A question Cleanerlife asked me in my last blog post. How can I not believe in Destiny after what happened in 2008?
This time last year, I finally did the Cash Flow forecasting I needed to do. I had deliberately put it off so as not to spoil Christmas and New Year for my husband and brother. Thanks to the housing market crashing around us, our family business was in desperate straights. We knew we were in trouble, it was just a question of how bad it was.
We bought run down properties, renovated them and then sold them on. All the financial projections were carefully done: there was labour costs, insurance, materials, legal and realtor fees. Every nut, bolt and screw was allowed for. What we did not allow for was that while we had two houses on our books they would devalue by at least 20%. When you are working on a 10% profit margin (normal for this type of small business in the UK) you don’t have to be a mathmatical genius to work out there was a problem.
I wont go into the details, save to say that the first three months of 2008 were the worst my husband and I have experienced in 15 years together. We were OK as a couple but I have never had so many conversations at 3 am, when neither of us could sleep for the worry of it all. To raise the capital for the business our home was put up as security. That was bad enough but my elderly parents’ home was used as security as well. In two years, what had been a relatively secure venture had turned into everyone’s worse nightmare.
We said nothing to my parents to start with. We only told them once the first house had been sold and we had paid the bank back some of what we owed, which was sufficient to lift the legal charge on their property. We actually still managed to make a profit on that house but values were still sliding and by the time we sold the second house, we had made an overall loss.
Ah well, at least both mny husband and I had good jobs. Mine was fantastic - it was a one year contract until the end of August 2008 and in March 2008 there was already talk of a permanent position. The pay was brilliant and I was working part time from home. With two children it was ideal.
Then I became very ill in April and had to stop working. It was so bad I thought either I’d had a stroke or I was getting Parkinson’s Disease. I had scans which showed nothing and then I was referred to a neurologist - very scary. But in June I got the diagnosis: Otosclerosis. On the one hand I was relieved that it was nothing too sinister but I felt my whole life grinding to a halt. It would have been easy to descend into depression and looking back I am so surprised I did not.
We were in debt. I could not work. I could not do any of the things I normally did. No tennis, not much gardening, no going out unaccompanied and I even had to stop driving. The only good thing about it was I had a perfectly legitimate reason for not being able to do much housework or shopping!
So what to do? Despite the dizzyness and problems with co-ordination and clumsyness I could still use a computer - oh joy! If that pleasure in life had been denied to me, I really would have been desperate.
I had always wanted to write and I do have a draft novel (note to moi: get working on it some more) so I started researching writing on the net. The rest is Squidoo history and will be the subject of a new lens one of these days.
If I had not got Otosclerosis I may not have found Squidoo.
If I had not found Squidoo I would not have written that first lens.
If I had not written that first lens I would not have got my new job: Imperfectly Natural.
Do I believe in Destiny (or should that be Squidestiny?) You bet!