What shall I do with my life now? (Part B)

I just read my last blog (what shall I do with my life now part a) and it was a lot about Christmas and not a lot about "what I should do with my life" so apologies if I deceived you into reading that. I think the conclusion was that I want a calmer 2023 with no major life changes, but I'm not sure what to do job wise.

Until now I've not been focused on getting a job, and I'm still not really looking right now, but this year I need to get a job. I'm not really that employable even in the UK, and although I have had loads of different jobs, I've never had a full time pays monthly job. 

I hate being asked for a CV. Words without humour is my least favourite way of expressing myself. I much prefer proving myself by showing someone a load of photos of stuff I made. I wish employers were more creative in the way they asked for this info e.g "Lovely to meet you, could you please tell me about your working history through the medium of dance"

Here's my honest CV:

Qualifications

Some GCSEs, mainly Bs.

A weird selection of A-Levels: Art (A), Psychology (B), Business (C) and AS Chemistry (E). Really I wanted to do drama but it didn't fit with art and psychology, so I got round this by doing my business presentations with sock puppets at every available opportunity. I did accents and everything.

Foundation art course - Merit.

Fine Art BA - just scraped a 2:1, I had a great time though.

Post Graduate Diploma in "Children and Young People in Society". This is what it's called if you do two thirds of a Masters degree and then quit because you can't be bothered to write a dissertation. I tried to write a dissertation about the links between dyslexia and creativity. I had to do an original piece of research, but then I was told that you can't measure creativity, and I am dyslexic, and we are actually the natural enemies of academic writing. I don't need to prove the link to those nerds anyway, I know it. Half my art course were dyslexic.  All the cool kids are. 

Working History

I've done all the bad teenage and student jobs you can think of, except a paper round. Then after uni I got a job working with naughty kids part time and a job sitting in a gallery part time. I was pretty good at both of them. It's hard to be bad at sitting on a chair all day. I was resourceful with the long amounts of time I had doing nothing though. I read a bit, I started writing letters to old friends, I invented some secret games that I tried to play with other information assistants and I started this blog. I think I'd cope pretty well in prison.

Then I went self-employed, which was pretty similar to being unemployed at first, but then did become a genuine thing. A school once asked me if I could do mosaics so I said "yes" because it seemed like the answer they wanted to hear. I watched a youtube video on making mosaics, and then I just blagged it. And it went well! I started doing them all over the place. It was my most popular project, until I made a spelling mistake on a massive one worth £2000. And then a couple turned out to be not very waterproof and fell apart. But the majority of people were genuinely happy and the majority of kids did not cut themselves when they were cutting the glass tiles.

After the mistake was fixed.

I did comedy, too and I was mainly good at it. I mean not every time, there was the time when an audience member told me I was shit and the promoter who had given me a trial spot, followed that up with an email confirming it was true. But there were some good ones too, I even won a competition once. I bet I'm the only comedian to dress as the virgin Mary for a Christmas special, complete with a pregnant bump containing a doll and an edible placenta.

Strengths

Including people, making community.

Coming up with fun games and challenges.

Making things out of cardboard boxes.

Jokes and banter.

Knowing what Liverpool postcodes relate to what areas.

Mixing the exact right paint colour, without even mixing as I go. 

Understanding conceptual similarities - I'm in the more than 99.9 percentile for this, it was measured on my dyslexia test. It means I'm good at making links, but how can I monetise this useless skill?

Being different: want to meet someone who likes to hold a three day festival in their garden? Or tried to teach strangers to dance the YMCA using the Arabic letters? Or went through the McDonald's drive through in a supermarket trolly? Or dislocated their elbow falling off a unicycle? Or cycled to Kuwait. HI.

Weaknesses.

Spelling.

Admin.

Technology.

Parking.

Long division.

anything before 9am.

The End

If you think of the job thats perfect for my skillset, please let me know!

I did love doing art workshops, it was pretty much my dream job. It's fun to make big bits of art and it's lovely when kids are enthusiastic about it, which they generally are. It took so long to get to the point where I had loads of work and schools were contacting me and I could actually be a bit picky about what I wanted to do. It was pretty gutting to then just leave and tell everyone, "sorry I can't do that project." I also was so lucky to get to be a comedian for a bit. I never made big money but when it went well, regardless of money, it was amazing. I think I get much higher highs and lower lows doing comedy compared to art. I feel like art has been a constant throughout my life, a thing I usually really like doing, but it can't ever quite give me that same buzz that doing well in comedy can do. 

So what should I do now? After 100 hours of lessons I've just passed my A1 French which is quite basic, but I can now move onto A2 which means learning how to speak in the past and future tenses. So I still need time for that, and I still have to look after the kids when they're not in school on Wednesdays. I need to do something for money, and I'd like to do something creative, but they don't have to be the same thing. Like, I'm quite happy to get a low skilled, low paid job like cleaning or babysitting, and make time for painting or comedy writing. I could put together another hour long show to do somewhere in a years time for example.

I'm actually going to be doing some writing for a French expat magazine soon, 1500 words about our moving experience. I've never written for anything but this blog before. I also started a TikTok last week, it's probably the sign of a midlife crisis. I've made 3 videos about being in France. The first was deemed too long and silent by strangers and my own children. It was one minute and 8 seconds long and it did contain a big chunk of silence, while showing lots of different views of my commute; the beautiful mountains, the train arriving and my cycle through town. I think a minute's silence is sometimes nice but then I am an old person now. My video on 5 differences between English and French schools has gone down well though. The bit where Eric dressed as a king for a nativity play, throws off his crown in disgust at the fact religion is not allowed in schools was my favourite. He looked so angry, either because he's a brilliant actor or because that was the fourth take and he really was mad. Tell me what other videos I should make about France, I'm planning at least one in a supermarket, and one about things I didn't know before I moved here. On TikTok I am @foreigninfrance.

But back to jobs. The other option is becoming an auto entrepreneur, which is being self-employed. I was self-employed in England and I like that way of working and I understand the system, but I don't think I would like it here. They are very restrictive about what you can do. In England my business was "community artist" which is basically anything I want it to be, mainly school art workshops but when I did comedy or anything else random I just put it all in there as community art. But the French system is more strict. You can only be one thing e.g. you can't just be a general builder/handyman, you have to be a registered plumber or plasterer or whatever. I think this is a stupid law and encourages people to do little jobs on the side for cash. There's a few things I've thought of doing here, the most obvious one is to try and do the art thing I did in Britain, but I don't know enough French yet and I don't know how the school system works and I really don't want to fill in a French tax return. Another self-employed idea I had was managing peoples holiday houses, like cleaning, changing the sheets, being around to give people keys, but the busiest time would be the summer holidays when the kids are off school.

I also have considered teaching English. At first it was annoying when I told people I was moving to France and they said "I know, you can teach English!" as if being born English is the only skill you need to teach English. Since I've been learning French though, I've had more of an appreciation for what makes a good teacher and a good lesson and I do find the language learning process interesting.  I'd love to teach kids in an informal after school fun club. Like with games and stuff. Eric's best buddy at school has asked to go to English lessons so he can speak to Eric and for Christmas he got a subscription to an English magazine. How cute is that?! That's the kind of kid I'd love to teach.

The view of the snowy Canigou out of our bedroom window.

P.s Dan did a half marathon up the mountains in deep snow yesterday, he's training for the Paris marathon in April.

What shall I do with my life now? (part a)

Welcome to 2023 everyone, I'm glad you all made it this far in life. It's been a tough few years so give yourself a pat on the back. We are just back from two weeks in dreary old England, with our dreary old families. Just kidding, it was great to see the family, especially Dan's brother Josh who secretly flew back from Korea so he could surprise his parents. He had to endure 21 hours in Dubai without a hotel just wandering round trying to sleep in cinemas, so that he could be with them for just four days after not having seen them for three years.

The 5 Jones siblings

When I got off the plane and walked into the airport I realised I must have a hole in my shoe because my foot was a bit wet. I've been wearing these shoes since I moved to France and had never noticed before, because it virtually never rains. In some ways being back felt very familiar, like we'd never left, but Christmas is not the same when you don't have your own house and your own car and the independence to do what you like. You don't get that break between seeing big groups of people. We didn't get to see everyone we wanted to see, and most of the time we were all sleeping in one room together.  We are super grateful to our parents for putting us up and lending us a car so we could visit other people, but we're gradually getting used to the fact that we did actually make a pretty big life change, and it effects the whole family and Christmas dynamics.

The obligatory Christmas dinner photo where you can't quite get everyone in.

Marshall Christmas

Cousins on Dan's side.

One highlight of being back was taking the kids back to their old school on the last day of term, so they could see their old classmates. When Percy walked into his class they all shouted "Percy" and ran to hug him. They both showed a little powerpoint of photos, and the kids got to ask a few questions. We had a playdate with my school run crew, which was lovely. We saw a panto and we saw the new Matilda film at the cinema. And we went to the dentist because I'm trying to get everything possible from the NHS while I can.

I tried to get a smear test too but they wouldn't let me. I meant to go on 10th Jan, (I have to go every year because of having cervical cancer once) but I'm back in France now, and they won't let me just go when I'm in England in August because being that late looks bad on their records. So now I'm going to have to figure out French smear tests. As if a smear tests isn't embarrassing enough as it is, do I really have to do it all in a language I'm an idiot in as well?!

After a few nice days of seeing lots of people before Christmas, I got ill and stayed ill for the rest of my time. Mainly with bad headaches. Thursday was the first day I felt normal again. I was gutted to have to cancel our new year plans with Zac and Jude. They are the family who were going to visit in the summer but their plans were ruined by chicken pox. We still met them in Delamere forest for a bit, but it wasn't the full house party shenanigans we had planned.

Arriving back in France (via Barcelona) felt good. It would have felt better if it wasn't 1am on a school night, but it did feel like coming home. The next morning was tough, I was still a bit ill and had to be at French lessons and the kids were in school. I really can't remember making the decision that a flight that got in so late was a good idea, but there must have been a reason. The following day was great though it was a Wednesday so no school and no French lessons. The kids played with their new Christmas lego and we all enjoyed being back in the sun. It's still cold in the morning and evening, but the quality of light is just beautiful. it's virtually never grey or rainy and for a good few hours around the middle of the day it's really warm. We sat outside to eat lunch almost needing suntan lotion. The feeling of the sun on my face is such a lovely restful thing. I don't know if maybe I had seasonal affective disorder but I definitely craved the summer months and Dan did too. Every winter we'd dream about moving somewhere, and we did! I can finally say we fixed that problem in our lives. Unfortunately while fixing that problem some more problems that we didn't have previously have arisen:

1) I have left my art job that I loved and can't easily earn money.

2) I was slowly making my way up in the comedy circuit and now I can't do any of that.

3) There's a big imbalance between me and Dan now where he has to do 90% of the admin for four people because he speaks French.

4) Our house is smaller than before and although it is a nice house I miss having a bath and more rooms.

5) I'm 1000 miles away from all my friends and family.

But hey, you can't feel down about those things when you have beautiful mountains to look at.

This is the view a few minutes from my house that I cycle past most days.

I don't I regret the France move, if we hadn't moved I would have always wondered what could have happened. But I really didn't think it through that much. At first I thought we could just go for a year and come back if we didn't like it. But even before we moved I realised that was a stupid idea. Now that we are 8 months into that year I realise how completely stupid it would be to move back in April. Firstly our old house would not be available until the summer. Then I know the kids school places have already been taken by other kids. We sold all our furniture and our car. We're not even all the way through what we have to do document wise. e.g we stopped getting UK child benefit ages ago but we're still waiting to be on the French system and hoping to get some back dated French child benefit soon. The kids wouldn't remember much French at all as adults if we went back now. We decided to be here for three years minimum, but we didn't ever consider what if one person wants to go back then and the others don't. I find it hard to imagine any scenario for 5 or 10 years time. The idea of still being here seems weird but the idea of moving back also feels pretty weird. I guess we could always be somewhere else that isn't Liverpool or Perpignan but that seems a bit pointless too.

I don't know what this year will hold, which is sort of exciting. After changing our whole lives in 2022 I hope for a calmer 2023. My resolutions are to not move house or move country or have a baby. I would however love to be at least a bit further on the journey of deciding what to do now. At the moment I am pretty busy doing French lessons for 3 full days a week and then I have the kids on Wednesdays, so I don't have much free time, but when my French is better I need to start looking for a job and a purpose in life. Let me know your suggestions, I need all the help I can get.

I've got more things to write about this but I will write them another day.