A Blessing and a Curse

I don't talk about work on here very often, and when I do I keep it brief. I work in the public sector and I do admin. That's as much as I'll disclose here. I do the best I can, given the circumstances (short term memory difficulties) but the team is supportive and aware it's not the most ideal job for me. Somehow, however, I've held it down- against all odds, and despite a few errors- for nearly 13 years.

A couple of years ago I identified Public Relations as a sector that I'd be well-suited to. It's a field that involves marketing, writing, advertising and journalism, but doesn't involve sales, a field I crashed and burned in twice in 2005. (In 6+1/2 years of studying media, I never once learned about PR.) I started looking around for opportunities in this field- be it being put on their books as a blogger, or volunteering in their office.

Go PR and Events have had me as a blogger on their books for a couple of years, and- before the lockdown- were inviting me to blogger dinners, product launches and bar openings. I'm looking forward to things picking up once it's safe to do so. I looked into PR as a field, and it seemed like a perfect fit- everything I'm already good at. I'd just need to learn procedures. I started asking around, and a friend gave me the heads-up about another PR company, in the city centre, called SKV Communications. I sent an email off- in the tail end of 2018- and met with the Manager. He explained more about the field, and the industry, and offered me 2 weeks work experience. I took him up on the offer, and enjoyed it. As a field, PR was just what I was looking for, and from then on, I had a plan. I was to be a Public Relations Officer.

That said, around that time, I bought a house. It's kind of a big shake-up, moving from a 1-bedroom council flat to a terraced house, and even a fairly well-kept house needs a TON of decorating. I did a huge splurge of decorating starting around April '19, lasting for a few months.

In May '19, I covered my time at SKV here. Over that next month, I grafted away at getting my foot in the PR door- to little avail. It was going to take more persistence.

Of course, once 2020 began, everything went tits up. COVID-19 found its way to UK shores, and within 7 months 40,000 people were dead. The country was, and still is, in lockdown. Thousands of businesses have gone under. Sadly, one of these was SKV.

They were a great team. I hope the freelance plan is working for the officers there- I'm not closely in touch with many of the team, bar the odd social media follow. As for myself, my public-sector role is an essential job, and I've been working the same number of hours during lockdown as I did before. So, as much as I'd like to have made a transition, I am in some ways glad I didn't. At the same time, though, how much more of my life should I spend doing something that, honestly, makes me quite unhappy?

A blessing and a curse, indeed.