Goodbyes

Today was the last day of my admin career, hopefully.

I said fond goodbyes to those I care about at work.  Thoughtful presents were handed over and we had excellent leaving drinks.

I am leaving after six-or-so years in the NHS.  I am extremely proud of my time there and will miss it deeply.  I have genuinely helped many, many people and will always remember that. 

I have received some abusive behaviour but it is far outweighed by the positive, appreciative, genuine and heartfelt thanks I have received - sometimes in the form of chocolate!

It's an unusual transition: in the NHS you are fundamentally trusted by those with whom you are dealing, simply by being part of that organisation.  People offer deeply personal information to you on request without a second's thought, implicitly understanding that you will use it to the best of your ability to help them; that it will remain confidential is never discussed (at that moment) but is always understood.  It is a privilege and an honour.  It is something I will miss.

The patients are the whole point and they are what makes the job worth doing... though they are sometimes a curse!  I will miss regular interaction with them, helping them understand the monolith that is the NHS and trying to guide their treatment pathway through it as smoothly as possible.  I care about them and I think part of me will always think and feel like an NHS employee.

But that is not the point of this blog!

On Monday morning it begins. Hopefully the first stage of a smooth, painless transition into the world of VFX. It won't be quite that easy, of course, but I can dream.

Two weeks and counting.

In two weeks, I will probably be panicking; in two weeks I should be asleep but I will probably be panicking.

In two weeks, I will be nine hours from the start of a hopefully life-changing three months.  I will have left my admin job.  In two weeks and nine hours, I will be starting a 12-week course in Visual Effects Production at Escape Studios.

It feels like a year since I made the final decision to do this.  It's closer to three months.  What felt like an ocean of time has drained away to be the barest stream.  An ignore-able, casually-long period of time has suddenly become a distinctly short, distinctly disappearing period of time.

I am nervous.  Nervous that it will all go wrong - that phrase, "all go wrong" is one whose incidence in my life has increased drastically in the last month but I don't entirely know what I fear will "all go wrong".  The nerves stem from two things:

1. A period of time during which I am entirely without paid work.  I will be training from 10am (luxuriously late start) to 5pm.  There will be no time for work, I think.

2. After the course has finished, I need to find work.  That work will probably not be familiar, safe, sign-a-contract, monthly-paycheck work but freelance work.  Freelance work about which I know very little.  

Point 1 is an irrelevance, really.  I have savings and my partner has a job; nevertheless, it might "all go wrong".

Point 2 is more understandable but I hope that once the course begins the Studio will have resources into which I can tap.  If nothing else, they will have information: information as to how the world I'm entering works.  That might, also, "all go wrong".  

(Still no clearer to establishing what would all go wrong, or how.)

But I am not just nervous.  I am excited, elated, enthused and effervescent;  I am tumultuously thrilled and thankful for the opportunity.  I am at the very edge of something which I have wanted for quite some time and I have taken the first step.  I am on the tightrope, I have removed the stabilisers, I have jumped from the plane.  I am buzzing with anticipation and elation.  

I don't really think it will "all go wrong".  I expect it will all go fine.  I hope I  end up happier, working on things I enjoy and am passionate about.  I hope I end up proud of my job, proud of what I do and of my work.  If I just end up happy and in regular work then it definitely has not "all gone wrong".  We can only wait and see.