How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?
Many times I have found myself almost a passive character in my own story; watching as I have been steered by circumstance or others into a path that I never considered. One of these occurred after my first degree. The job centre didn’t know what to do with me, someone with a degree that couldn’t use numbers, or a till, and had a problem with instructions. They threw their hands in the air and fast tracked me into an NVQ.
I know… I already had a degree, but they got me the experience I needed to become a conservationist and eventually I ended up as an education assistant. I didn’t much like it as there wasn’t enough routine. My day was uncertain and that made me anxious. It was filled with people and interactions. It was hell. I loved the time I spent outside, but the further up the career ladder, the less time I spent in the woodland.
We had organised a huge fair, and part of that fair were three welsh black cows; one adult, one adolescent and one calf. This meant creating a temporary pen. Now, my boss was a little flaky and I was forever getting in trouble because he had no concept of health and safety. I should have learnt. He was far to fast to point at me and say I was too simple to understand the task, so it had to be my fault. Even when I had highlighted the possible problems, but he had cleared to go ahead for the task. On this particular day he decided the two smallest females in his team were the right people to do a massively heavy physical task.
“Go get the bales of hay,” he said. “They will build a wall for one side of the pen.”
“Big bales?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I looked at myself and the other girl with me and shook my head.
“Two large bales with just us and two wheelbarrows?” I said.
“Yes.”
“How are we meant to lift them?”
I never got an answer so I put off the task until it was all that had to be done.
“Can we get some help?” I asked.
I might as well have been speaking into a void. We went, and not only where they large, but they were the huge round bales. I used physics to get them into the wheel barrows and got them back to the pen. I did the lifting.
I guess if I have been more capable in listening to my body I would have realised that something was wrong. But I didn’t. I went the gym instead. I woke screaming that night.
After tests it was worked out that I had pulled my shoulders and trapped a nerve in my neck. It was agony. The job accepted I was sick and I worked from home for a bit, but eventually they paid me off, and I was jobless.
If that hadn’t happened I wouldn’t have moved to Wales with my parents, I wouldn’t have got the archaeology degree or my masters and I wouldn’t have started writing. I wouldn’t have this blog or a house in Swansea and I would never have met R and gotten married. That accident and failure meant that I ended up here and in a much better place. If I were back in the Midlands and still in conservation I wonder if I would have even found out I was autistic or if I would simply have gone mad.
Who knows…
From that failure I have a life I love with a man I love. I have a family and I smile everyday.
Kate Murray - Cleaver 