Long Time No See

It has been a strange few months due to COVID-19 and I am pretty sure we are all fed up of hearing about it. It is definitely going to be the global excuse of the century. However, you may been thinking “Donna, you have been gone for two years, not 4 months”. This is true and part of my return to this site is to give you a bit more insight into the why of that and how COVID-19 has actually changed my current life for the better.

Faerydae Stitches isn’t my own venture. In fact, as many of you know, I have a full time job as a demand planner. I love my job… genuinely. From the outside it looks like a role that is never appreciated and involves staring at spreadsheet all day. Largely that is true. Demand Planning involves looking at sales, current inventory, customer behavior, sales expectations and external trends, then mixing this altogether to predict how much stock you need and ensuring it arrives at the time it is needed. The perfect solution is the stock leaves the warehouse or store days after arriving. If you work for someone like Tesco you are hoping for hours. Despite all the data, we as humans like to test the limits of demand planners and just do whatever we like regardless of what some forecast says. It’s the working out the why and using the new information to make predictions, that makes my job so exciting. I love spreadsheets and colour coding, planning for the future and making continuous updates to include more data. I am never 100% right and that just makes me want to know more.

Customers make my life extremely hard but they are also the reason my job is so interesting.

Back at the end of 2018 my job got EXTREMELY interesting. I was working 50-70 hours per week whilst commuting 3-4 hours per day (and those were the good days that GWR didn’t decide to close down trains leaving Paddington). As you can imagine Faerydae Stitches took a back seat. In January 2019 I was allowed to hire someone to assist me but it took us until March to hire her then she had a month’s notice. I had a week’s annual leave at Easter and she was due to start the following Monday.

The Thursday before heading back to the office, my personal life took a curve ball (no rest for the creative, right?). Via email, my husband told me that she actually identifies as a woman and felt her actual name should be Emily. She had been sitting on this news for 12 months. To say it hit me like a truck would be an understatement. So back to work I went with this 4 day old news, not being able to talk about it because Emily didn’t wish to be public, to train a new starter, and catch up from a week off. I cried every time I was away from the public eye for 4 weeks maybe longer. When I finally told them, work gave me some extra days working from home and resources to turn to if I should need to. Well, by June I couldn’t cope and I fell apart, despite having a weekly counselling session with Emily to help us work through all the changes. I had to take two weeks off sick. I had to increase my anxiety medication too. However, I discovered Junk Journalling and Mixed Media Art during these two weeks

Emily came out in September, then all of a sudden it was Christmas and it was the first time we had to navigate the holidays without seeing Emily’s family, who all had previously booked to have Christmas elsewhere (unconnected to Emily’s transition). It made it a very strange year for us because we are used to celebrating with two big families and scheduling them all in to a week period that we are in Cornwall. During this time I was permanently exhausted. Myself and my GP just put this down to long commutes, long days at work in front of a screen, my anxiety and my need to be constantly productive. At weekends I would spend at least 12 hours out of 24 in bed, unable to sleep deeply, but unable to stay awake and have the energy I needed to be creative. I was still working from home 2 days a week and Emily was fantastic about holding the fort where Xander (our son) was concerned. When I was creative I was turning to the quick pursuits of journal making and mixed media. I didn’t have to plan, buy supplies or worry about being focused to remain accurate.

I am a huge fan of new years resolutions and approaching 2020 was no different especially because I wanted to get back to being my early bird, productive and creative self. I produced a list of 20 goals for 2020. I will share those with you all in another post and how I am getting along with them in this year of isolation.

When COVID-19 showed its appearance in the UK I was watching the news everyday, and even had BBC’s live coverage permanently in a browser tab so I could check for updates. In the middle of March, my company made the decision to send us home to work for the duration of the pandemic, then a week later, my son’s school did the same. Emily and I, then had to juggle working full time whilst home schooling our recently 6 year old. Needless to say, that we, like many others, felt like fish drowning out of water, especially because my extreme fatigue was not going anywhere. No commute, no customers purchasing stock (due to lockdown) and yet I still struggled to cope with 12 hours sleep and regular breaks.

In June I rang the Doctors and we ran a bunch of tests. Wooo, finally something I can do something about. Results revealed I was deficent in Folates, vitamin D and HDL’s, plus I was pre-diabetic. More medication and some dietary changes and finally 4 weeks later I am naturally waking up feeling refreshed after 8 hours sleep. Yay!!! I can be creative again (and I really have been this week… more on that in a later post).

Now, what does this have to do with you and my blog you may ask. Well, if you got this far then I think you will be interested in the fact that Faerydae Stitches is not going to be purely about quilting. In fact, over the last 2 years I have felt that I want to share more of myself in my blog and show you the behind the scenes. Topics to include: Quilting, Journalling, Mixed Media, Productivity, Goals, Transitioning with Emily, Books, Inspiration, and much more. If it keeps me creating, I want to share it with you.

Thanks for being with me on this journey and I will be with you again on Saturday.