Category Archives: Work

Cardiff Pound – news at last!

Cardiff Pound, Cardiff Stuff, Social enterprise, Work

Exciting news!

This time last year I was spending quite a bit of time talking to everyone who would listen about the benefits that a local currency could bring to Cardiff. I firmly believed that a Cardiff Pound would be a real boost for Cardiff’s local economy, and having watched the Bristol Pound go from strength to strength over the last 12 months, I’m now even more convinced  of the case for a local currency.

It was pretty clear that there was a lot of goodwill and support around to set up a local currency, and in a perfect world I would have liked to have been able to capitalise on that to have a Cardiff Pound up and running right now. Indeed I did make some brave predictions about how soon we would have everything ready to launch – however, in my excitement and enthusiasm I rather forgot about the necessity to earn a living in the meantime, ha! Then in September I began a new job and it became clear that with the best will in the world the Cardiff Pound would have to take a back seat until I was settled in.

So take a back seat it did, but for far longer than I had hoped – every time I could see a breather coming up, a new project appeared. Which has been great for my overdraft, but it has also meant that a few weeks ago, I had reluctantly come to the conclusion that if I wanted to see the Cardiff Pound happen, I would have to hand it over to someone who had the time and energy that it deserved. This was a hard decision but at the end of the day I want the Cardiff Pound to happen more than I want to be the person to make it happen, if that makes sense. Though I do quite badly want to be that person as well!

Which is why I am very, VERY excited this afternoon because after having some conversations with the lovely people that run Cadwyn Housing Association (and who, for their sins,  also have the misfortune to employ me part time) I have been given the go-ahead to work on the Cardiff Pound for one day a week from September! My brief will be to put the groundwork in to bring the project to the stage where it is ready to go, and, I hope, to create enough momentum that the Cardiff Pound becomes a reality.

This is brilliant news! I am incredibly grateful to Cadwyn for seeing the potential of a local currency, and also for putting their faith in me to take the project forward to the next stage; and at the risk of doing a Gwyneth, I’m also really grateful to those of you out there who have taken such a patient interest in the Cardiff Pound and have encouraged me to keep chipping away  – you know who you are!

So – next steps…I shall be reviving my Cardiff Pound To Do list which includes talking to the New Economics Foundation; more conversations with the Bristol and Brixton Pounds; putting together a website with information for local people and local businesses; investigating cashless payment systems; keeping you all updated via @cardiffpound; oh, and panicking just a little bit at what suddenly feels like a big, scary and frankly overwhelming task. Bring it on!

Living and learning

LearnerMother, Work

So I’ve been having something of a blogging break. I’ve not logged into my site for WEEKS I tell you. Or maybe days. But it’s felt like weeks! After the kids are in bed I’ve been catching up on reading other blogs, binge watching Orange is the New Black, and also working through the final stages on getting our new shop website up and running. And you know what I discovered? THE WORLD HAS NOT STOPPED! More importantly I woke up this morning, and despite the fact that I have skipped the school run to get to the shops early to buy provisions for my daughter’s birthday party, I’ve somehow landed up in my favourite writing haunt with my laptop open and actually excited about writing something – anything.

I am sure this is linked to the fact that yesterday I underwent the most excruciating 45 minutes that I’ve spent for a while, and what best to do when you have been totally and completely excruciated (it’s a WORD, ok?) – yep, fire up the laptop and share the humiliation with a million more people. Or a couple, anyway. Whatevs.

I’m on a course at work. It’s pretty exciting actually, both the course itself and the fact that I’m doing it, and I hope I’m going to learn a lot from it. I wanted to do it for a lot of reasons, but one of the biggies for me was that after working pretty much for myself for 8 years, I wanted to learn how to stop working in isolation, and become better at bringing people along with me. I also wanted to be better at managing upwards – I’m really crap at this, and always have been – I can’t do internal politics, I don’t get the power play, I can’t hide my feelings, and I become confrontational when cornered.  This got me fired from a fat job in advertising at the tender age of 30 – fired for doing the right thing, by the way, and I’d do it again too. I’d just do it cleverer this time. Ooooh, see, there’s baggage right there, maybe I should blog about that one day!

Anyway, back to the excruciations. This course I’m on is based around something known as an ‘action learning’. This basically means that a group of people support each other through a project by a process of open questioning, reflective thinking, and offering a safe environment to test out new thoughts and ideas, ultimately leading to real progress on a work issue. Sounds fairly simple? Yep, I thought so too. Until it came to be my turn in the hot seat, bringing a problem to the group. I’d actually decided on what I was going to ask for help on – it was something fairly non-controversial on my to-do list of doom, that I needed some help with.

But when the time came to open my mouth, for some bizarre reason my pre-prepared and non-controversial problem didn’t come out. Instead what came out was a very real set of fears, both about whether I have the ability to deliver my chosen project, about what failure on the project might mean for me and for my employer, and also I suppose a bit about the fact that I feel absolutely terrified about everything, all the bloody time, but do a really good job of hiding it.

I felt like I had been stripped naked. I tried to regain control of the situation, to dress myself again as it were, by reverting to type. When asked by one of my colleagues how I thought I might deal with stress, I rolled my eyes in (I thought) a semi-humorous fashion and answered ‘drink more, obviously‘. This didn’t work. So I had to give the real answer. To that and various other questions that I found uncomfortable. I should point out here that my colleagues and the trainer were not in any way disrespectful or unkind in their questioning, quite the opposite. It’s just – well, it was excruciating. And it left me totally discombobulated.

But weirdly, once the discombobulation wore off, I think I sort of feel like I might have made some progress. For one, I did come out of the exercise with a concrete set of actions to follow up on the project. It’s an exciting one by the way, which I shall be blogging about as soon as I am allowed!

But also, this. It made me realise that there is no rule which says I have to be the best at everything, all the time. There is no rule that says I always have to try to be the funny muppet one to deflect attention from the fact that I’m not the best at anything. There is no rule that says if I drop a ball, the world stops. And while this has left me feeling a bit disappointed in the world (FFS, I’d always thought it needed me!) it’s also left me feeling weirdly relieved. And a bit of a muppet that it’s taken me until this age to figure it out.

I think I’m beginning to see why they say life begins at forty. Though I’m a bit past that particular milestone,  it certainly feels for me as if this is a time for figuring stuff out and beginning, just beginning to feel comfortable in my own skin. Onwards and upwards, I say, just as long as it doesn’t involve too many more excruciations!

Impostor Syndrome

Other Stories, Work,

Recently I had a meeting with a potential client. While we were chatting about what I might be able to do for them, they asked for help on identifying funding sources. I immediately panicked.

‘I have to tell you right now that I’m totally the wrong person for this. I have never in my life submitted a funding application and I have no idea how it works and I have no contacts and you really could get someone far better than me to do this.’

So we moved on to the next item on their list. A bit later in the same meeting, I found myself talking about the Digital Development Fund; Xenos; Indycube Ventures; Finance Wales, Jobs Growth Wales, when I became aware of the client looking at me, confused.

‘I thought you said you didn’t know anything about funding? You’ve just mentioned a whole bunch of stuff that sounds like funding to me…’

YAY there’s nothing like looking like a muppet when you are trying to persuade someone to pay actual cash for your skills!

And then a couple of weeks ago,  I had to pop in to see a director at work about something.

‘Ah come in, can you close the door a minute’ says she.

‘Close the door? CLOSE THE DOOR? I’m gonna get fired, I’m gonna get fired, I’m gonna get fired’ says my brain.

It turns out that this is not a conversation about getting fired, but a conversation about a possible leadership training scheme and an increase in hours and best of all, the chance to work on an absolutely AMAZING project.

Only I was so convinced I was going to get fired that it took my brain a while to catch up and I suspect I managed to witter incoherently just enough to mess up any good impression I might have inadvertently formed. Muppet, again.

I’ve always been inclined to doubt myself whilst apparently giving off an air of cockiness and confidence; but I do feel that this internal failure monologue is getting stronger as I get older.  My natural reaction is to take on more stuff and set myself more goals to prove to myself I suppose that I can be the best at something – anything. Whilst my rational head can see the futility of this, my muppet head just keeps urging me onwards. I’m actually considering an ultra marathon at the moment – that’s 50 miles – for no other reason except that I feel like I should be able to do it.

I’ve read enough to know that this isn’t an unusual form of self torture – in fact, it even has a name, Impostor Syndrome – also known as the fear of being found out. Apparently 70% of people suffer from it at some point in their lives; it’s a hallmark of high achievers, and it appears to be more common in women than men though as this article points out this may be down to the fact that us ladies are better at admitting it. But giving it a name doesn’t detract from its insidious effects. Hell, do you know what I am thinking RIGHT NOW?

I’m thinking that I can’t possibly suffer from impostor syndrome because I’m not actually a high enough achiever; instead I should probably just get used to the fact that I’m actually a muppet and prepare myself for when the world inevitably finds out.

FFS! I’m actually getting kind of bored with myself here. I mean I’m forty flipping two, and isn’t your forties when life is all supposed to come together and make sense and you’re supposed to finally be comfortable with yourself? Yet here I am impostorising and fear-of-being-foundouting more than ever. I know that I need to get a grip on it or I’ll actually end up talking myself out of opportunities as I’ve so nearly done twice in the last month.

I’m going to assume that at least some people reading this post can relate to some of this (that is if I can get past the voice in my head telling me that nobody will still be reading this far down) and send out a plea for help…If you have any suggestions for managing this, or know of any good books or resources out there, please do comment below or message me privately.  And I will read, review, and not only cure myself of this dastardly condition but will also announce THE definitive cure, and make it free for everyone, and become a world renowned authority on the subject, and win awards, all without apparent effort.

Oh dear. I really, REALLY, need those suggestions.