Life update.

The last time I posted on this blog was almost two months ago. I'm not sure even where to being, there has been so many changes in my life and so much happened.

I went home for Easter which wasn't entirely planned, but I loved every minute of it. It was relaxing, it was refreshing, it was energising. Since my stay only lasted one week, I didn't get sucked into the whirlwind of domestic drama, but could truly enjoy doing things that I love: baking, reading, playing with a dog.

On that note, I have almost got a dog last month. I was so, so close to getting a furry friend, but the brain won over the heart. It wouldn't be fair on the dog to leave it home for long periods of time while I'm working and it would hugely restrict our ability to travel. HOWEVER, I did find a way around it! I finally got my head round signing up to Borrow My Doggy and bought a membership for £12.99 and these were the best spent money ever as I found a beautiful dachshund in the area which I will be looking after on Fridays. It will be glorious.

Now, the reason why I can be a pet sitter on Fridays is that I have quit my job. I warned you that a lot has happened in the past two months. I was really unhappy at work for a long time and it has taken both a physical and a psychological toll on me, so the only sensible decision was to leave. I have to say it was a massive leap of faith on my part: I was leaving a secure, albeit extremely stressful, job and with it a secure stream of income. And even though money doesn't equal happiness, the mortgage needs to be paid and so do bills etc., so I was more than a little worried about the future.

But this feeling didn't last long. In the Gospel according to St Matthew, Jesus says "Do not worry about tomorrow." I was convinced that I have made the right choice and that everything will work out fince. And so far I was blessed with such an abundance of opportunities! I have several tutoring assignments through a teaching agency and I am beginning to build a client base for my own business. It is a little scary to be effectively self-employed and having such a huge responsibility for everything from finding clients, preparing materials, setting up finances and keeping an organised diary. At the same time, I have so much freedom and such a great balance between work and study, and life. I do have to work evenings and I don't earn quite as much as before, but it's totally worth it. I can decide to do some exercising in the middle of the day. I can cook a healthy lunch at home rather than eating cold past at my desk. I have time to write and read. And, as MM can confirm, I am visibly healthier.

There has been so much going on in the past couple of weeks. I hope to be able to slow down a little in the next few weeks, take more time to build up my weekly leisure schedule (look out for that post in the near future!). And to write more blog post, of course :)

What I've been doing wrong.

And what you probably do wrong sometimes too.

After receiving around 15 rejection from law firms I had to face the question: what the hell are you doing wrong, Kat? And so I did, and I even tried to find some answers to this baffling question. The answer didn't come as a result of a long logical process, but rather as a result of a moment of revelation which happened to me a few days ago.

Starting with a logical route, however, since I'm a logically thinking person liking logical processes with clearly defined steps, I thought that maybe the explanation to this string of failures is in the fact that I've sent an excessive number of applications and maybe didn't make any of them good enough? (well, they clearly weren't good enough given the rejections, but maybe a more specific reason can be found). You know, it happens to everyone, that you don't really answer the question, or you make terrible typos or just waffle a lot about nothing specific. This could be the reason, but I had two months to complete all these applications and I actually made an effort to make them tailored for particular law firms, I've done my research and everything, so I rejected this explanation, especially that I've actually managed to get two interviews (but here my adventure with these places finished).

The moment of revelation came one morning when I realised what the reason of my failures was. It's not that I'm not a lawyer material. I just don't really care about business, but I do care about people a lot. So aiming for strictly commercial firms makes no sense whatsoever! And the recruiters know I have no passion for multimillion transactions. But, on the other hand, I absolutely loved working in immigration law, because there I saw real people with problems I could actually very directly address. Working for charities, churches or other institutions acting for public good would be perfect

I've realised that if, by some unfortunate conjunction of stars, I ended up in a commercial firm, I would be really unhappy. I would probably bloody good at whatever area of law I would specialise in, I would not enjoy it.

So the search continues. In the attempt to make this world a little bit better place, I'm joining Teach First Insight Programme in June. I'm so looking forward to it, it really feels like my kind of thing. The future looks so much clearer now that I know what I've been doing wrong.