Downsizing the business was painful but also allowed me to think more widely again. Apart from me, the business now has one AP (we peaked at 3), 15 hours of admin and 7 of operational management. A new qualified CP is starting for 8 hours per week to pick up some direct therapy work, and will increase over time to take on some LAC work. I’m doing one day per month of consultancy and training to a regional LAC project, and I’ve cut down the court work a little. I have some ideas about potential research bids, though I’m currently lacking the energy to write them after a series of knock-backs. I am however developing some technical projects (an app and a website based tool) and hoping to pay someone to do the social media stuff that has lapsed.

However I am also looking more seriously at NHS and academic posts (to see if I can find something super-inspiring that would fit within the 9-5 in a location that we like), and exploring other options in terms of personal development to address my workaholism and get more balance in my life. I want to find time to be creative, have a social life, do fun stuff, and self-care, as well as work and family time. I love CP, but it can’t be my whole life with the kids and my husband just squeezed into a corner.

Update: The big news is that I’ve been offered an NHS job again, in Scotland where the landscape is glorious and the NHS less massacred, so have to figure out whether I want to take it. I’m a bit overwhelmed with the decision as the two options feel very hard to compare.

The NHS job would be a return to 9-5 which is fewer hours, but less flexibly arranged. The salary is lower than my current earnings, but it would also offer the NHS pension and protection of sick pay. It seems like a lovely service with a wide remit and a focus on quality, and would bring me into contact with lots of other professionals. I’d also have scope to do some research as well as my committee commitments, in paid time. The work would be more varied and less grim. And I’d be paid a salary and not have to invoice, haggle and chase overdue amounts. However relocating is a big unknown. It will be expensive and stressful, and I don’t know what my other half would do for work. Plus I’d be less well connected geographically and need to learn about a new culture/locality. The winters are also darker and colder. But I might enjoy doing up a new home or self-building, and we’d be able to choose to live in the catchment of a good school and have a good quality of life, and Scottish people are generally friendly and pragmatic.

Continuing my current role involves loads of work but arranged much more flexibly. It can earn more, but that is dependent on what I do and how reliably I invoice and chase up the money (though I might be able to employ someone to take this on or delegate more of it to my operational manager). I don’t have the same protection of pension or sick pay, but I do try to invest and I don’t get ill much. The majority of my earnings come from court work which is very heavy material, and all my extra-curricular stuff (committees, research, writing bids, peer supervision, reading, CPD) is in unpaid time. I’ve not been successful in securing funding for clinical or research projects. But I’m well known and well located, and good at what I do, plus I enjoy the challenge and rigour of the court work. Its also less hassle to stay where we are, though we don’t have much of a social network locally and being the boss of a small company is quite isolating. We are not super keen on our locality here, as it is bland and flat, but it is very convenient with every supermarket within a few miles, a gym with childcare down the road, and the motorway and rail links on hand. Plus recently I’ve had a good run of speaking at events, offering training and consultancy within this region or easy travel range. I’m also loathe to lose the company I’ve built up over many years (though I could potentially keep it open without being directly involved myself) and my husband has a job here that fits in school hours – though there is some reorganisation going on that might threaten that.

I feel very spoilt having the choice. Deciding seems like a “first world problem” of the highest order. Its a decision between two good options, and we are very lucky to also be financially secure enough to choose to do neither of them – I could take a year out and be an at home mum or do a PhD and we’d still have a home to live in and food on the table due to my husband’s salary covering our modest living expenses. On this wonderful reminder of where we stand in the world we are in the top 1% for income and top 2% for assets, which is a pretty stark reminder of how many people cannot take this stuff for granted.

I sat down with my husband over the weekend to look at our goals and dreams, and it seems they relate rather little to what work we do! Here they are:

– have more physical and emotional energy for the kids
– have more leisure time to read, grow veg (M), do creative stuff (M) and play video games (T)
– get strong and healthy (M&T) and play football (T)
– get a social life (M)
– get rid of accumulated stuff that isn’t meaningful
– increase retirement income/passive sources of income
– take more holidays, including at least one chance to dive/snorkel per year (M)
– build or renovate a dream house
– make video games (T) and a work related app (M)
– complete my study of risk and resilience in adoption, and use the BERRI measure to look at outcomes for young people in residential care, influencing practise to improve life for LAAC and writing another book, some papers and perhaps get a visiting academic role.

If I stay here I need to delegate all the operational management and financial stuff I don’t like, and start to share the court work with a colleague, so I work less from home. In short – improve quality of life and social connectedness by reducing work and gaining leisure time/energy, and focus the work I’m doing on improving the knowledge base and consulting/training more.

Last night it felt like these would be best achieved by moving to Scotland. This morning like I’d rather build on what I’ve started here. But its good to have identified goals at least, as that means positive change wherever we are!

Outcome: I declined the job in Scotland.

I had been worried about what it would mean for my husband, moving away from my family, losing my total autonomy and letting down the people I employ. Plus I was concerned that it was more a fantasy of a different life than the reality of this particular post that attracted me. Speaking to the previous post-holder sealed the deal. She reminded me of all the problems I had left behind. I’ve always hated inter-profession politics and being stuck in middle management where the needs of the workers and clients are opposed to the targets of the folk at the top would be my idea of hell. Plus it would be a huge upheaval/expense and I didn’t know how we’d cope with the darker/colder winters.

I am now thinking I need to change my own barriers to having a better work life balance, rather than thinking that will only come with a change of my role or geographical location. Interestingly it reinforced my recurrent theme of wanting choice but not taking it. It also made me think again about my seemingly disparate motivations of ‘doing good for humanity’ by improving knowledge and practise and through this increasing quality of life for others (my hippy goals) and having ‘success’ in the form of autonomy, influence, status and quality of life (my yuppie goals). The challenge is how to achieve these things from here. The TEDx event I went to yesterday was inspiring in that regard, looking at ‘generosity, greed and the greater good’. It made me feel like I need to find a way to fund my grand plan to improve the quality of life for LAAC.