You know that sensation of beating your head against a wall? Of believing utterly in manifesting the life that you want into reality — but none of the tried and true methods that have always worked in the past are now producing any results?
I’ve always known that no matter how much I might attempt to will something into being, if it was not meant to be, it would not appear. All of my efforts would be a complete waste of time if the Universe had other plans for me — for us. And being stubborn or petulant was utterly futile and a complete waste of time and energy.
In spite of being oh-so-ill this week, I have continued to pump out CVs and cover letters for Mark’s job search — 70 applications in less than 5 weeks. But some hard truths are now completely clear. There are far too many people looking for work in the UK and far too few jobs, so potential employers don’t even give you the courtesy of a form letter email to acknowledge that they have received your application. Even people as multi-talented as Mark are all competing for the same small number of jobs at simply shocking wages.
We’ve heard from friends here in Newcastle that this has only been the case in the last 10 years and previously tradesmen could make a very good living at wages that were comparable to those paid in Australia. That certainly is not the case now and the numbers of people that are living right on the edge of abject poverty is simply shocking. I’m not going to engage in any sort of lengthy statement about the wisdom or lack thereof of allowing hundreds of thousands of immigrants to come into this small island nation and drive the wages down-down-down to mimimum wage or LESS in a mere decade, but the situation is going to get even worse at the end of this year when another unrestricted flow will be allowed from two new Eastern European countries.
So why beat ourselves up about it? We haven’t failed in any way, our adventure in Europe for the past 2 & 1/2 years has been wonderful, and we feel blessed to have seen so many places and experienced so many countries. We aren’t 20-somethings and we have to be sensible about economics and long term plans, so after a major re-think on where to go next, we’ve made a surprisingly happy decision to go home to Australia.
You’re going to be getting an interesting mix of travel posts and photos and planning-staging-moving posts from this point onward. We have to get back to Norfolk in a few weeks to organise what to ship back to Australia. Then we’ll do a wee bit more travelling in countries outside the UK, we’ll sell our left-hand-drive car, and then there will be a series of journeys via plane (my least enjoyable kind of travel!) as we hop, skip, and jump our way back.
Look out, Australia — here we come!
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