Hi lovelies! I thought I'd do a bit of a chatty post today as I feel like a bit of a ramble and sometimes my blog becomes my online diary. As we're now officially in December (what), I've been getting all reflective, (as I do every year) and have been thinking a lot about decisions. Good ones, bad ones, ones I've made recently, earlier this year and even further back than that. But more than that, I've been thinking about how glad I am that I made each and every one of them.

To put you in the picture a little bit, I'm a massively impulsive person. I make snap decisions and run with them, I dive head first into everything I do and when I get an idea in my head, I want it done yesterday. My impulsiveness is both one of my best features as well as one of my biggest flaws. In some ways, it's a good thing, sometimes I'll decide one night that I want a night out, or a day in another city or to dip dye my hair pink. Other times, it means I don't think very hard about big decisions. However, I'm a true believer that everything happens for a reason and every single decision you make, even the wrong ones are still the right ones, because they shape you into the person you are to become (unless you decide to do something massively illegal or dangerous, then it's probably just wrong).

This year has been acrazyyear for me. I've probably made more mistakes this year than any other in my life. These weren't earth shattering, life ruining mistakes, but pretty life changing in some ways, which sounds more dramatic than I'm meaning it to! This year, I started a job in a salon, which was great at first as it was my first real beauty therapy job, but after a while, I realised I wasn't really being treated as I should be and one day, my boss had a go at me for something ridiculous for the last time and I made a very quick decision to leave. I applied to every single beauty job within two hours of where I lived and within a week I landed a job in London and quit. However, even though it was a relief to get out of the salon, the job in London (which was with a pretty big company, some of you may know already, but I won't name names), which had sounded so fantastic at the interview turned out to be a非常different story. Basically, within three weeks of working there, my anxiety, which until then had been incredibly mild had gotten really bad, I was having panic attacks and honestly felt like half the person I used to be. I'd gone from one toxic job right into another and it seriously made me feel awful. The hours were long and ridiculous, I wasn't getting home until gone 11pm some nights, I was missing out on nights out and family things due to having no weekends or free time to speak of and it was all just generally pretty crappy!

我觉得这都是我的错。我女as kicking myself for rushing into yet another job I hated and not thinking it over before I accepted it, so then I made a pretty scary decision. I decided to quit that job too, with no back up job this time. For the first time since I was 15, I was completely unemployed. So, I threw myself into freelance beauty therapy and freelance blogging. However, after a couple of weeks, I realised that as much as I love my own company, working at homeallday with no one to talk to but the odd beauty client or back and forth emails with PR people and freelance writing agencies just wasn't for me. So I madeanotherdecision to try something new. After searching for work in beauty therapy for a while, I realised I didn't really want to go back into another salon. I love beauty, but salons often mean working weekends and in previous jobs, I'd missed out on a lot of friends/ family/ Darren time due to funny hours. So, without too much thought I applied for an apprenticeship with a kids club, working mornings and late afternoons in a primary school, while studying for an NVQ in child development. It's something I'd never properly considered before, but I just felt like a complete change. It was a total risk as I didn't really expect to go back to studying and it was a complete career change, but I couldn't be happier. Almost everyone I know was really surprised when I told them, as it's not something I'd ever told them I'd been interested in before, but I absolutely adore working with children. As much as I love beauty (which I haven't abandoned, I still freelance at home!), I honestly feel like there's nothing more rewarding than feeling as though you might have even the tiniest impact on a child's development.

I feel as though I've given you all my life story in this post, which I didn't intend to, but as I said, this blog has become my online diary and sometimes, you just need a good old ramble! Basically, the point of this post was to say that sometimes, snap decisions and big life changes can be a good thing. If you ever find yourself in a place where you're unhappy with something, be it work or otherwise, life is just far too short to not do something about it. Trying new things can be scary and sometimes they won't work out, but you'll learn from that and move on. Sometimes though, itdoeswork out and there's honestly no better feeling.