As some will know, I decided to take Voluntary Redundancy from BHGE, the Company where I have worked for the past seven years. My last day was just before Christmas.
Change, or progress, can often be a difficult thing. I was under no illusion that starting something new from scratch was going to be easy. And I’m not going to lie; It’s been a very hard month.
On New Years Day, out of the blue, I felt like I had been hit by a sledgehammer and I was crumbling away. I started thinking about who I was now, and I didn’t know. I had no idea who I had become. What was I doing? What had I done? Had I thrown away a good stable life for the wrong reasons? I had plunged myself and my family into the complete unknown and I felt completely empty and so completely alone.
This feeling unfortunately stayed. My stomach was constantly in knots and I struggled to sleep with these overwhelming feelings of doubt.
Then on the tenth day something else happened to help me realise that I can only worry about what I do and how I feel. I can’t control what other people think, or how they may feel, so I should just get on with it. I make decisions from the heart, and that is rarely the wrong thing to do. This realisation was swiftly followed by a really great meeting. It was a feedback and mentoring session on my design work, and I left that meeting knowing who I was again.
I’m just Fiona. But a Fiona who knows where they have been and where they are going. A Fiona who loves designing, who can lose myself focussed on creating something. Who loves being able to imagine something then create it with my own hands. Design is what I’ve always wanted to do. I’m good at it, and the only person that will stop me from succeeding is me myself.
As an aesthete, I’ve always had a love of beautiful things. Beautiful fabrics, materials, colours, lines and textures have always enticed me. And that is what I will be forming with my own work. Creations that people want to hold, to have, to use, and to treasure.
So, after taking a cold hard look at myself this month, I’m now happy to say I’m Fiona, I have my own business – Camban Studio, where I design. I’m allowing myself to take some time to create a body of work that I can be really proud of, to find my creative voice again and get to know myself as I am now; to be a work in progress.