Good news at last

Sooooooo. I haven't wanted to post anything until I was a bit more cheerful than the last time. I don't know that I'm more cheerful as such but I do have good news. I returned to work in the new year to find that I have a shiny new job. I had the interview before Christmas and whilst I felt it went well I wasn't sure I'd be successful. The job itself is very exciting. It is launching a new product which may start to make a real change to the way people study and the qualifications they get.

It's also a validation of part of me which I feel has been squashed and trampled on in my current post. It's sometimes hard labour for me to have a professional work persona as I am, by nature, dramatic and exhuberant. I feel everything a bit too much to really be professional but I do work hard to show this calm and collected individual to my colleagues. She is in there and I don't feel like I'm denying who I really am but I have felt, for years now, that there's no point as I'm under-valued and completely unappreciated. Well now, I am appreciated. I start in a few weeks (bitter arguements with the outgoing boss have ensued about my leaving date) and I'm looking forward to working with someone who may just appreciate the career girl part of me is.

I've also had a lovely afternoon with one of my oldest, closest, dearest, bestest friends. She of the lovely Christmas house fame has spent the afternoon inspiring me, empathising with me, making me laugh and generally making me feel loved and special.

Her craft projects are an inspiration to anyone who has ever picked up a needle and thread and wanted to create something beautiful and now she's going to make a business out of it. I'm proud, excited, a little jealous and most of all looking forward to what treats I can buy myself...like the brooch I bought my mum, a ball of yarn with knitting needles pushed through. It needs to be seen. I don't do it justice. By all accounts a simple idea but make no mistake it is an inspired one. They are lovely and I bought it from my friend the artist and creator not just my friend.

She almost made me cry today by quietly, in a truly understated way telling me that she is so glad I'm in her life. She wasn't drunk (a small amount of wine was drunk in celebration of our new work ventures but not a lot) and she didn't want anything in return. She just wanted to let me know. And I want to let her know. We have been friends for some 12 years in September - no mean feat for people hanging around in the world of the dramatic and creative arts, I tell ya. She has moved away and back to our adopted home, got married and had two beautiful babies. My trajectory has been less dramatic and variable and perhaps that has helped but effort has been made on both our parts. She had concerns when she first got pregnant that we would drift apart (I don't have kids, don't want kids) but I look after her little ones from time to time in order that her and her husband (it doesn't hurt that I love him to bits too) may have some semblance of a social life. I don't think she knows how content it makes me to know that I'm one of the only people she trusts those mini-Bs with (it is mad that it should be me given the fact that I'm the least maternal woman you are ever likely to meet but it works.) It works because we get one another. We aren't afraid to disagree take full advantage of the other when necessary - always safe in the knowledge that it will be reciprocated in the near future.

We have seen one another angry, happy, depressed, elated, snippy, drunk, tired, lonely, grieving and almost everywhere in between and I would like to say here and now that I love my friend and that I'm thankful for her. I'm thankful to whatever twist of fate brought us together, I'm thankful to her for putting up with my highs and lows, to her husband for loving Manchester as much as she does and making it easier to come back here and I'm thankful that we are growing together. Sisters not in the biological sense but in the way that really matters. For a long, long time to come.

Sx