Hi all.
Summer is starting here in Britain, with the weather set to be its best yet. Weather reports show it's going to be between 26 and 28 degrees, it seems like the perfect opportunity for me to get my Hawaiian shirts out of the wardrobe.
We are halfway through the year, and I'm feeling pretty good. This post is basically a summary or review of how I feel 2018 has gone for me so far. So here's my story as it stands from the last six months.
In January I had to end up leaving my job because it was deemed too stressful. I left on medical grounds and as of the beginning of January, I was jobless. That of course, meant having to get back on the chain of job hunting and looking for something I could do to earn myself some money to get the ball rolling again. Things didn't really start happening for me until March. So for the best part of two and half months, I was unemployed. But that didn't mean to say I was sitting at home not doing anything. Throughout that time I did things each day to actively help myself, I would set myself small targets and made it my goal to make sure I achieved those targets, by doing that it gave me something to work towards and made me feel like I did something with my day.
I had a lot of free time on my hands to do stuff I've always wanted to do but couldn't because I was too busy working. Me time like I've always wanted to listen to the Harry Potter audiobooks, I've been able to do that, Stephen Fry is very entertaining, as he voices all the characters. Even the women. That provided some light entertainment whilst I was getting on with other tasks. The occasional media work would pop up now and then, and that meant I could do something I enjoyed and get paid cash in hand for the day and that suited me fine.
It also gave me an ideal opportunity to think, what do I want to do with my life? and I've known from a very young age that I wanted to work in media. Film, TV, Acting, Theatre, or Radio. That's when Radio Verulam came along, I signed up to become a volunteer and was accepted. I had an induction at the end of January to join, started properly as a studio assistant at the end of February. And I was also starring in a production of Frankenstein at the time. And I was working backstage on a studio production of The Effect. So I had a lot to keep me busy.
Working at Radio Verulam has been great. I'm growing from strength to strength and developing my skills and experience in that profession. I've also been able to develop new skills I didn't know I had, as a social media contributor. I was getting invited to a lot of events and asked to help with social media and social marketing, particularly with Facebook and Instagram, and when you use those two platforms for personal use, it makes the job easy. Live streaming, photos, etc.
I'm now on the morning show, weekday mornings from 8am. Monday to Thursday. That's been great. And I'm socializing more. I've been getting to know my fellow volunteers very well.
In March I managed to get a job as a waiter in a Thai restaurant in St Albans. Just as a way of earning some money so I could provide a steady income for what I wanted to do, with the overall goal always remaining for me to make a success working within media, as that's where my passion and main interest lies.
I worked as a waiter for three months, not the most enjoyable experience but the pay was pretty good so sometimes you have to take the rough with the smooth. One would get quite stressed out when dealing with customers, members of the public. One example being, a Saturday afternoon, the restaurant was half full, it was lunchtime, it's going to busy. My job is to make the customers feel welcome, I deliver immaculate service, bring you your food, I serve your table. Now, serve, doesn't mean f*cking servant!
There was one man who came in that afternoon who was particularly fussy. He complained several times about his food being late. With the volume of people that were in the restaurant at the time and the fact that the restaurant was short staffed on waiters that afternoon, he was waiting around for quite some time, but this particular person came across as very arrogant and hangry. That made him impertinent. The chefs were all pretty stressed out in the kitchen. He was complaining, "Where's my food?" and I'd go up to the kitchen and ask the chefs about how long the food's going to be, normally in this kind of situation you go back to the customer/customers and say "I'm really sorry, but the food's going to be another five or ten minutes" and most people's response to that is "that's fine" but because this man was an impertinent old git, when I told him his food was going to be another ten minutes or so, he said "well that's not good enough!" Now, being blunt and rude isn't going to make me want to speed up the process, if anything, it's going to make me want to slow it down. Waiters are the direct link between the customer and the kitchen, and if you start grambling and moaning at us, and being rude to us, then we're not going to be best inclined to make sure that your food hurries up.
And I had to deal with a few people like him. I wasn't always the best person at dealing with these sorts of things under pressure. I very much preferred it when the restaurant was a lot quieter. Afternoon shifts were good for me because I'd clock out just as all the evening people were coming in for dinner, so I'd get to escape from the rupture of a busy environment and get to chill out for the evening.
But I now know what it's like to work as a waiter, and it's horrible. I don't want to do it again. I left my job at the restaurant because now, I have a new job. In London. I'm going to be a radio presenter on my own show, on Relaks Radio. I'm very excited about it.
My friends and I are good. We're planning big things for the summer, and I shall see what the second half of the year has to offer me. I started off this year, not in a very good place and I've managed to turn that around for myself and have landed in a much more comfortable position, which if done right, can really take off to get me where I want to be. So I'm happy.
