Boxing Week review: ups and downs

Christmas has passed, and now I enter one of the best stages of summer: the span of days between Boxing Day and New Years where you can evaluate your life and your year and consider what comes next.

This year has been positively heavenly for me, with new friends and a fantastic job and a chance to make my own life again.  I'm in an SES Unit that I like serving with.  The only restraint on my fitness activities is the number of hours in the day. 

A diary is the gift you give yourself.  What does mine tell me?  In my diary entry for 3 January 2018 is this passage -

In the afternoon I was already stressed thinking about SES.  Then driving to the Blood Bank about 4pm I saw a 'pylon' sign outside O'Brien's Glass and this made me think about work.  I found my chest getting tight and my heart felt like it was beating very heavily.  Lying in the chair at the Blood Bank I felt like my whole ribcage was visibly shaking.  The nurse assessed my heart rate at 67 bpm and blood pressure at 134/82.

The other great asset of a diary is reading it knowing what you didn't know at the time of writing.  On 22 January 2018 - the day before I was fired from Goulburn Valley Signmakers - I wrote about being sent to Melbourne to work with Nathan Sali, one of the bosses -

First job was to remove signs at KFC Wallan (easy).  Called by Claudio while driving.  After discussion they sent me on to Dandenong in Sali's ute with tandem trailer to get stock while Sali did job at Ravenhill.  Noted that Claudio said "he'll crash your ute for sure" (referring to me).  Naturally I drove very carefully and strapped load down very very carefully.  Was late because of this.  Sali annoyed.

The next day I was fired.  Diary notes that on that day I was sent on errands to get cigarettes and coffees for the bosses, to buy hose, and to install signs at the various entries to Shepparton.  And then I mistakenly stripped some vinyl off a sheet of perspex, leading to my dismissal.  I noted that Dad was visibly disappointed that I was unemployed again.

And within less than a month I'd had two job interviews, attended my first barre and yoga classes, moved to Brunswick and started my new job as a lawyer.  I have a hard time believing life could have such a rapid reversal of fortune.

It's a trite learning, but there's a lesson in not giving up: hard work and good luck can mean a reversal of fortune is just around the corner.

For the linkup: how has 2018 treated you?  Well, or harshly?  Are you on the way up, or weathering a storm?  And how do you think 2019 will go?