The Set Up
It is an early summer Monday evening and there’s a soulful blend playing on Spotify. It is one of the lovely times of the year, where it is almost 9.30pm and there is still light out there. This is one of the best things that I love about living in England. The long summer evenings.
Something really simple, yet quite poignant gave me inspiration tonight to write my beloved blog and ditch life admin tasks I needed to do. Looking back, it’s been an awful long time since I felt the need to share my walking. Unforgivable to have missed out on recording with words significant events that have happened since the last time I wrote, almost a year ago. But my blog is my trusted friend and companion who knows that even if I don’t populate it as often as I’d like to, it’s always there waiting for me. It doesn’t count time in days and years, it doesn’t judge me for not typing my walks and thoughts on the keyboard. It just waits for me to feel it.
Tonight is one of those nights that I am feeling it. Very strongly. It all started this morning when I received a link to view the professional headshots that I did a couple of weeks ago in Tower 42 in London. However, I am getting ahead of myself …
Last summer’s walks in London
Before I embark on the events of today, I must address the physical and mental walks that have taken place through this period of absence from my writing. Starting from last summer, most of it went by so fast while I was finishing my work contract. The weather was extremely warm and there were a lot of heatwaves which was lovely as I didn’t book any summer holidays. Given that I was planning a big adventure in autumn, I enjoyed summer in Highate and London. There was tango dancing, there was a lovely weekend at Marlow with my lover, there were a lot of walks at the Heath backwards and forwards to Hampstead.
At the end of June and during July I was actively job hunting trying to secure my next role. I was walking through a few interviews and had a stint with an interesting job offer which I thought was going to give me security and stability. Unfortunately, due to lack of proper communication at exploration stage about its location and the fact that they wanted me to be in office five days a week, it turned out that it wasn’t possible to accept. I was slightly disheartened but given the warm weather and the fact that I was planning to visit my brother for a month and a half in Australia in September, I chose to give up efforts in August and just call it a summer!
The weekend in Marlow with my lover was our first little getaway from everyday life. It was short but very sweet and Marlow is an enchanting little town so near London. We took a small boat and navigated Thames, we walked around the town, had some lovely dinners. Most of all we just enjoyed being in love.
There was the traditional summer treat of the open air cinema with my sweet neighbour (who is no longer my neighbour as he moved to Hampstead) at Westminster Abbey on a full moon night. And we also did our Regent’s Open Air Theatre and this time I was fully awake and not totally drunk throughout the performance!!! There was champagne but prudently consumed this year throughout the night rather than all of it before the start of the performance!!!!!
In tango, there were new tango shoes that were broken into in the weekly lessons although with the high temperatures, I must say that I skipped quite a few of them in favour of keeping cool at the Heath. The ones I joined though, I did love how much more I was learning and how much more I bonded with my lover and dedicated tango partner.
Before I knew it, the end of August came around and with it I closed another work chapter. It started as a six-week contract and it ended up being extended into a whole year but unfortunately, there was no room for another extension. There was a very warm hug goodbye by my colleagues and a very generous Oliver Bonas farewell gift (yes, my colleagues totally knew my love for accessories). This warm farewell made me feel quite sad, as it felt as if I was leaving a family not by choice. If it wasn’t for my reunion with my brother waiting for me, it wouldn’t have been easy to get rid of this sadness.
Walking in Australia
On the 1st of September, with two very large and heavy suitcases, which just about made the baggage allowance, I travelled for 24 hours across the globe to Melbourne to visit my brother. After everything that has happened, it was the first time we saw each other since 2018. I was so looking forward to this reunion that when I arrived in Melbourne I hugged him for over 5 minutes non-stop, crying my heart out, leaving him pretty damned embarrassed. But I suspect he was equally happy to be embarassed (despite his British stiff upper lip of showing no emotion and declaring affection in public).
For an entire month and a half, my brother and I experienced some of the deepest emotional walks while physically walking in stunningly beautiful beaches, vineyards, bushland and Melbourne city centre. For the first time ever, we spoke frankly about things that have happened to both of us and shared a lot of our feelings. We enjoyed good dinners, I met his closest and dearest friends, we cycled and we encountered the wild life. Kangaroos, koalas, black swans, echidnas, frogs and snakes. Yes, I almost run over a snake while cycling!
While being away, there was a new experience as a traveller. It was the first time ever that I had a lover waiting for me back home. I had someone dear to call each day and share my news. He was patiently waiting for the days to pass until my return and while he was happy to see me enjoying myself so much, he ached each time I had to put the phone down. For the first time somebody missed me. Somebody longed for me to be back. What a feeling…
When the last day with my brother arrived, it was hard. I wanted so much to stay strong and not cry. I didn’t want my last hug to my brother to be a wet one! And although I had someone to pick me up from the airport and be there for my first day back, there was the grey cloud of not having a job to come back to. I was walking high in the skies on the way back home crossing so many countries, with a big question mark and uncertainty. However, the batteries were recharged to full energy for resuming life back in London. Things were not that easy a few days after my return….
Walking through endless interviews
Yours truly was disillusioned to believe that, upon my return from my long break, the red carpet full of job offers would be waiting for me. Totally far from the truth. From mid-October until February I walked through a lot of first and second interviews, I sent what felt like a million applications and I received a billion non-responses and rejections. Yes, I am a bit exaggerating but that is how it actually felt. At the same time, changes in my body due to nature, known as pre-menopause also hit me and gave me a lot of new not-so-wonderful feelings and symptoms. While everyone around me was very supportive and was telling me that it was a matter of time for me to find my next job, seeing every month going by without a new job was hard. Filling in the hours in a day with projects to keep me sane was not very easy either. And no, it’s not true about enjoying the freedom while looking for a job. Because without income, life is just not enjoyable and there is no way to overcome the feeling of worry over how long you will be able to afford to pay the bills.
There was a cruel glimpse of hope just before Christmas with an offer than was made to me for an interesting role, but which was retrieved a week before the Christmas holidays leaving me in the cold and dry. My sweet ex-neighbour was my solace, taking me away for Christmas in a beautiful Landmark Trust cottage in Bedford with a huge fireplace in an amazing old abbey in the village of Old Warden. He helped me park my worries for a few days, with lovely walks in the surrounding area including Bletchley park, Shuttleworth Estate and a 10-mile round walk of Old Warden. My lame foot just about made the last one, but it was really worth it and there was a beautiful winter sunshine making it a lovely day.
When we returned back home, and in the first few weeks of January, I went through a very low mood period. However, I didn’t give up and my flat benefited from a lot of DIY jobs that I had plenty of time to do to fill in the time when I was not job searching and interviewing. And then in February after a series of second and third interviews taking place the unthinkable happened…I got offered two jobs.
Walking over bridges
As my therapist described it very wisely, I finally crossed the other side of the bridge, where for the first time ever, I got to choose to accept a job and not simply get chosen by an employer. It was a hard decision to make. It was not easy to say no to one of them. They were both very good options for me and it was a major accomplishment for me to have reached this level in my life.
One of them though was a dream job for me. One that I’ve been longing and working towards for a very long time. Head of Marketing at a Russell Group university in London. The burst of pride I felt, the sheer happiness when I received the call from the recruiter confirming to me the offer and the moment I put my signature on the contract is beyond words. Nothing compares with knowing you’ve gained a higher position in your career and that you’ll be financially stable again. Since that day in mid-March that I crossed over London Bridge to join my new office, I feel that I have everything I dreamed of. A good job, someone to love me and a beautiful home. My good friends and brother who put up with me all the time through thick and thin. My good health.
So for the past two and half months, I’ve been crossing Blackfriars Bridge, London Bridge and Waterloo Bridge as my new job has a few campuses that I can work from or be there for meetings. Each time I cross a bridge, there is a smile on my face and I spent a minute to reflect back on everything that has happened to bring me to the here and now and the crossing. I spent more than a minute to feel grateful for everything that I have.
Looking myself through the lens of a photographer
This brings me to today’s events. A couple of weeks ago, I did a photoshoot with a photographer I knew from my old days at my first university. Professional photography does put you in the spot and posing for the headshots didn’t come easy to me. I felt like an imposter posing in front of a professional. Today, I received the link to see these headshot images and it brought about unexpected feelings.
I was totally taken by surprise by the images that I saw in front of me. Not because I didn’t have faith into the photographer. But because I don’t have faith in me. These images though evoked a waterfall of emotions and thoughts. They made me feel I am beautiful. They made me realise what others may see in me when they look at me. They made me realise that the person I was looking at is no longer shy, is no longer a young woman, is no longer feeling anxious and hesitant. The person looking back at me is a mature woman, who’s a senior professional, who’s got a few wrinkles around the eyes that betray her age but who’s smiling back with confidence, freedom and a heart and mind that is at peace and content.
The Epilogue
Tomorrow marks sixteen years since the day I left Greece behind me and started a new life in my brother’s flat in Bishops Stortford. If I look back to photos of myself from that period, I will see the same green eyes but they will be full of agony, uncertainty and a bit of sadness. I’ll always be eternally grateful to my brother for opening a door for me to this new life. I’ve been walking over a lot of bridges since that day. I suspect there are a more to cross in the future. I wouldn’t change anything and look forward to everything.
Walks and Smiles 