I’m always one for juggling several plates at once, but even I recognise I’m skirting kind of close to the limit of what one person can do. I know this because I find myself just wanting to dip out of it all and sleep for a day, or to jump on a train and head off somewhere quiet for the weekend, seeing no one.

It’s annoying, because there is just so much at the moment that feels exciting and engaging. My new job is brilliant. I’ve spent much of the past three weeks getting to grips and reacquainting myself with technology. I have repartitioned laptops and learnt how different mobile Operating Systems work. I have taken a laptop to pieces and fought to put it back together (“where are these spare screws from?!”). I have built my own tool kit, and have spent my evenings building scrap books to help me with the different aspects of troubleshooting devices and helping clients.

This weekend, the run of training in London and practicing in another store will end, with the grand opening of our very own here. I will stand in my beautiful orange precinct and be proud to be an Agent.

And it’s not just work that’s pretty awesome at the moment. On Monday night, between 5-600 people gathered in Canterbury Cathedral to celebrate the ‘Sound in the City’ a few of us had worked together to bring about. Preceding this, we held a 24 hour event in the Boiler Room, gathering different people there over the weekend to explore the area of worship. I loved the creativity, the variety, the colour and noise of it all.

And then last night a few of us gathered and thought about the dreams in us that are laying dormant. What are we to do about these? How do we hold onto them and push for them to come true, whilst at the same time being patient, waiting for the right moment, not forcing our owns ideas and agendas forward. Hmmmm. It reminded me that there are so many things I long to see. So many things that just don’t seem to be anywhere near fulfilment yet. It felt empowering to remember and acknowledge those things.

So, there are so many good things, but only a finite amount of mental-processing ability that I can use to sort through all these different thoughts and experiences in my head.

There are many dreams, but there are also many day-to-day things that are just as important, and I need to find a balance.

(There is also the small, awkward issue of a third year of a degree course to be navigated through. My first deadline is in four weeks and creativity seems a little bit hampered at present!)

So in all of this I need to work out how best I can be kind to myself, how best to care for myself and ensure I don’t keep trying to run at full pace forwards. I need to seek out those moments where I can just enjoy peace and rest and space, and then fiercely defend those slots in my beleaguered diary. And sometimes, perhaps I need to give up on trying to sit up and work it all through, and just call it a night and head to bed!

http://pinterest.com/teapterodactyl/hope/

Over the last few days a few different things have spurred me to write again:

A whole bunch of my friends have embarked on new projects for November. Some are going to grow moustaches, some have given up alcohol, some are doing the NaBloPoMo thing of writing a story over these 30 days. I’d love to do that, but my stories always end up as random, endless things that I’m not sure I could reign in to such a timeframe.

I’ve also been having significant conversations with people about the power of story. And I have a story to tell. Its very different from the one that told the story of my life in London, but it’s real, none the less. I’m thinking and praying through how best I tell that story, without being dramatic, self-obsessed, or just downright weird. Its a challenge.

More tomorrow

A psalm when I have no words,
A song when I have no tune,
Silence, where the melody of certainty once played.

But certainty lacked cadence,
A restrictive rhythm that told me what to sing and when,
Stifling my heart song.

For the truest words spring from a place of pain,
Captivating melodies emerge from the darkest corners,
I long for the songs I sang, before I cared how they sounded.

I still believe,
Though my whispered song has felt drowned out,
By the crashing of a hundred angry waves.

I want to sing,
Though the old words feel contrived,
And I struggle to articulate the new.
I’m searching for the brave song,
The melodies where faith and doubt embrace.

Today was another significant point in that transition, as I left my job with Whittards, fifteen months to the day from when I started. I’m not very good at this kind of thing, mainly because I’m too sentimental, so I stood there cashing up, tying myself in emotional knots thinking redundant thoughts such as: “this is the last time I’ll ever fill in a Whittards cash sheet’.

I’ll miss the world of quality tea and coffee. I’ll miss my friends there. I’ll miss the quirky customers, many of whom I know as regulars now. I think I might even miss the fiendish schoolkids who drain our instant tea machines dry. I’ll definitely miss discount and fortnightly freebies.

Having left, today, I’m embarking on more ‘Vicki adventures’: a trip to Frankfurt, and then straight off to a week of training for my new job. No, I don’t do things by halves. After all, rest is for the weak…

Hmmm. Therein lies the problem. I like to be busy, but I need to learn where to take time to relax in it all. I am a disciplined person by nature, but there must be a space for kindness. I need to learn how to be kinder to myself, to cut myself some slack, to recognise that it’s ok to feel a whole heap of stuff about all the changes these past weeks have held. It’s really important that I do.

It’s ok, I’m not moving house again, but I am celebrating today, with some lovely friends.

I think I like 30ths. On the 30th of July I first came to see this lovely flat, and then on the 30th of August I moved in.

Today, the 30th of Sept, its a fitting time for a small party, with much cake.

The past four weeks have been amazing. I have grappled with utility companies, fought spindly spiders who seemed intent on making their home in my food cupboard, forgot bin day, and tried to find the best location for a hibiscus plant that needs sunlight to thrive, in a space which never faces the sun.

I have also painted my wall teal.

Happy Vicki is Happy

Over the past ten years, my life has changed in ways I never thought possible. I’ve lived in some great places: Northampton, Oldham, Wandsworth and now this lovely city.  I’ve met some beautiful, wonderful people, and I have been blessed in so many ways.

In some ways, these ten years have gone so fast. When I spend time with my younger friends, sometimes I find it hard to get my head round it that I really am 28, that there has been a whole decade since I queued to receive my A Level results, texting them round on an ageing Nokia with a black and white screen.

But I don’t regret the passing of time. Over the past year I’ve noticed a real settling down, a real calming of some of the worries that plagued me in my early twenties, a sense of being happy with who I am and with where life has brought me.

I ‘journalled’ fervently when I was younger, and have a pretty much complete record of the years between 1999 and 2009.  When I look back at those older entries, I realise quite how much I thought I had to make God and everyone else like me. I felt a bit like a fraud, like I was play-acting in my own life.

My faith has changed in these past ten years, too. No longer do I view God as a judge who is always marking me out of ten, always waiting till I fall. I’ve learned that he is expansive, generous, quirky and above all, loving. I don’t have him worked out, not at all, and I shirk attempts to try and answer the mysterious questions, instead revelling in the unknowing.

I also note quite how much my life has been hijacked (in a good way), by a little prayer movement that was still in its infancy back in 2001.  I remember clearly standing in my school library reading a double page spread about ’24-7 Prayer’, and being intrigued and excited. Ten years later, as I spend time with my friends in this passionate, crazy, unpredictable and wonderful movement, I am inspired by the stories of other people who encountered it in similar ways. As I phone prayer rooms around and about the place and hear stories of what God is doing, I am still amazed, and so excited about what the next ten years will bring for us.

Ten years ago, the world was about to change in the wake of a terrorist atrocity with global impact.  I didn’t know that, until a couple of days later, as I stood behind the photographic counter in Boots and heard the news. That evening, I sat in a pub and watched pictures on a big screen, and I still remember the sense of being entirely overwhelmed. My life situation was nothing compared to the trauma of those caught in that situation, and I do not seek to make a comparison between the two, but it felt like, on Sept 9^th, my life had changed dramatically. I didn’t know where to go next, and I was pretty sure things couldn’t go back to the way they were. What felt like a decision made in the spur of the moment then, changed the course of the following ten years.  I felt like nothing was certain, and now the world seemed to be going mad too. On Thursday, I will stand and think of those who lost their lives in America ten years ago. I will also mark the life I said goodbye to then.

I like to think about the dates and times of things, and I do think that this ‘ten years’ date is significant for me. I feel like this year marks a shift from this previous decade – which has been about breaking out of that which held me, finding freedom and healing, making decisions about my life and my future. The past ten years have felt like establishing ones, clearing the ground and laying the foundations for something; I feel like, in the next ten, I will truly be able to enjoy.

Today, my day has been a mish mash of so many of the wonderful things in my life today. I woke up at my night job, and spent time chatting to someone there before leaving. I then enjoyed breakfast in my beautiful Huge Small Flat of Glory (toast and trains…what could be better). I then worked my day job, before having coffee with my favourite Shepherd Wizard J I then saw my lovely boyfriend, who always brings joy to my world.

I definitely haven’t raved enough about this, yet. My lovely friends, knowing my love for tea and the birthday theme of piracy, excelled themselves with imagination and creativity and commissioned a local artist friend to design and make these. (the cups, not the macbook pro).

Each of the three cups has our names on, and a different design, and there is a phrase at the bottom of each cup, too. This one, for example, says ‘Shiver me Timbers’. The artwork is beautiful and so well done. There is also a big teapot, with a pirate ship painted on it, in the same style.

I love them. I love it that no-one else in the world has these, or ever will. I love it that they record a particular time, a particular year, a particularly crazy idea that came to me one day (there really was no other, logical explanation for the mixing of the tea and pirate themes).

I’m very grateful to Rachel, their creator, and Lyndall and Mandy for excelling themselves with birthday prep this year. I really do have the most amazing friends.