It will always bother me, although I have kept it tucked deep inside from most folks, it has now raised bigger and started bothering me, I do know why.
It’s approaching 20 years, 20 years since I achieved something I were so proud of. Okay this is simply a qualification, so below my all time achievement of becoming a dad! Though I did work hard for it. I left school at 15 – three months before I turned 16.
Missing loads out here…
In the later 1990’s I decided to start re-educating, a 1 year B-Tec first? in electrical and mechanical engineering, another year doing what I classed as a bridging ONC qualification in materials and then onto a 2 year HNC in Technology and Management. During this four years I achieved some decent job progression through three companies, I were trying to accelerate myself.
During the first year on the HNC I were super pleased to get a job at a company Hurel – Dubois, Burnley, huge thanks to them especially M.W. My project titled ‘Managing Change’ went down huge with the course management through the Leeds Metropolitan University, all part time day release though sponsored by Hurel.
I then applied to do a Masters through the Open University, this was Management and Technology, it were based more towards management, again Hurel sponsored me, this were late 2001 to early 2002, however, for the previous few months I had heard some certain things about my then ‘teacher’ wife, at the same time I had started to have various unwell ‘attacks’ probably anxiety though without doubt my Sarcoidosis was active.
The first unit of the Masters was actually going quite well, I were averaging something like 65%, this is pretty good despite rumblings going on within my marriage. The exam for that unit took place, I got about 27% OU asked various stuff, though I never told them. The Masters came to an abrupt halt.
Loads missed out here…
Did I fuck up? The marriage collapsed, I had a great job with loads of support, I bought a house I should never have bought, it were cheap and not far from where ‘we’ lived so I were thinking about contact with my sons. As I learned, contact became terrible, one Friday and Saturday night in two (I’m not feeling great typing this) and a few hours after school on a Wednesday. Anyone complaining about children can now fuck right off you cunts.
Phew, after all these years I’m simply saying, I could have bought a nice house lets say in Addingham near where I now am. My job had a finish time on Fridays of 1pm though many managers stayed a bit longer to catch up, yet meaning picking up my sons from school would not have been a problem.
I could have booked almost every other Monday morning off from work as holidays, only 13 days in total. This would have made Sunday to Monday much more manageable as and when required with my sons. This still left me with about 4 weeks holiday.
Instead I allowed myself to collapse, this is probably one of the reasons to my situation of circumstances now.
I did fuck up and it’s now started to really bother me, as said I do know why and I just can’t help that. If I had got into doing what I did best at work and worked hard and listened to some folks at Hurel, I believe I would have got somewhat balanced and it could have been a great career…
This is yet another one of the many reasons I just keep hold of times gone by, they can be buried but always return.
Believing I could have done far better for my sons.
