She’s feeling a bit better, but still a ways to go. Thanks for asking!
The General Chat Thread (2024)
- Thread starter SatNavSaysStraightOn
- Start date
Usually takes a minute or two but glad to hear it’s going in the right direction.
Rocklobster
Legendary Member
It took me years to focus my business to be profitable on the tasks that I truly love. I used to have deep fryers, char grills, table service, crappy employees, travel time, all of the things that made my life hard..Now, I walk to work, sell fine, imported foods, and cook it all day. It's pretty much like an extension of being home, but without the beer and wine..lol..
I'm with you on that. There's often such an obligation to do something a particular way it can take a while to refine it to what you actual want it to be. That's if you have the ability to see and make the changes in the first place.
I have great admiration for anyone who has the gumption to look realistically at the things in their life they don't enjoy and make changes, especially changes that people around them are resistant to happening.
As someone who's always had a lot of responsibility heaped on them because I'm deemed capable it took me decades (and I mean decades) to realise just because I can and others want me to doesn't mean I should feel obliged.
Reassessing everything every birthday meant that eventually in my late 40's I realised I felt I've done more than my bit and it was time to look at what I really wanted to do.
Turned out I wanted to buy a motorcycle and ride around looking at things. This meant changing our business into being far more hands off on the practical side of things which was totally alien to us.
But here we are 4 years later armed with the marvels of the internet and a new set of skills that allows a larger degree of freedom.
I think we were brought up with the idea perseverance, resilience and stoicism is so important that sometimes it stops us looking at whether the way of life we're experiencing is actually good for us. There's an idea that if you stick with something the reward will come, which is true in some circumstances and very untrue in others.
What's other peoples take on that? Does anyone else feel they may have stuck with a difficult job or way of life for longer than they should have based on 'toughing it out'??
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In our younger years (20's & 30's) it was all about family and helping them out. I had a much younger brother (17 years younger) and sister but there came a time when we realised we had to put ourselves first for once. We were working out day jobs, working in the evenings and weekends fixing computers for friends and family or driving the length of England to help out family at the weekend. Something had to give and it did. My health.
We got up and tried leaving about 20 years ago to live in Stavangar, Noway. That fell through but after being diagnosed with a pituitary adenoma and Addison's at the same time and told that the rate the adenoma was growing meant surgery would be needed inside 18 months, we decided to take an opportunity that came our way. That was my husband asking to take voluntary redundancy during a (6th round or so) round of compulsory redundancies that wouldn't have affected him because he was just about to be promoted. He's been working for the civil service for 16 years or more at that point... so that's the we went off to try to cycle around the world bit. Ironically I've never needed that surgery because the adenoma shrank whilst we were on the road and no longer causes issues! Much better option than injecting hormones for the rest of my life!
Then with itchy feet, we baled on a house purchase 8 years ago (inital stages, so didn't affect anyone) and opted to move to Australia for 3-4 years... covid hit during the period we were meant to return to the UK, but we'd already decided to stay longer. Covid and lock down just meant we moved over from a permanent residency visa to being citizens. It made life easier in the long run.
Now we live life for ourselves rather than family.
Being physically broken or the death of someone close is a very common wake up call isn't it.
Sometimes because you literally physically have no choice and sometimes because folk acknowledge mortality for what it is.
Australia sounds like it was a great move for you. I often think it's family and 'friends' that can make moving away oh so difficult or so so easy
I suppose that's what I achieved in 2001, when I was finally a victim (or in my case, beneficiary!) of downsizing. That was when I said to myself "right, that's enough of Corporate. I no longer want to be bullied by arrogant kids, shouted at, obliged to work weekends, be questioned at all times, obliged to work from a freezing air-conditioned office". That's when I started the Chutney business.
Did it give me freedom? Oh yes! And all of a sudden, I didn't mind working till 9pm or at weekends, because it was MY time on MY project and the results depended on ME.
Looking back, there are loads of things I would have done differently, but absolutely no regrets. Would I be happy sitting in the front garden watching birds or trawling through re-runs of "Game of Thrones" ? Definitely not, probably because I believe there are always new challenges to be accepted and new objectives, however small, to be achieved. Others might be happy to sit back and do nothing - that's up to them, and it's not my problem or my business, of course.
I finally bought a new laptop yesterday, which means I get finish off writing up my chutney/jam/pickle/jelly recipes. Next project in focus!
JAS_OH1
Forum GOD!
I have never noticed this! I'm gonna have to ask people to say it so I can listen for it.I’m in a meeting, and the person leading it, I happen to know where she’s from (same area as me), and I can’t help but smile at how hard she’s hitting her Midwest accent.
It just so happens that she has to say the word “customer” a lot in her presentation. Now, Midwest, we frequently soften T’s, pronouncing them more as D’s or even N’s, depending on the word.
She’s completely eliminated it. She keeps saying “cuss-simmer” for “customer,” and it’s like every fifth word, so now I can’t stop hearing it, and I’m afraid it’s going to infect me, because I say it properly… “cuss-dumber.”
Now that's a book I'd like to read.
Rocklobster
Legendary Member
I started cooking as a job when I was a teenager. That skill came in handy throughout my life as I went back to it for income when, what I thought I wanted to do, didn't work out. Eventually, after about 4-5 intermittent cooking jobs the realization hit me that maybe cooking is what I actually wanted to do. But, it never paid well, so I figured I better find something with better pay and benefits. After a few failed attempts at "career" jobs I came to terms with the fact that I wanted to cook for a living and that meant a certain lifestyle. I still had to balance that with actually making a living at it,(I had kids by then), so that required producing a product that the local market would want and support me for. As corny as it sounds, even when I was selling burgers and fries for a living, I tried to make the best burgers and fries anybody had ever tasted. In that pursuit I found the reward. My opinion is that it's not what you do, it's how you do it that brings happiness..Once I decided that this was what I am probably going to do for the rest of my life, it was just a matter of fine tuning by eliminating as much unpleasant work. It's still not all great. I work too much, and small business can always have an element of stress, but, like moving into my old family home there is comfort that this is the life I have chose and I'm not looking to make any other changes..just get up every day and do the best at what you did the day before. I can choose to like it or not and if you don't try your hardest you are only failing yourself..
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The problem with that is, when specifically asked, people consciously things more in line with “proper” pronunciation.
This happened when my SIL last visited. Shes from along the US-Canada border, so she has a distinct accent (which, for some reason, my wife nor their older sister have).
She happens to be a state speech therapist, so she’s always interested in and analyzing other people’s speech patterns.
We were all sitting around one evening, talking, and out of nowhere, she asked me, “Say the days of the week for me.”
“Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Why?”
I spoke them casually enough, but distinctly, because I’d been asked, almost like a school exercise.
“No reason. Anyway…” and we were off on some other topic.
Halfway through the conversation a few minutes later, she shouted, “A-HA!” and pointed at me, “You’re doing it again!”
“What?”
“You’re quickening the name of the weekdays. You just said ‘last Friday,’ but you pronounced it ‘FRI-dee,’ but when I asked you to say it earlier, you said ‘Fri-Day’ - you emphasized both syllables equally and you said ‘day,’ not ‘dee.” - then she ended the way she usually does, with “You need some speech therapy, my friend, get that fixed!”
That last bit is an ongoing 36-year-old joke, because her family (except for her mom) have always chided me about my accent.
I may not be interpreting this the way you intended, but I’m not someone who generally looks too far ahead, so when I chose this career path (and it was my choice), it was to serve an immediate need (the choice came with a relocation for training and a second relocation for placement afterward).
I was military, junior enlisted, working a low-effort job (which suited me just fine), and I’d been stationed there for nearly five years at that point and was ready to leave.
A big reason I’d joined the military to begin with was because I saw it as my best chance to get to the UK, which was my main goal at that point (I was 19 when I joined), and five years in, I was stuck in upstate NY, with no prospect of leaving anytime soon.
That’s when a call went out for volunteers to retrain into a specialized IT course, 18 months of training in Texas, at least one round of deployment to install a new personnel accounting system somewhere in the world (mine ended up being Northern California), followed by a permanent posting somewhere else.
I did see it as a much better career move, in or out of the military, but my main reason was that final move - I intended to figure out a way to get that final move to be somewhere in England (where we had eight air bases at the time)…and that’s what I did, landing at RAF Upper Heyford, followed by time at RAF Alconbury. Mission accomplished.
I liked my job, for the most part, then. There’s a lot of structure and every last detail of how to do a job is written down in highly-specific training materials, and I liked that. When I left the military after nearly 11 years, that was my hardest adjustment by far, the lack of structure and the lack of regulation/oversight. It was like being turned loose with all the responsibility and none of the safety net of documentation and regulation.
Also, believe it or not, I worked far, far less overtime in the military than I have in the private sector. Not even close.
All that, I guess, was just a long way of saying I’ve never seen work as anything other than a way to earn money to pay for food, clothing, shelter, and a bit of fun.
The thing is, no matter what the work, the fact that it’s work makes it unpleasant. I worked a side job as a professional musician for about eight years or so, did it properly, worked at giving lessons, performing live, and doing studio work, and that should have been a blast, right?
Wrong. As soon as it became attached to earning money, it became a chore, and before long, I resented playing music. The work aspect took the fun out of it. It goes back to not being in charge of your own schedule, because (to me, anyway, and especially if you have others involved, like employees or coworkers), you’re not always free to turn down an opportunity to earn money, and there’d always be those times where I’d book something and think, “Oh, that’ll be a nice place to play,” and as it got closer and closer, that resentment would bubble up, and not because there was anything wrong with the job, except that it was a commitment, and now it had to be done, and that just went against my character. As soon as I have to do something, I don’t care what it is…I don’t want to do it. I see it as an encroachment and I resent it. Strongly.
I’ve half-joked in the past, probably on here, that I could be the Lead Pizza & Beer Inspector, and I’d be complaining about the job before the first week was out, simply because I had to be somewhere at a predetermined time to drink beer and eat pizza.
In short - for me, there’s no such thing as work & fun. They cannot coexist in my life. It’s matter and antimatter and Star Trek taught me a long time ago that those two don’t mix.
Whew, that was long!
Rocklobster
Legendary Member
Maybe you should have been a writer?
Then it’d be, “I can’t believe I have to sit here and write homespun, entertaining tales from my life! Can you believe it?! FML!!!”
Rocklobster
Legendary Member
I’m far too morose to mingle with the general public on a daily basis. I’m better off being in a kitchen all day by myself.
On the other hand, maybe I’m sullen and grumpy because I spend all day in a kitchen by myself”
On the other hand, maybe I’m sullen and grumpy because I spend all day in a kitchen by myself”