A brief history of my work life…

Old post from a few years ago – will be 5 years this September. I have since left REL and now work at an Accountancy – proper grown up now…

So I’m sat on my sofa, surrounded by my dogs, listening to my husband talk to his buddies on TeamSpeak and realise – in two days I’ll have had a proper adult job for three years!

Don’t get me wrong, I do miss effects work (sometimes). It has been part of my life for as long as I remember. Because of my Dad (Nigel Brackley) I grew up surrounded by it, even before I started working in it myself. I miss the banter most definitely. Miss the laughter that is so infectious, an outsider would think we’ve been smoking something naughty, when really we are all so sleep deprived, hysteria/borderline insane

15 years in the Film Industry, a bit of promo, a bit of massage therapy, a bit of driving, a few years running an Airsoft site, to finally trying my hand at Field Marketing. I think I’m doing ok?… 

But I won’t go back, body is too broken, there were some dark times but most importantly, I like knowing how much money I’ll get at the end of the month. I like having my weekends back. I actually like going to the pictures again – granted cheap seats now.

I better mention the wig making. I only knotted hair into wigs for “Cats”. Started at the tender age of 10, when my Gran (Audrey Farman) showed me how to knot and I started earn money doing the napes (base hair line). Progressed over the years to full wigs and only really stopped doing it when Gran retired.

So after getting fed up of the gaps between films and a mortgage to pay, I trained to be a massage therapist thinking I’d have another source of income when needed. Kept me afloat. I also did promo, extras work (anything from costume dramas to an advert where I looked like the transvestite fraggle, that had been chased out of the caves with flaming torches and pitchforks)

Then came Gunman Airsoft…

Now I am not afraid to say I used to play pew pew on occasion myself. I had many Airsoft guns. Managing a bunch of “adults” to play nice with toy guns isn’t as easy or fun as I thought it would be. I did learn to regularly talk to a crowd without crapping myself (my potty mouth most certainly peaked during these years however) Learned to deal with conflict/petulance/dummy spitting and other skills that will come in handy should I ever need to herd cats. However it was here I was to manage a marshal, who would become a friend, who I would then go on to marry (properly never saw that coming, I thought I’d either stay the mistress of he who shall not be named, or mad old cat lady) Stace saw something in this “lost cause” when I certainly didn’t.

So let’s fast forward to a Skype interview (this was effectively my 3rd interview) with Alex and Marty at REL for the role of “Business Development Executive for Logitech”.

I really wanted this job by this stage, had been looking up “business jargons and acronyms” in the hope I wouldn’t come across as completely green and inexperienced (to be honest, I think I have mental block on most, as I still don’t understand a lot of them, doofa, thingamajib, admin various tend to get used a lot!) I had been researching Logitech to see as a company how they were doing, even going into my local John Lewis and Curry’s to see what was in store.

I knew I was the wild card, I knew it was either going to be down to my personality or Alex thinking “F*€k it, what’s the worst that could happen?…” I’ve not asked, not sure I want to know 😉

So I had got myself a regular “proper” job, I was having to dress smart (granted this still needs improving) Talking to managers and staff on a daily basis, turning their years of cynicism and indifference into a friendly working relationship. Having targets and KPIs to meet and after a few months… well slap me with a kipper and call me Shirley, I was hitting them (not the managers and staff of course)

2018 I was given the opportunity to join a brand new team with different challenges and a leapt at the chance.

It’s not always been easy, life has got in the way, being at my Mum’s bedside and watch her pass away in horrific pain to cancer in 2016 still effects me to this day.

Now I’ve had a lot of bad sh*t happen to me personally over the years, in work and out and I became the queen of burying it, keeping going no matter what flung my way. This was different, this happened to someone I loved and cared about and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it. I went back to work, to all that weren’t close to me I was fine, still hitting those targets. Because I am a queen of burying sh*t. On top of that my increasingly frail grandparents, very poorly dog, Husband’s health scare (he’s fine thank frack, just have his colonoscopy to get out of the way before I’m completely settled) just to add to universal sh*t show that can be life sometimes.

What scared me more than the slowly increasing anxiety and dark clouds that were brewing, was someone seeing/sensing my “weakness”. The corner I was perceiving to be backed into, was of my own making. 

It took breaking down during a phone call to my boss Sue to realise how bad it was. I finally spoke to someone outside of my (very small) inner circle about the anxiety, nightmares and depression. 

It turns out I had hidden it well, this call came out of the blue for Sue. But thanks to that call, with no judgements, I got the help I needed and I’m now on a more even keel. I’ve started to enjoy the work again.

Still feel very vulnerable but that’s ok, it also turns out not to be the end of the world. It’s in some ways made me more empathetic to those in a similar situation, in the past I’d have just inwardly snorted and thought they should just pull themselves together and get on with it. 

Even the most resilient and stoic of us can be effected.

Never, ever be afraid to talk to someone. There’s a lot of help out there for those in need.

Even after all these years, I’m still able to laugh at the absurd.

Hx

**New puppy pooping in my Cocker Spaniel’s food bowl…