I found out this afternoon that around 40 hours from now I have to submit a comprehensive business plan for a cafe in a health centre. I have never done this before. Getting through the first stage stretched me, and my blagging skills, enormously, so this stage 2 document is filling me with fear. At the back of mind is a bit of the thrill of the chase - my quarry is the finished plan, and I'm not yet totally off the scent. The annoying thing is that, on the advice and indeed nagging from my friends, I have booked a day's annual leave on Friday just to rest, except now I'll be so tired from not going to bed tomorrow that I won't even enjoy it.
Found out the other week that the going rate for my job in the sector is 40k - let's just say... "grrr"!
I'm very stressed right now, so am taking a break to blog. I will pour it all out, then delete tomorrow, or not as fancy takes me.
So I'm writing this business plan. I'm basically bullshitting my way through it, as to write it properly I'd need about 5 years experiencing managing a restaurant/cafe, an MBA, and probably at least 1 year's experience running a start-up. As I have none of the above, I am a) stressed and b) stretched. Though as a team we've recently pulled off some fairly jammy coups, the chances of this one are slim to none This is owing to the fact that despite getting a degree from the University of Cambridge based on nothing more than bullshitting skills, the University of Life requries rather more background study than a modern academic degree and thus I am basically not able to do this. However it just might pull off, if my written words and my bosses interview skills on Monday can weave a web just strong enough to get them to buy in. The frustrating thing is that as a concept this cafe is amazing, and I remain 100% convinced that we could do it, but we have Primary Care Trust hoops to jump through!
I think the reason I'm so stressed about it is that I feel like there is no-one I can turn to for help. None of my colleagues, not even my boss, would actually be able to write this, so I'm the best of a bad bunch here, having at least written some minor stuff like this before, and being blessed with speed-reading and speed-waffling skills. There are probably several much more highly qualified people I could have asked to read it had I had a month in which to do so, but I found out about this yesterday, and it's due in less than 24 hours, so that's impossible now. So it's all on me really. And now we get down to the crux of all this, and yet another illustration that work can be so wonderful as a replacement for therapy. You see what I have realised is that my main stress comes not from the importance of the project, as although it will be incredible if we get it, nothing will change if we don't. Rather my stress stems from the fact that it all rests on me, and that activates my deep fear that I will be seen through, and proved insufficient.
The author of Wild at Heart witters on about how men need to feel that they are sufficient, or something along those lines, but as a woman I have that need just as strongly. At many times in my life, especially at those times when given a big reponsibility, or when praised highly or loved dearly I have feared discovery, and rejection. Sometimes I look at the trajectory of my career and wonder when someone's going to cotton on to the fact that I'm not really fit for anything more senior than my first job, as a receptionist. I know that one of the reasons for this fear is that I'm a bit of a striver, an optimistic overseller, and when you're stretching yourself there's a sense in which is is nothing but truth that you aren't really fully able to do what you're promising. But that's not the whole picture, because surely as people of faith we can dare to do things we're hilariously underqualified for. Another true thing that I need to grasp is that the people around me aren't all idiots, and while I have my massive weaknesses, if I was really so hideously incompetent under it all someone would have noticed by now.
So I'm going to get back to it now, after a quick walk through the London streets for some fresh air. I'm going back to it in faith that I'm able to do some things, and that through him who strengthens me I can do all things. So if this is His thing, I can do it!
It's finished, and has been received their end. I feel like I've run an intellectual marathon. It was 51 pages of content which I didn't know I had in me at the start. Either NLP is right, and we have in us all that we set out to do, or God miraculously helped me! Based on a few key moments when I was utterly stuck and I prayed, I'll go with the latter. And now a bonus day of annual leave is all that remains between me and a weekend spent with some friends I've been away from for far too long!
Gordon's new budget will save me £59.57 per year (calculate yours here ), £61.65 if my pay goes up in line with what I've been told to expect. So that's nothing to get excited about really. I don't really see where the positive impact of this budget will be, if not on middle-income earners like myself. Meanwhile the very poorest will actually pay more tax.
Meanwhile Cameron's popularity is ever-growing, and I have almost reached the point of being persuaded to campaign for the Labour party. Two things are stopping me:
1) I'm working 50-60 hours per week at the moment, and am generally doing something fun 5 nights out of 7. I can't cut the work, and I don't want to cut the fun, so any campaigning I do will have to come out of the teeny amounts of down-time I have. Maybe I could hire a cleaner?
2) I don't actually like the Labour party very much. I like their (our) stated aims and values, and the history of the movement inspires me, but I really profoundly dislike Blair. From Trident to Asbos, the Blair Government has used its majority to push through policies opposed by even its own members. I'd leave the party in protest, as thousands have done, but where would I go? A friend who is entirely disengaged from politics was telling me the other day that even he is considering throwing his lot in with a party that best approximates to his beliefs, because you can't really accomplish anything outside the machine.
Last week my team and I went to a training session on Myers Briggs, but it was more frustrating that useful as having boxed us all, they released us into the wild with no discussion of how to relate it all to our team dynamics, which was the whole point of the exercise. So, being a wonderful manager, I devised a training session for my team to implement what we had learned. It all went very well really, but at the end it degenerated into a bit of a farce...