Keep Moving Forward

'Keep moving forward' feels like the mantra of my life.

I have moved house many times, from five different areas around Manchester to three locations in Cumbria to Oxfordshire, then Berkshire, then finally to Wales ... or so I thought.  Then itchy feet and the need to fulfill a dream brought me full circle to Lancashire.  Where accents match mine, buns are back to being barm-cakes and where you can smile at a stranger without getting a funny look.

My career history is similarly here, there and everywhere, well I guess it has to be when you move around  the country at the drop of a hat as I have.  I started out in office work, as an invoice clerk, then moved to the civil service as a typist, then relief typing pool supervisor/secretary ... I was pretty bad at that, kept cutting Government ministers off on the phone ... oops!!  

Then I had stay at home period with my eldest son and the first few months of my youngest sons life, before the need for some extra cash saw me holiday home cleaning,  then caravan cleaning two days a week once he was at nursery school.  Alongside this I volunteered at an Oxfam shop two mornings a a week and this is what led to a whole new career in charity shop management, first with Oxfam, then the British Heart Foundation, then six years at Scope.

After a year out of the charity game working at Sainsbury's as an on-line shopper, when this first was a 'thing',  I went back into managing shops when we uprooted ourselves again. This time two local hospice shops .

Oh did I mention that in between managing charity shops I opened my own shops. The first time it was a little bric-a-brac style antique shop for a couple of years and then after leaving the Hospice I opened a little gift and toiletries shop ... that's when my very first blog (and my blogging career) was born.  Day to day life in the smallest shop in Cumbria 🙂

Then a conversation over a coffee in the shop one Saturday morning started the biggest change of them all, the one most of you know all about after reading my second blog for eight years.

I just take a breath and keep moving forward.

  It's all you have to do if you have a dream.  If you then decide that dream is not for you, you take a bigger breath and move on again, sideways, forwards or even backwards if you really must.

But fresh new things are exciting, fresh ideas spark something magical and a fresh new anything is what keeps life special ... even if it's just a new coffee, a new cake or a different doggy walk ...

...just ask Suky !!

She moves forward with me ... every step of the way.

Sue xx