed personally and nationally ..and indeed worldwide . I firstly wish to thank everyone who started to follow this blog and was so complimentary about it , I do hope those readers will enjoy the new posts , some with a similar focus to previously and others with a new focus ....indeed , a new purpose . My purpose with the previous blog had been to help others in similar positions to myself , maybe older , maybe with health issues , maybe with caring responsibilities, to find a job , or legitimate and successful ways to make an income ...BUT !!! I had to make an income for myself and writing about it was not achieving that purpose .
I decided to have a go at what many of my colleagues told me was a missed vocation when I worked in early years , which I had to retire early from on health grounds and I started an online gift store as I apparently have a reputation for always knowing that perfect gift and where to find it .
However , things have changed a lot since I began that enterprise , we have had a worldwide pandemic and now as a result of this and war in the Ukraine , plus other economic factors such as rising domestic prices including food and mortgages and costs of utilities such as fuel affecting production and transport costs , people have less money to spend and many have had to cut down massively on the amount of gift buying that they do, for individual gifts and for the holiday seasons . As a result of the pandemic , working patterns changed beyond recognition , even more high street stores , big and small names closed, shutting up shop for good , and while it is said that even more people are shopping online , many people have lost their jobs altogether rather than seen them change in nature and location.... Many are looking for or have found , a new purpose in life ...
Do you know how to find your
purpose? If you posed that question to several people, the majority would
likely answer no. It’s because there is a world of possibilities. People are
afraid to try something new out of fear of the unknown. They often don’t know
how to go about looking for what they should be doing.
What you may want to do and should be doing are not always the same thing . Unfortunately , the careers that some people want are once again in these current times , as much an impossibility as they were for me in the 1970's when I wanted to teach and my mother literally beat it out of me , never to be mentioned again . She made it clear that I was NOT going to university , I was to stop jumping out of my class and being as she called me a lily livered lizard hiding away in school and I was to leave school as soon as possible and get a job . she was furious that legally I could no longer leave at fourteen as she had done, and told me that to go to work at fourteen as she had to do , with bombs dropping around me , would give me the backbone that I lacked !! . I replied that she was the only mother I knew who did not want better for me than she had herself ...By the time this argument took place , I had been working on Saturday and in the school holidays , in a children' s clothes shop in the famous Kings Road , Chelsea London . I made so many sales , many to very wealthy middle eastern families who enjoyed the British fashions for their children and the tax allowances . I was offered the chance to train as a fashion buyer , but by this time was too terrified of my mother to do anything other than start work at the nursery school , where she as telephonist at a local job centre , had found the job and arranged an interview for me . The headteacher told me that she interviewed me because she wanted to see this idiot who could not phone about the job herself !!! ... Sadly , I think there may be yet again , many young people in similar circumstances to those I faced back in the 70's .... forced into jobs by their parents as soon as possible , without the maturing experience of college or university . No sooner had I started the job , albeit with training as part of it , than I was forced by my mother to get a room to rent and she was proudly telling the family ...' Valerie is independent now ' ..in fact , I almost failed my first year of the nursery nurse ( as they were then called ) course , as the headteacher reported to college that I was not sophisticated enough for work ... I was an only child of older , low income parents with significant mental health issues themselves and my mother made sure I gave her no worry , by insisting I rarely went anywhere other than what was either legally forced on her to send me ..i.e school, or somewhere I was unlikely to come home pregnant ..Sunday school ... I knew my purpose in those days ..to be independent from my parents as soon as possible and to look after them when they were old. Indeed , my mother told me that was what she had a child for .... Unless things improve in the coming years , with the financial pressures facing families again now and the lack and cost of social care for the elderly , I am sure that children will be facing such a future yet again ....
Meanwhile , if in a position to do so , we need first to ask if what we are doing now is
satisfying. Put aside the bills and your pay check for a moment. Do you get a
charge out of getting up every morning to go to work? How do you feel on Sunday
evenings, assuming you start up work on Mondays? Do you dread having to get up
in the morning on Monday, or does it excite you? Indeed , do you even have a job ? or is it another week of being hounded by the jobcentre that you are facing ?
Another problem is you may feel stuck doing something in which you never wanted to do , it is nothing like any of the dreams you had when you were younger . You will need to ask yourself what will it take to make changes to get out of your current situation and into something you enjoy. It may require going back to school or at least, training online. Luckily, there are several options available, and many of them are cheap or free.
If you find that the path is
well laid out, ask yourself are you’re willing to put in the time and make an effort? If not, you haven’t truly found
your purpose. You either need to continue what you
are doing or find another path. Keep doing this until you are willing to
put forth the effort.
Valerie
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