Someone's home... but no lights are on.

7th November 2019

Do you ever feel so disconnected with life? I feel like the lights are on but no one is home. In fact, I’m not even sure the lights are on. Someone is home, but the lights are off and the fuse has blown and I’m sat here waiting for an electrician to come round and fix it but they never arrive. So I’m just waiting… and waiting… and waiting for this spark to come back, for the light bulbs to switch back on, and for there to be brightness, clarity, happiness once again. To be able to see what’s in front of me clearly and to know where I am going, instead I am just banging into walls, cupboards and furniture because I cannot see where to go.

I know what you are thinking, fix those damn lights yourself. And believe me, I feel like I have tried. And of course, I will keep trying, but it feels like every light bulb I put in is a dud, it’s the wrong one, it blows up in my face.

You see, I get a light bulb and think, this one will do. This one will fix everything! But alas, the light quickly dwindles until it’s not more. How do I find a light bulb that works for me?

My first light bulb was Princess Cruises, even then incredible job but I was still lacking a spark. I thought that would be solved by leaving to go travelling and work in Australia. I thought being in Sydney would be certain to make that light shine bright.

But then working there, my light was even dimmer than when I was at Princess. Sure, the outside of work part was great (well, for the first few months anyway…) but the work part, awful. I was in a PR agency and everyone was nice, the clients were huge well-known names, but the work was mind numbing. It seemed like everyone else around me was so passionate and involved and I always felt like I was on the outside looking in.

Then I had odd jobs here and there for three months that truly sucked the remainder of my soul out of my body until there was no more.

I left Australia earlier than originally intended due to not being able to find work I enjoyed and losing sight of the reason why I was out there in the first place.

The light was completely out by this point.

I came home, back to England, back to Southampton, back to living with my mum. I quickly got a job, thank god, and I was back working with L who I worked with at Princess which I was over the moon about. Couldn’t ask for a better person to work in PR with as a manager, colleague and friend. The light started to turn back on slightly, but it was flickering, and the room was still quite dark.

I put this down to being back in Southampton and thought that the solution would be working and living in London. When a job opportunity came up to work back in the cruise industry AND be in London, it felt like the stars had aligned. Sure, I knew that the job would be a struggle at times as it’s for the cruise industry rather than a specific line, but I felt like it could be a good stepping stone – plus the job title was advertised as PR manager – so should open the door to opportunities more suited.

But of course that wasn’t the case. Sure, I feel like the light is definitely brighter than it was a year ago. That’s mainly down to the people I work with and being at cruise events where I see people I know from my Princess days. But without those two things, if it was just the job itself… then I feel like I’m back where I’ve been, where I feel like I’ve been for a long time now, in the darkness with flickering light.

All I want is to have a fire burn inside, to enjoy what I’m doing instead of staring blankly at my computer screen thinking – why? How did I get here? When will I ever be truly happy in my job? I’m fully aware that happiness is like hunger, it comes and goes, and lights sometimes blow, but usually you can satisfy your hunger, if there’s enough food around, and you can fix that light, if you have the right tools.

I feel like I look around me, at my friends and people I work with, and their light bulbs are shining bright. They’re succeeding, they’re passionate, they seem to know what TF they’re doing. Yet I have no clue. How many more light bulbs do I need to try before I finding the right one?