I'm allowed a holiday right?

Its a Saturday night and I go on holiday for a week on Monday! Whoop. First proper break in nearly 6 years. I'm trying to blitz what work I can but find myself reflecting on the last 5.5 years since I last took a holiday (I came back from that holiday, handed my notice in and set up SPHstructures).

Its weird.

I said this to someone the other week, even though I set out to go on my own and I knew the implications of that at the time. Its only recently that its proper sunk in that this is me now... no safety net, self reliance for another 20 years, relying on my own skill and ability to keep putting one foot in front of the other every day for the rest of my career, and backing myself to feed those around me in my employ as well - the guy I was speaking to just laughed and said I was unemployable now. He's probably right.

I had another person come up to me on Thursday night and tell me they really liked my LinkedIn posts - said they're 'honest' or 'overly honest'... something like that (it was a loud pub to be fair). You'd be amazed how many people reach out like that, for me I just sit here and ramble and don't think about who may or may not read it. Not even sure why I do it half the time, an Architect described it as watching my progression - which I took as a nice statement.

I'm not good with compliments, or tooting my own horn (I'm confident but that's different). I look back now to my last holiday and when I started out my goal was to grow the company, get to about ￡1M turnover and I figured I'd need about 10 guys around me to do that. I saw that as a success being in one of the biggest cities in the world, in a country renowned for its engineering. That all went to shit though pretty quickly with Covid and redundancies striking 2 years later.

I heard something the other day that happiness lies somewhere between expectation and reality. Meaning that if you don't stop chasing that dream, or growth or improvement and standstill long enough appreciate the journey, you're not going to be happy. I'd like to think I'm giving myself chance to reflect a bit now on this holiday for a week or so.

My career/business hasn't gone as I thought it would. You could very easily argue its gone better, writing for the IStructE was super cool and I'll look to do more of that, being part of Association of Rooftop & Airspace Development - so much more to do there, but glad to be helping to make a difference for the betterment of the industry with them, and the business is still going! Just about it feels like some days. But we're still here. A client told me to just make sure we're there at the end, that 'end' has meant a few different things lately, but we keep going and we'll still be here when I get back.

But having to pivot back from your own expectation (dreams and ambitions), back towards reality and pivot into something else, something that works even better and setting new goals and aims when you can't really see which way you're suppose to go. That was a tough pill to swallow. It was pride more than anything, having to admit that I got something wrong, or couldn't make something work.

That's probably been my biggest lesson in the last few years to be fair. Ditching something when its not working and knowing when to do it more importantly. I'll try new stuff again, if I didn't I wouldn't be growing.

I think I'm hooked on this whole malarkey now. Did you know I do a search once a week on 'airspace development' just to see what's going on. I also do the same now on 'disproportionate collapse' but that ones a little less popular to be fair. Its just interesting to me.

I've also got HRBs and risk assessments running around in my head free of charge most days - the goal is robustness index, robustness index is the goal! The goal is actually safety, and safer existing structures, but in order to get there we have to take a proper technical road trip which is awesome.

I was at a networking event the other week and someone asked me about the firm, I said it feeds my reading habit now which feels about right. I do enough work to survive and then read everything I can.

I know we've come a long way in the last few years, miles further in the last 5 compared to where we started and I have no idea what will happen between this and my next holiday, but I'll keep grafting and see what happens. Hopefully I will be able to take something sooner than another 5.5 years before the next one.

Part of me wants to go away and sort out a plan, a way forward for the next couple of years. But I had a plan once and it didn't go so well. So maybe I forget the plan, have a beer, try and reflect on the last 5 years a bit, and then run with whatever happens when I get back.

I've got two good guys around me now. Confident walking into anything with them either side of me anyway.

Anyway, better get some work done before I go....