God, pretty much half way through my life (I am guessing, but with the age I’m expecting to live to) and this year, my birthday sucks, hard, literally. You’ll see below what I mean.
The time came to deal with being 40, to be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to it, until I got my pressie which for birthday’s, is a rather odd choice, considering that if someone was given it, it will be thrown out the window pretty quickly, especially if your husband buys it and you didn’t ask for it.
So, leading up to my 40thh (the day I write this), it was marked with depression issues, of them and even at 6 months out, my family wanted to know “what do you want for your birthday?”, lets just say, if you had the same idea I had, 116 123, call that. To be honest, I have a lot of issues with depression recently, not because I don’t want to feel depressed, but things aren’t quite going the way I would like them to and the horrible habit of comparing myself to other people, especially from the school I came from. What makes it worse, is that I am focusing on the stuff I don’t have, which is a wife, kids, a house (although I now have the money to move out of my dads place when needed – with a little help with a mortgage) and I feel held back considerably.
Actually, it is the first time I’ve talked about this on my blog and don’t worry, I have thought about seeking help, its on my todo list. Also recently, as I became an eBay seller to reduce my computer collection substantially, I’ve been doing a lot of selling, my god, one package has become extremely stressful, because Royal Mail decided not to deliver it, instead, it was at my local delivery office for 10 days with no activity. It was suppose to go elsewhere (not Chichester). So, I had a pretty understandably frustrated buyer wondering if I scammed them.
I’ve tried to be helpful as much as possible as well. Yes, registered a complaint and guess how far that got? Nowhere!
So there is that, the thing I have to focus on and I am not very good at doing that, is what I achieved. Now I’ve not really spoken about it, but I was considered a SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) pupil at school – before SEND was a thing, so my education hasn’t been great, left with 2 GCSE’s when many leave with 5 or more, one C and one E grade, couldn’t go any further, couldn’t do A levels, couldn’t do six form, so ended up in college. But what I didn’t expect was to go into university, that was a very last minute decision, because of a course I liked and that was thanks to “Trainz”.
Now I am working in London. I broke records at the school, now I am probably still breaking records after I left. I’d love to know how many pupils actually did go to University and graduated, even more so, how many actually work in London for a large company that millions depend on daily. Many from my school will be going “you’re boasting about what you have done”, actually no, I’ve actually got a bigger challenge and its not about me, its not about others, its about SEND and this is borne out of my frustration of life, you see SEND, jobs and education becomes hard, VERY hard. IT shouldn’t be, but the stigma is still there, the stigma of society as a whole see people like me with Asperger’s Syndrome as “pretty stupid” when actually, we are really really smart, its changing perception of that and as much as I hate to say it, when I come from a far more diverse background, I’ve had that exposure of seeing what the person can do, those that come from state school where SEND isn’t a thing, still have that stigma. That’s what I want to change, just became my education background isn’t that good, doesn’t mean I am less able, in fact, I prove I’m just as able – I just need a bit more support to understand what is the social norms and how to interact (as I interact differently).
I actually had a longer post prepared on SEND, but I never completed it, so that is on the back burner.
So why does my 40th suck? What did I ask for, for my birthday? Well, everything I touch either doesn’t work, needs emptying frequently, the filters clogged very quickly, you need to untangle the bloody thing and no matter what manufacturer you use, its the same situation, so when I go and clean the house, I want the bloody thing to just bloody work. I asked for something that became my companion at work, I remember them at school too, with his great big smile and eyes, that great big trunk sticking out and made a machine human. Outside the UK, he’s not as well known, but inside the UK, he has a dependable reputation and has many other friends in different colours…
.. he’s not a machine, he’s a life long companion! Many people would absolutely hate having a hoover for their birthday. Me? I wanted a Henry. So I finally got my own Henry Hoover. Finally, I can clean the house with a hoover that is reliable and easy to fix. That’s the other complaint, every Dyson I’ve touched, breaks, can you find the bits for them? God, nope, because they stopped making them. Henry’s? Dead easy and dirt cheap! That’s why he isn’t a machine, but a companion for life.
(Side note, I managed to complete a yearly task, trains and daffodils, this is on the flower bed at Haslemere station with the only daffodil I snapped at the time.)
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