Hi everyone - Happy New Year!
I hope you had a wonderful Christmas break and that you got some time to recharge. I booked off the 21st, 22nd and 23rd from work and I spent the time with my siblings rewatching all of our favourite Christmas films and television specials. Returning to work in January is always really hard, and the absence of the German Christmas market which I used to work next door to has made it even more difficult. For the first time since the days have gotten shorter, there are no Christmas lights to illuminate the streets. Changes as abrupt but as necessary as these will always impact your mood. In recent years I’ve tried to treat January as a trial month, which allows me to rectify mistakes I’ve made in the previous year and forgive myself for making them.
That said, January last year was probably the easiest January I’d ever had. I usually dread the beginning of the New Year; it’s so poetically depressing to see so many fairy lights taken down all at once. Last January however, I was fine - most likely because I loved my job at the time, and if you’re not spending Saturday night dreading Sunday because Sunday is a countdown to Monday morning, your life becomes a million times easier. A job you enjoy is the best distraction when all your non-job-related thoughts are cartwheeling and crashing into each other. I was also indulging in some fantastic literature. My sister purchased this gorgeous poetry anthology for me the Christmas before last - this was my favourite poem for the month of January. I also received You’d Be Home Now for Christmas and it was the best book I read last year.
I was in year 7 when Little Mix were on The X Factor and watching them perform on the live shows every week made what was otherwise a very lonely and confusing period so much better. I loved them. I thought they were ridiculously talented then and they’ve unbelievably got even better since! I have Jade to blame for the 2012 photos of me donning bows and braces though in retrospect, they were a vibe.
I finally got to see them in concert last April. They put on a show, you would never have known that they'd gone through the mix-up of a missing member since their last tour. Seeing them perform Wings was particularly special for me; the song meant so much to me as a 12-year-old. The below clip is the only one I filmed in which you can't hear my awful singing alongside the performance, though you can hear me very excitedly say to Mallika, "so good isn't it?!"
Going to the theatre was both a rarity and a luxury experience growing up, and through the instances I actually got to attend, it easily became one of my favourite formats of storytelling. I vowed as a kid that when I began earning for myself, I’d go more often, which is exactly what I’ve done. I went to several shows last year and I’m so proud that I paid for my mum to attend one of them. She’d never attended a theatre production up until last March, and what better play to have her watch than the adaption of the Disney film I made her watch five times a day many years ago?
My friend Belle and I watched Peter Pan at the Wolverhampton Grand last November. The experience was especially poignant for me for several reasons; the J. M. Barrie classic was the first production I ever watched in the theatre and as I mentioned in my childhood book quotes blog entry, Wendy is my favourite literary character. The first time I watched the show was on a primary school trip, and as you would expect, we were told to dress up as a character from the book - of course, I dressed as Wendy. I was 8 years old, and I’ve always remembered the show and its songs vividly. There are several adaptions of Peter Pan and I never imagined I’d see the exact same production again, so imagine my excitement when two minutes in the cast began singing the verse to a song which has been printed into my mind for the last 15 years.
In terms of work, I’ve had to conquer the self-doubt that has plagued and consumed me for as long as I can remember this year; I can’t stop myself from speaking up when I feel as though something isn’t right regardless of my age and knowledge. I’m so grateful for every opportunity I’ve received, and there was one in particular that I loved, but the more time went on, the more neglected I felt by my employers. When you’re the youngest person in the room, the most inexperienced and you have zero experience of the corporate world it’s so hard to express concern at the way things are being handled or the way you’re being treated. For instance, I was given an assignment to work on alone only for my superior to not chase up the client company for their retainer. This nearly cost me months of hard work, but how do you tell someone that when they have over two decades worth of experience over you?
More and more things kept going wrong during the experience; I was flippantly asked by another superior on a group teams call what my contribution was to a massive project in which I’d undertaken all of the research despite sending weekly emails detailing exactly what I was doing. I had to ask to make initial phone calls and be on interviews that I’d shadowed and practised an entire year prior, and even then, the answer was only yes when the job hadn’t been completed by someone else. I even had to ask for five minutes of catch-up time with the people pulling the strings whilst they were spending up to 2 hours with my other colleagues planning what their futures looked like. Their solution to me being tossed about was to have me be guided by their newest hire, which would have been fine, had I not spent a good five months shadowing someone else only for all the above events to happen.
How do you articulate frustrations like these without coming across as whiny or ungrateful, especially when you’re junior and inexperienced? You can’t, and eventually, thanks to my always-anxious mind, I snapped. And I’m still paying the price for my mistakes, because despite feeling disregarded and forgotten about, I loved the job and I loved the people I worked with. Whilst I felt neglected professionally, they were very supportive of me in my personal life, a crutch I didn’t realise I was using to stand with until it completely disappeared. As a relationship person, the breaking down of multiple friendships all at once has been the most bitter pill I’ve ever had to swallow; I’ve never been the source of so much mess. And whilst the sadness is, six months later, beginning to ebb away, the bitterness is still there. I’m not proud of my actions but do I deserve to be this unhappy six months on? A branch only snaps when it gets bent too far, which is exactly what happened to me. My mistakes still keep me up at night because I was denied the opportunity to apologise for them. But the fact is: a relationship that is context-dependent won’t always continue in the same way no matter how many secrets and car trips and handwritten notes were shared. If people fall out of love with you there’s nothing you can do - they don’t love you anymore because they’re not obliged to. Even your love can't withstand the knowledge that you're being painted as a villain behind doors no longer open to you. I can only hope the New Year allows me to heal and feel better - reflecting and regretting and wanting to disappear every spare second of the day has really taken its toll on me the last few months.
I’ve always known that I had the best parents in the world but if I needed a year to remind me of that, this was definitely the one. Through an extremely turbulent and stressful year (which left me crying in between the pair of them on the sofa nearly every evening in the latter half) they have offered me endless consoling and support. Seeing my mum and my sister cry for me because of how quickly and awfully my life changed last year has been the hardest burden to carry; it's a punishment that constantly circles my mind. The universe sure knows how to deliver karma. It's the only thing worse than the pain I put myself through.
I have to give it to my parents - their bond is incredible. It’s everything you could want in a marriage. They bring out the best in each other and despite spending all day everyday together working, they don’t tire of the presence of the other. Working the same job and facing the same environment everyday means they completely comprehend what the other is going through. I don’t believe this would work for every couple but I’m so proud and grateful that my parents are this way. Mum and Dad - thank you for watching endless episodes of The Office and Friends with me to cheer me up. I know you secretly love both shows but it’s okay, I’ll let you have this one.
Going back to my sister, her intelligence has opened yet another door for her. After completing a summer internship at Willis Towers Watson the insurance firm have offered her a graduate job for next September after she graduates from Warwick and I couldn’t be more proud. My little brother meanwhile pulled an incredible A*A*AB in his A Levels last summer and is now studying maths at Warwick. I was dreading the pair of them being away at the same time however, I’ve really enjoyed having my parents to myself the last few months. But I love my siblings. Promise.
I went on my first holiday break in nearly three years in September! Myself and my three best friends, Abbey, Niamh and Belle, spent a weekend in a static caravan in Cumbria. The first 24 hours were too good to be true; despite the forecast promising a storm, the weather remained moderately calm throughout our time up North. It was subdued enough for us to visit the beach. My childhood love and impulsive need to collect sea shells and pebbles and do absolutely nothing with them afterwards returned and I left the caravan with four obscenely large stones in my bag. I still have them in a box in my room - I plan to paint them.
Thanks to a massive oil spill, myself and my friends got stuck in traffic on the way home. And when I say traffic, I mean the drive ended up being a 10 hour journey instead of 4. My poor friend Abbey not only had to be at the wheel for the whole distance but, unlike us, couldn’t use her phone to entertain her. She only had the radio to keep her company, and with the Queen passing away only two days before our trip, the stations were only playing exclusively sad songs. At one point things got so dire we watched the live transportation of the Queen’s coffin on our phones whilst in the standstill traffic. It's hilarious to watch back the video blog documentation of the trip in which you can see the four of us progressively losing our minds.
To finish off the year, Mallika and I decided to have a Macmillan Coffee Morning. I say morning, we were still decorating at 11 and guests were still turning up at 1. My parents have always taught the three of us to remember how lucky we are to be in good health and to have a nice home, no matter how dire things get. In somewhat of a homage to this teaching, I wanted to give back. I haven't had the best year but there are people out there who have had it far worse.
The World Cup Final also happened to be that afternoon, an event which resulted in my favourite home video of the year.
I'm so grateful to my parents, siblings, grandparents, cousins and friends who have supported me over the last 12 months; I've never had to be reminded to say thank you, though this year has made me acknowledge how much of an army I really, really have.
In the words of Wendy Cope, "I love you. I'm glad I exist". Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Lots of love, Karisma xxx