Deciding to look for another job because of toxic work environment

I have been at my job for 8 months now, it is officially the longest I have been at one place now. My previous record was 7 months.

But yesterday I decided that I was done with were I am working now. Before now I always thought maybe I could do a few years there but yesterday it was so toxic that I decided for my mental health that I was done. People being rude, making me feel as though I am less. Just draining me mentally and I am tired of being sad because of them or feeling down or less or as if I am the problem because I am nice.

I think when I realised that I was being made fun of, people were rude to me and because I am not a argumentative or rude person myself and I don't want to change who I am to fit them.

Today cemented my beliefs and my stance to leave. I want to stay there for one year. I have four months left until I reach my one year mark.

I need to start to make preparations to leave.

I need to update my CV and just get back into the groove of applying for jobs again. I also want to apply to graduate schemes, just anything to get away from there.

Work mental strain and giving graduate schemes a go

I have been at my job for roughly 6 months now and until the end of July, things were alright and then one person who I worked with, she trained me and we sat opposite each other. She left and never came back and now a lot of the stuff she did has been  put onto me.

The thing is she was my shield. I did my accounting side and she dealt with the crazy family that run the business. If I haven't mentioned I work for a family business and it is pretty crazy.

I have cried multiple times, I have felt like I am stupid, when they make mistakes it's my fault. When in reality it is not. I am mentally drained. I am tired of saying sorry for things that are not my fault or saying thank you for some one doing what they were meant to do.

I am tired. Drained.

Sometimes, I think about the future, and it's crazy because I am such a loyal person that if I found a decent job I would stay there for years, decades even and last week Thursday I was walking to work and I was just imagining staying there for years, starting a family, weddings, all of that and then when I left my blood was boiling, I was upset with my self. I had been made too feel so small and useless and I know my worth and I know that it is not my fault.

When the girl left, she told me its not you it's them and to breathe.

It felt good to let out how I feel, it's sad because I don't think I can really talk to anyone about how I feel. And I accepted today that this place is negatively affecting my mental state. I am more on edge, not much can make me snap or want to cry and that isn't healthy. That isn't what work should be like and even though it has it's pro's and they are some people there that I absolutely love and would love to carry on working with.

The family is too crazy for me and the negative affects it is been having on me is not worth the money. I have learnt my lesson before where I just left a place and was unemployed for 2 years so this time I will not just quit but I am going to apply for Graduate scheme in 2020. They open up in September and I was ready but haven't been putting that much time into it, when I get home I am mentally drained and tired. This week I even slept at 21:45.

But I need to apply this one last time and if it doesn't work then I will look for another job in a bigger company in the new year.

One year is enough at this place.

April thoughts

I just thought I would come on and waffle about what has been going on in my life since the last post and how my mindset has changed.

So, I created a blog, another one, I think this is the longest blog I have had. But I wanted to create a fitness blog and I had these grand ideas of how I would make money but honestly I can't be asked. It doesn't really interest me like at all and I tried, I spent about £8 or £15 on a domain and other stuff and now I'm done.

It's just chore and I really have no energy for it. I feel as though I am wasting my time I guess.

It's not for me.

But atleast I tried it and it did what it was meant to do.

Now accounting, there was this moment where we had new cleaners where I worked and I had walked past one of them to go to my desk and I thought to myself what is the difference between me and them and I realised that I was lucky 1 and two my education.

For that moment I wanted to carry on with my education, I wanted to learn for fun not to learn for a job. Even the site. I was doing it for money not because I wanted to do it and that was the issue.

So, now I want to carry on learn and grow. I want to learn more about business, about people in the work force and how they work and learning more languages.

I feel somewhat at ease now, i have finally made my decision.

I'm 26, employed and thinking about being self-employed

Yayyy, I am a year older. I am now 26 years old. Where does the time go by.

I guess the biggest change from when I turned 25 to now is that I now have a job. I went through a lot in during the last 12 months. I had signed on to job seekers, so I was attending that once a week and then that turned into once every two weeks.

I had interviews almost once a month. They all turned out to be rejections after rejections. I went on holiday to snowdonia which was absolutly beautiful. Then I started this mentoring circle which resulted in me making 3 new friends which I am still friends with today. I then did my first work experience at a rail company for three days.

That was the first time in more than a year when I had to wake up early and be active all day. Afterwards, I had an 8 week work experience at the job centre, I got to meet everyone, work with my friends and help people. It was fun and I enjoyed it alot.

Afterwards, I went to an interview at a big travel agency and I actually got the place. I had assumed that they would be 2 places, we really weren't told much but there was only one place and I ended up getting it.

That was the first interview after many rejections where I had gotten the job. What I liked about the place was that, I remember one time we drove past it and I remember I was quite young, maybe 16/17 around then and it's a big office building and you can tell it's an office building and can see the desks and chairs and computers from outside and I remember clearly at that time thinking to myself that I would love to work there. Or it would be amazing to have a job there and without knowing or trying I ended up there. Even though it was work experience.

I still had the card that gave me access, I had the desk that was mine.

It was a big company, a company that is on the stock exchange, that makes millions or even billions of profit.

I was surrounded by a lot of white people. There was a canteen, a costa, a cash machine, a sandwich area. A free vending machine that gave free water, hot chocolate, tea. At the press of a button. I remembered at the job centre in the lunch room there being a vending machine and my friend paying like 30p for hot chocolate and how the other vending machine wouldn't even give her a packet of crisps because it didn't work.

They would give you a discount on holidays with the travel company and there were people who got free holidays on the new destinations launched.

The people I worked with, honestly, they were alright. I had to work hard to be more social and it honestly was mentally straining but the work I was doing was so dull and boring that I found time went somewhat quicker if I conversed with the people I sat with.

There was one day though, they had this thing were once a month someone would come and speak. That day we had 3 white guys. I think the CEO, marketing manager and another white guy in a powerful position. And they stood there and talked for about an hour and as I sat there and listened to them talk about things that really didn't affect me. I realised that on every single team the manager was a white guy. So, I went on the website and looked at the members of the board and they were ten people on it. 8 white guys and 2 white women.

It was a realisation that I knew but that made it clearer what country lived in.

These jobs where not that great, alot of them anyone could learn, because when there is a big company sometimes you need people to do basic repetetive things over and over again.

But I saw a lot more pregnant women there than in normal which showed that felt comfortable. You had some sort of a job security and I will give it to the company they tried their best to make it a happy environment.

So, then moving on to where I am working at now. I have a full time job, I get paid a decent wage. The place is a walking distance from my house. And I am doing a job that relates to my degree.

It is something that I probably wouldn't have imagined getting and here it was. As an assistant account/ sales. I work for a family business.

The thing is before I got the job I had given up applying, I was done. I had been unemployed for 2 years and I had been claiming job seekers for a year and I was tired. So, I decided that I was going to become self-employed. Then I got offered this job and honest to God I didn't believe it, it wasn't until I got my first pay slip that I started to believe it.

That leaves me to where I am now. I could take my AAT exams and then try to do the graduate schemes in september. I will have a related job, I will have an extra qualification and more. I might have a better chance of getting a job.

But do I want to, I am 26 now, I started doing accounting when I was 16 in college. I remember leaving the exam for accounting over it, I took multiple retakes and I still left with an E. My first and only E. Ever, I somehow ended up going to university to do that same course and I left with a 2:2.

And now I somehow believe that I can get into a graduate scheme where I will be going against people who have gone to better universities, who have better grades and who are white and male.

But that doesn't really matter what matters is would that make me happy, if by some reason I got a job at a big accounting firm. I got my dream job would I be happy?

Initially yes, I believe I would be happy because that would make my family happy. I would be happy because I will be working at a big firm. But I will be miserable, I will be in shackles again.

Right now I am free, sort-off. I have the freedom to decide  what I want to do with myself and I have been thinking about this for the past few weeks. Going back and forth and I want to be self-employed. I want to start my own business. I want to be my own boss and to do my own things.

This job acts as a safety net whilst I start things up. I know it will take time to build up so that it is profitable but I am smart and I have great ideas and I believe that I will be happier if I was too work for my self.

Wow, actually typing it out and making it into reality feels weird. It feels as though I can breathe again. I believe these 10 years have been a long lesson, I have picked up many skills that have lead me to this point and now I just need to leap with confidence into this journey.

This is my choice. The next ten years will be focused on growing my businesses. I would hope that in a few years they will be profitable enough that I will be able to live off of them.

I know I will have many challenges ahead but this is my only choice. I feel like to be successful I had to reach this point, to come to this understand and here I am.

I am ready to take on this new year, take on a 26 year old me who will be a CEO. A strong smart talented business woman.

Finally got a job, now what?

Ahhh, so after 2 years of applications, rejections and the job centre. I have finally gotten a job and it was honestly by luck. I still can't believe, it wasn't really the job I applied for I am realising but it is a job and I am grateful for it.

Now what do I do?

For the last two years my goal, the reason for me being down was due to me being unemployed but now that I have a job I have two paths, 1 is to try for one more year to see if I can get into a grad scheme and I gave myself this weekend to think about it all. And I am going to try.

If all fails then thats just another year. Of living gone down the drain.

I need to renew my AAT, actually start doing the exams. Look at the companies I want to apply to and set up alerts if it's possible. Prepare for the application process and the questions. I mess up on those but I need to be ready.

I need to lose at least 20 pounds because looks to matter in the dog on business world.

Also, I want to carry on learning French, it's good to be learning Korean but I think knowing French will also help me to have an upper leg.

Wow, I cannot believe I am actually going to do this.

I am actually going to carry on in the hopes of one day becoming an accountant. If I don't succeed this year then I will know it wasn't meant to be and I will try my luck at being self-employed.

This job has made me a little bit more employable and I am going to work twice as hard so that I can be a success at it.

Even though this was partly luck, I do believe that I deserve this job because my goodness I worked hard, I had a positive outlook on working for free. I worked for free on two internships. I did it all without complaining once and I think this job was a way of my hard work being paid of.

So, I am going to carry on working hard. Wish me luck.

Deciding to become self-employed after 2 years of getting rejections

Today I have made the decision to put my efforts into starting my own business and becoming self-employed. I have been applying for jobs for 2 years and I am still unemployed. I have done 2 internships in the last 6 months and still nothing. I am currently doing free work experience at a big travel company and I look at some of the white people who have jobs but they can't even do them properly and I wonder to myself how did they get this job.

Then there is me who did everything right, went all the way to university and graduated in the hopes to get a job. Worked for free and still nothing. The only time someone asks me to come for an interview is when they barely look at the CV and then when I go to the interview I end up getting rejected. End up feeling that I am less than human. And I have done this for 2 years and you know what I am tired of letting nobodies dictate how I feel about myself. They don't want to hire me fine, who needs them I will just work for myself and make a living.

I am a smart black woman with drive and ambition.

I already have a few ideas running through my head and now I have the will to do it. I don't have a backup. It's this or nothing. They are crackheads, alcoholics, rappers and strippers not caring about getting a job. I guess I am going to join them. I know it will be hard but at least if I put effort into it. They will some progress instead of me applying to jobs for another year and still being unemployed and having absolutely nothing to show for it.

I'm going to risk it. For the first time in my life I am going to take this chance. Wish me luck!

Learning Korean: Bought some books from TTIK

I have been trying to teach myself Korean for a little while now and even though the free stuff online has helped me to learn the basics. I didn't have that much motivation because I learn best from reading a book and not online.

So since it's 2019 I decided I want to really put myself out there and take learning Korean seriously. I went to TalktomeinKorean website, I have used their site before, it is one of my sources for learning Korean but I had never bought anything before so I went to their store and I saw the books they had. They had a beginners pack which had a book on verbs 1 & 2 and other beginner books which interested me a lot. So, I decided to buy that as well as the level 1 books. When I signed in there was a test and I was still at level 1.

I decided to do their special delivery because I wanted my order to come quickly and I prefer my order to be tracked since its coming from Korea.

It was actually really quick and the tracking was very good. I order it on Sunday and it arrived on Wednesday. So, that was quite good. Everything was there and they were new books.

The easy Korean Reading book excited me because I feel as though if I can actually read Korean sentences and understand it, that will be great. That's the goal to understand and say Korean sentences.

The real life conversations book looks good too, they have audio on their website so that should help me to be able to say the basic stuff and that will also help me when I am watching kdrama's because then I will be able to understand the common phrases.

I really liked the my first 500 words book because I kinda was doing something like that because it's good to learn more words as you go along and it seems like something you can do for like 30 mins a day and the book's really pretty. I love pink <33

The verbs books, I am really excited about that because I have started learning verbs but I feel as though those books will have a clearer explanations and more structure. I won't just be learning this and that like before and it's really pretty.

Those were the books in the beginners pack. I also got the TTIK Level 1, I think most people just buy that but I wanted to do more. I probably know maybe like 10% of whats in there but the book looks really user friendly and colorful and they also have sections where they have pictures of popular places in Korea and a little paragraph about Korea. I thought that was a nice extra touch to the books.

They have a workbook for the level 1 and I am going to write on it with a pencil, I don't really care about reselling them on ebay or anything. I haven't had a workbook since school so I am quite excited about learning with the books and that is one of my goals this is to reach the end of the year and to be able to understand Korean more confidently.

Let's do this, let's learn Korean!!!!!

Finally went to an interview & got a good response

Today is a good day and I can say that I am happy. I woke up and I got a call that after my interview last week Friday they wanted me to come in and do the work experience at the big travel agency.

YAYYYYYYYY!

Literally, after like so many interviews and being rejected so many times to actually go in and have an interview and for them to like me, it feels good and it shows me that I am slowly becoming less unemployable. 

Even though it is for work experience that will be for 8 weeks. It is a big company and if I am lucky they might ask me to stay for a permanent position but if they don't I will have a big company as a reference and I am actually excited about the work they will be doing as it will be something that I don't usually get to see on a normal day. 

Also, there was something with her handshake, when we met the handshake touched the tips of my hand, but when I was leaving she gave me a full handshake. But if you have been rejected so many times before I was convinced I hadn't gotten it, but apparently they really REALLY liked me. Ahh, let me just revel in this moment and on that part. They really REALLYYYYY liked me. Me: crying of joy as I type. 

Hopefully, I get along with the people there but I will have my best smile and try my hardest to be friendly with everyone. I have learnt alot of my previous work experiences that were not so great so here's to hoping that this one will be a great one. 

I am excited to be starting, it was like one door closed and another opened. 

All I know is that I am going to work hard and take this opportunity with both hands and do my absolute best. I am ready!!!!

I am also going to start revising for an AAT qualification. 2019, I am not going to waste the year like last year. 

2019: What I want to achieve

It's already 12 of January, time really flies. I don't want it to be 2020 and I am in the same place, unemployed and crying about it.

Career plan -

My plan for 2019 is too get a job, this can be anything. I just need to stop claiming.

I also want to complete my AAT qualifications this year.

This will all help me to become more likely to get into an accounting graduate scheme. I told myself that this will be the last year I will be applying for graduate schemes, if I fail this year then I will give up for good and accept that that is not the path for me.

Right now, I have an interview with a supermarket for a store assistant type of job. I know it's below wanting to become an accountant but I feel as though that experience will benefit me. My only issues is, will I be fit enough to do that type of job. or will I even get that type of job.

Also, I had an interview on friday for a work experience opportunity at a massive travel company. It will be for 8 weeks and after that I might not even get a job. In my heart, after going there I wasn't really interested, it seems like a place that wouldn't be a fit for me, they all seemed fake. But if I get it, I will go and see, it will look good on my CV and you never know.

But if I don't go I will go to the supermarket one, just so that I know if I would have gotten it or not. I can't deal with regrets in my life.

I will also buy some new AAT books, so that I have a fresh new start. I also want to see about Sage, I might call them to see what they say.

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Web development, I had a website and I created fansites for people, I was doing it for free, but I just got bored of it because I could create wordpress themes and there was no challenge even though I knew I still had a lot to learn so I opted to cancel everything and just stop that.

The goal of this year is to create a mobile blogger website and also a mobile app and get it live. I need to start working on that.

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Korean, I feel as though I have gone backwards, I am realising that learning a new language is like watering a plant if you stop it will die. I need to be more consistent with this.

I want to buy a korean book, maybe having something in person instead of on a computer will help me.

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I want to create a weight-loss blog. I am still thinking about it. I want it to document my experience but also to write little dribbles of life losing weight and stuff. I have been thinking about it and I feel as though this could also be something where I could end up with a career for. So, it's all still a thought process, will see.

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Stock trade, that is also something that I have thought about and this year I want to try it out and see if it something for me or not.

So, I will get some books first and then take it from there.

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A goal of 2019 is to be healthy and happy and give it my all. Don't stress unnecessarily.

2019 - Let's get it

Happy New Year, 2019 is the year, where good things will happen, I am putting it out there.


I have officially finished my work experience now well yesterday and I feel weird about it because I went into Christmas thinking I had atleast a few weeks to come back to, that I had something to look forward too and then when we went there was nothing to do and it was over.

I didn't have time to mentally prepare to the fact that it was over and now it's done. No more work experience, no more waking up in the morning and catching a bus. No more.

But I have to look at it as one door has closed, and now I am in a limbo state waiting for another door to open.

So, what do I want to do with my life now?

I am going to carry on applying for jobs, right now I just want anything so that I am not claiming anymore. I just need to do something even if it's retail or a dead-end job. I just need something. So, that is the first goal, to get a job.