All change

I had intended, following my introduction post, to try to write something every couple of days, however, life has had other ideas and now it looks like it will be drastically changing, hopefully for the better!

It started at the beginning of the month when my mum was given notice to leave her rented house of nearly a decade, the landlords are moving back from abroad. Now my mum is my rock and often dedicates her time to help me with the business (breeding rare breed chickens), which has me frequently working long hours. She's been looking into houses in the area as she says she worries about me and she's also going to college locally to become a counsellor (she's already a volunteer counsellor for cruse bereavement care and is very good, I'm sure she's going to make an excellent career out of this new course!).

Unfortunately just over a week ago my grandad (mum's dad) was rushed into hospital with sepsis and a pulse of 20 beats a minute. He was not expected to have any chance of survival but amazingly he's pulled through, albeit for what one of the doctors called an "altered mental state" for a few days due to lack of oxygen to his brain, apparently he has a 27 year old girlfriend called Simone, they're getting married but they haven't told her father yet AND he's just discovered she already has a child! So he's now had a pacemaker fitted to make sure he can keep up with Simone- haha!! Anyway he's home now and back to his normal self (I hope he let Simone down gently?!), it's simply miraculous and a credit to the doctors who saved him that he's home. However this does mean that Mum will now be moving down to the new forest to live with him, something he's been hoping she'd do for quite a while as he's been so lonely, and I suspect, pretty unhappy since my Grandma passed away in 2016. I have to admit I'm a tiny bit jealous... it's a beautiful house and area.

But this does change things for me, my support will be gone and I've come to the conclusion the business has simply gotten too big for one person, especially one who started it because of health problems so I could have a more flexible job. I don't think I've worked less than an 60 hour week for over a month and it's starting to get the better of me, as scary as it is I have someone coming to value the business tomorrow and all being well I'll be selling up and moving on to something new. Mum has been concerned over this decision but the fact that I know she will be able to move without feeling guilty that she's leaving me behind while I'm struggling has made my mind up for me. These last few weeks have also thrown into sharp focus that money/job is one thing but people are only here once, at the moment I hardly see anyone and I haven't seen my other Grandma for nearly a year. I have no idea yet what I'll do next, maybe some books on chickens/ online poultry courses, but I do know that having more time for family and friends will be so worth the change of career! In the meantime... does anyone have any tips or advice on selling a small business? Or perhaps ideas for what to do with my life, maybe one of you would like to become a rare breed chicken farmer haha!

Till the next time.

Charotte