Laid-Off-Having lost your job, discharged, dismissed, fired, pink-slipped.

Today was my last day at the job I’ve spent the last 3 years at. To start with I was scared, what was going to become of me? Where was I going to go and what was I going to do? I hated the thought of being the new girl all over again, I thought I’m to old for all this new girl shit.

That line of thinking dissolved into thinking about all the adventures that are ahead of me. It was time to go, I’d reached the top of what I was going to be able to do there. Time to see what comes next. I always do like a new adventure after all.

My last paid day is the 31st of December. That’s a very important date to me. December 31st 1997 8am, the day my plane landed at Manchester airport. The day that my biggest adventure started, 14 years ago. So as I mark the anniversary of that big adventure, I’ll be looking forward to a new one.

All the best things happen when it’s hard or painful, if everything was easy no one would want to try to do anything. Life would be really dull if everything was easy.

I drove out of the parking lot today, window rolled down, the stereo turned up to 11 (please someone get that joke!) and had the song TubThumping blasting into the warm, blue sky, day. If you don’t know the song most of it consists of this one line sung over and over again:

(We’ll be singing, when we’re winning, we’ll be singing)

I get knocked down, but I get up again
You’re never going to keep me down
I get knocked down, but I get up again
You’re never going to keep me down
I get knocked down, but I get up again
You’re never going to keep me down
I get knocked down, but I get up again
You’re never going to keep me down

And you know what? That song is right. I get knocked down, but I get up again.

Come on gang, jump in the back of the van lets see where this road goes.

Unfortunately the electrician has said that we need a new fuse box. I’m not surprised as the one we have is really old. It uses fuse wire. So we are going to have that replaced. Hopefully it wont cost to much.

I have to admit it’s all getting a bit tiring for me. It should be all finished and we can move back in on the 30th if everything goes to plan. I didn’t expect it to take this long, well that’s not totally true, I didn’t think about how long it would take.

Still I can’t wait to see what it’s like in the end. It’ll all be worth it!

As much as I resented the car and all that it stood for, I have to admit I’m going to miss her a bit.

Tomorrow after work I go collect Zippy.

Wednesday afternoon at about 5:30pm Fail Car and a RoyalMail van met in not the nicest of ways. To look at the damage there doesn’t seem like much is wrong. However, to attempt driving it is another matter. To say that the steering is wobbly is an understatement. Maybe this is what Fail Car would have felt like if I’d driven it drunk.

As much as I have complained about Fail Car, I have to admit I’m going to miss her. We’ve had some spectacular adventures, most of them coming from getting lost. There was the epic journey with Cheryl in our attempt to find HobbyCraft. Which entailed the two of us driving around in circles while never being more than spitting distance of the shop! The continual and most always accidental trips to or through Warrington.

Fail Car has done me proud, well as proud as Fail Car could do. Soon she’ll be off to ‘Scrap Car Heaven’ yes I kid you not that is the name of the place she’s going to.

And the world once again moves on.

*why are all cars a she?*

The first time we attempted to remodel/redecorate the bathroom ended in disaster. Well maybe not that bad but it sure didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to. Constant issues with the tiles, sealant and grout continued to fail regardless of what we did. It was all a bit annoying and depressing at the same time.

It’s like a new era for us, we’ll have a house stamped with our personalities and it will be an amazing transformation. I’ll be updating with photos and how things are going as much as I can.

Uncon is a convention that’s put on by Fortean Times. It’s a two day event featuring all kinds of lectures on a vast array of subjects, none of which could be called mainstream.

I got to meet Jon Ronson and he signed my copy of The Psychopath Test which was so cool. He would be signing books after his lecture but I saw him out side the venue and pounced on him. Okay not literally but I did make sure he didn’t get away. He even commented on my politically incorrect pen saying how nice it was. I’m not sure which was better, getting his autograph or him liking my pen.

Anyway, during one of the lectures I wasn’t interested in I wandered out to where the vendors section was. I picked up my free Uncon T-Shirt (which I may actually fit into one of these days!). I noticed Hunt Emerson (he draws the cartoon in Fortean Times) was there and he was selling caricatures for £5. I couldn’t resist! He was lovely to chat to and just an all around nice guy. I love the drawing he’s done of me, it will be framed as soon as I can find a frame for it.

The one thing that struck me about the whole weekend was that I didn’t feel out of place or weird the whole weekend it. It was easy to just be me, to be able to discuss things that interested me with complete strangers. I enjoyed the debate that some lectures created, and there were jokes that only this specific group of people would get. I’m still surprised how mainstream we all look, apart from the few odd-balls, you’d never guess any of us would attend something like this.

Maybe it’s me who thinks that, maybe I feel like an odd-ball because I read it. I do think that it shows how many people enjoy stuff like Uncon and that it’s not as weird as others think it is.

Regardless, I had a great weekend, met some new people and got to spend time with two of my favorite people.

I have journals and notebooks full of streams of conscious, I’m writing whatever comes into my head, I’m working out a problem, or how I feel about something. If anyone ever reads any of that stuff they’ll discover two things. 1) They’ll think I’m far more crazy than they ever thought and 2) They’ll be able to see my thought process at work and wonder how I’d avoided the nice padded cell.

So with all of that in mind, I’ve written myself a letter. Not my 16 year old self, I figure at 16 I was allowed to make all kinds of stupid mistakes, it is after all what 16 year olds are meant to do. No I’m writing to my 25 year old self. 25 is a weird year, I think it’s harder than being 40, at 25 you’re not a kid anymore but you’re not an adult either. It’s like being in limbo. It’s even more weird and hard if you still have no idea what you want or even who you are. God knows I didn’t have the answer to either of those, and 16 years later I’m only now working out who I am and I’ve changed my mind about what I want so many times even I’ve lost track.

So with that in mind, here’s my letter to myself

Dear Me,

First of all, Happy Birthday! I know you have no idea why you want to cry and why this birthday is so hard but I know. You set yourself these targets, all of them you haven’t achieved. I know right now it’s hard to see past feeling like a great big blob of fail but believe me you’ll get past it and in a few years you’ll be so glad you missed out on all of them!

I know you feel like the black sheep of the family, you are the only one not working, still living at home and you’ve not seen the inside of a college. You’re doing that thing that you’ve done since you were a kid. You’re comparing yourself to others, I’d tell you to knock it off but I’m still doing it. Believe me though, you aren’t the black sheep, just because you still haven’t worked out where you fit in the world doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Nor does it make you the black sheep, the weird one who still lives at home. In years to come you’ll actually embrace that feeling of weirdness and make it your own. You’ll happily walk to the beat of your own drum and know that it’s not only fun but it’ll in some ways define who you are. In a few years you’ll hear the song Minority by Green Day and feel a connection to the song in a massive way.

Life does get better and you’ll end up having adventures beyond you’re wildest dreams in a few years. So go have some fun now. Enjoy being you, stop trying so hard, stop worrying about things you can’t change. Just be you.

You may never work out what kind of a career you want but that’s okay, you’ll settle into a job and discover you’re pretty good at it.

One last thing, stop worrying about not feeling like an adult. You’ll be happy you never really grow up, growing old is a part of life, but that doesn’t mean you have to grow up. Growing up is boring, you’ll be happy to know.

With lots of love,

Me

ps Get Dad to give you the Mustang a hell of a lot earlier than he does! Don’t ask questions it’s all spoilers, just do it.

We had a bit of a wander round and I picked up some thread to finish the sock monster I started making last week. We headed back to Sarah’s house, Super T crashed out on the way back to the house and had an epic nap in his car seat. Sarah and I geeked a bit and I finally learned my first real bit of CSS code. I now know just enough to break things in a huge way! Thankfully Sarah is fantastic and if I break it I can just shout ‘Saaaaaaraaah’ and she’ll fix it, or tell me how to fix it.

Everyone remembers where they were. I’m no exception. I was in the back of a taxi on my way to Manchester airport, Pop and his partner Dale would be arriving shortly. I heard over the radio that a plane had crashed into one of the towers.

I knew that a small plane had once crashed into the Empire State building due to fog, I thought to my self ‘what and idiot’ and hoped no one was badly hurt. While waiting for Pops and Dale to make it through baggage claim and come out the doors I heard a man behind me say something about the Pentagon being hit and a second plane into the towers I knew something was wrong, I tried to call Mom on my mobile a few times but I couldn’t get through. I started to really worry then, my brain went through all kinds of what ifs.

Pop and Dale finally arrived and I told them what I’d heard. We listened to the news all the way back to the house. There was a frantic message on our answering machine from Dales Mom wanting to know if she was okay. We still couldn’t get a line out to call back. Thank goodness for the internet, I managed to get an email out to one of my friends who worked in the same company as one of Dales daughters. He got in touch and let her know Dale was fine. He kindly called my Mom to see if she was okay. The 4 of us watched the news most of the night. Sadly for me their trip didn’t hold the excitement factor that I’d hoped it would.

Going back to work after Pop and Dale went home was weird. My commute to work which normally just really annoyed me, felt scary some how. I felt like I stood out like a sore thumb, I just wanted to hide. Work its self was strange, everyone seemed to be treating me like I’d just lost a family member.

Ten years later the images of the second plane hitting the tower, the towers falling and that iconic picture of the man free falling head first silhouetted against a blue sky, all of them still make me cry as though my heart would break.

All those lives lost. So many lives changed forever. Not just the victims lives although theirs have been changed the most, but our lives, mine and yours.

The world has moved on again, there’s a decade between us now. The scar is slowly healing but, it’s all raw emotion underneath. I believe every single innocent victim that day gave us something, I believe they gave us all courage and strength.

I think of them all today. The people they left behind. I mourn them all and I mourn the innocence we all lost that day.

But from the ashes of all the destruction something beautiful happened. Thanks to Facebook and Twitter once again the depth of human kindness appeared. Both Twitter and Facebook were used to organize people in all the area’s affected to come together and clean up after the riots. Average people, people like you and me, going out on to the streets to clean up after the riots. The Guardian reported on it as well as many different media sites as did the evening news. This amazing group of people, once the clean up was finished, have carried on. They are now appealing for the basics for those people who have lost everything they had.

Once again it’s a case of the good being overshadowed by the bad. While there was a lot of coverage of these volunteers, in my opinion there should have been more. These people are the real people of the UK and it’s these people that make me proud to be a part of my adopted country.

One last thing, my heart goes out to those who lost their lives during the riots. None of them deserved to die. And a big thank you to Haroon Jahan, 21, and brothers Shazad Ali, 30, and Abdul Musavir, 31. Your courage and sense of community will always be remembered and your acts of bravery will never be forgotten.

*Title taken from the song Panic by The Smiths