Well spooky month has been and gone! Anyone else now on the countdown to Christmas?! You know I absolutely love Halloween but once that’s finished I definitely start to feel the magic of Christmas creeping in and I don’t do anything to stop it! Christmas is absolutely my favourite time of year so now all the pumpkins have gone, I’m packing my Halloween mugs away and I’m swapping my pumpkin spice latte’s for gingerbread latte’s. I’m ready to embrace Christmas. October was certainly a jam packed month for me so let’s not delay any further and take a look back shall we?
1. If you read September’s Happy List then you’ll know that last month I handed my notice in at work to make a huge change and go self employed. Well half way through October that journey started as I left my job of over 5 years to work for myself! These last 2 and a bit weeks of self employment have been an absolute rollercoaster, I’m not going to lie. But right now I wouldn’t swap it for the world. I still 100% believe that I’ve made the right choice and I absolutely will make this work. It’s been a huge change for me, I worked in education for almost 10 years in a job I knew I did well and now I’m starting all over again. But for the most part its been fun and I’m loving being my own boss so far.
2. My little team that I worked with threw me a lovely little leaving do and I had the absolute best last day at work. I was absolutely gutted to leave my team. There were lots of negatives at times to my job but my team certainly weren’t one of them! I miss them loads and for someone who is very introverted, getting used to working alone has been quite the adjustment. I also got a gorgeous bunch of flowers from one of the teachers and the class I worked with the most which was really unexpected!
3. I had planned to fully embrace the spirit of October with lots of autumnal walks and pumpkin picking but it just didn’t work out. My work schedule ended up being so busy that I just didn’t have time. While I am incredibly grateful to be busy I did find other small ways to embrace spooky season with my favourite mug filled with chai latte, spooky books, horror films and my beloved pumpkin top!
4. I lived on the Aldi peanut butter pumpkins in October. They need to release some sort of Christmas version of these because they were honestly incredible. I don’t even want to think about how many bags I got through because the answer is probably embarrassingly high! They were far better than Reese’s.
5. Self employed life started out with the absolute best of intentions with daily walks but then everything turned upside down with my workload and I ended up being incredibly busy. I really need to find some time to get out walking again. Not just for my physical health but for my mental health too. Spending an hour outside, embracing autumn and listening to a podcast felt really great. I definitely need to reassess my work schedule and make time for this again!
So that was October! I don’t really have any plans for November at the moment, though I have set myself some goals both work related and non-work related. Making that jump to self employment has consumed me since it was first looking like a possibility at the end of August. Since then I have absolutely worked my arse off and very rarely took a break, even at weekends. I think at the point of writing this I have had one day off in nine weeks.
In November I want to fall into a better work/life balance and feel a little more settled. I’ve set myself some non-work related goals so my focus isn’t just on work 24/7. I’m really looking forward to embracing the magical feeling of Christmas creeping in I want to make sure I feel present for that! I’m also excited to create my Christmas content for this blog too. I’ve scaled it back slightly this year but I love writing Christmas content and I wasn’t able to do any last year due to being really poorly.
How was October for you? What did you get up to? Let me know in the comments!
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