Daily Chat: May 21st

Toto wrote: »

ok, I've just had a read. And I really can relate to it. You remind me a lot of me when I was your age. Actually you are a lot more in control than I was, I was a single mum to my son, living in a rented flat and struggling to make sense of all the directions I was making myself go in.

As I've said, like you I was a young mum. When I first had my son I was flat broke and was struggling to make ends meet. I didn't have debt, in those days it was a lot harder to come by, which I'm thankful for. But, one day as I spent an hour with my hand down the back of my tatty sofa trying to reach a 50p coin, enough to feed my son for the day, I had a little breakdown. This wasn't how I wanted our lives to be. I was bored, unstimulated, and becoming depressed with the rut. So, I made a plan.

That day, I bundled my boy into his buggy and walked 6 miles to the university. I had no idea what I wanted to do, I just wanted to do something other than what I was doing. I just had a vague idea that I'd do something which would become my career (and in a round about and totally random way i did). Choosing a course that day was pretty much like sticking a pin in a map. I didn't really have the confidence to think I could be good at anything, but I thought the social sciences sounded interesting so I informed the uni that I would be doing that and that they would be accepting me onto the course, there was no if or but about it, and if I would be starting the following month. The woman smiled at me and handed me a bunch of forms to take away, of course i filled them out there and then and handed them back. 3 days later with no interview I had a letter to say they had accepted me.

So, now I was a single skint mum and a student. In those days there was no tax credits or any real help. I had to apply for a small grant (which didn't even cover childcare) and I wasn't entitled to housing benefit because I was a student. There was no choice but to find a job which would pay for our day to day needs. I ended up having to work 3 jobs, I had a cleaning job in the mornings from 5 am and a bar job in the evenings. At weekends i worked in the student union bar working on stage, setting up the bands and doing lighting. My little lad came with me on the early morning cleaning and if I couldn't find a babysitter he would come with me at the weekends too. In all, I must have been sleeping no more than 4 hours a night and didn't have a day off in 3 years. Sometimes I would feel over the moon, full of life and hope, other days I felt like i wanted to vanish into a hole and never come out. It was all just too much.

Now, I started playing drums when I was around 7 and had always kept playing, just for pleasure really.

During the weekend when I was in the student union, I would set up the band kit and do the sound check. I used to sit there for an hour or more tuning and playing kit. It was my little escape. The bands loved it, the drummy always had a perfectly tuned kit and could just walk on stage and play. many times, the sound engineer would ask why I wasn't working full time as a musician. My answer, I don't really know how... I mean, I'm not really that good. I did start to feel the pull of the music department more and more though and started spending any spare time I had in the practice studios, just playing.

To cut a stupidly long story short, I was given a business card one day after a sound check and was told to give the guy a call, he ran an agency for session musicians and thought he might be able to get me a gig or two.... and I guess the rest is history.

But to get back to the point of this ramble. I spent 3 years of my sons life in chaos, my mood was up and down, I really didn't devote the time and attention to him which perhaps I should have done. He was either in nursery, with a babysitter or being dragged around between my jobs. And I knew it; I felt the guilt. Sometimes I look back over the years and think, god, I've not been a great parent to the kids, it got no better when the girls were born. By then I was a full time musician and they spent the first years of their lives being dragged from venue to venue, bus to bus. But i know I did the right thing.

What you are going through at the moment is the chaos chapter. You are finding your feet and trying to make a clear pathway to your future. I know you feel guilt because you maybe aren't devoting all of your attention to Ste and the girls, but I think you'll find they really don't mind. One day when you are 100 years old (like me) you'll look back and think, I'm glad I did what I did. Life before the chaos wasn't acceptable for you and wasn't your future. Don't forget you are teaching your kids that life is out there, but it doesn't come to you, you need to make sacrifices and work to go and grab what you want. That's a great lesson for them.

I don't know if any of that has helped at all, or even if you got to the end of this epic. But I hope you know that you aren't alone in feeling the ups and downs. Long term they didn't do me any harm.

Maz3374 wrote: »

Toto, i like the theory behind the chaos chapter........

IA, the woman is talking sense!

immoral_angeluk wrote: »

Thank you hun. I had no idea you had it so tough. :grouphug:

Toto wrote: »

The point wasn't for you to see that I had it tough, but rather that what you are going through is not unusual. You have to try and see this time as your family moving towards your goal. By all means rethink the things you are doing, if argos is too much then think about cutting that out. But you shouldn't take on the burdon of worrying about how ste isn't getting enough time, or other stuff which is out of your control.