Things I want my kids to know

Last week, we said goodbye to the kettle that I have had for 15 years. It had been coming for a while, but we decided it was finally time to let it go when we switched it on and all the lights went out in the kitchen.

I was a little bit surprised about how I felt when I took it out to be recycled. I found myself feeling surprisingly emotional.

I bought this kettle when I was 22, having just got my first therapy training job up in North Yorkshire. After leaving University I had come home and had been applying for these jobs once or twice a week all across the country for a full calendar year before I got an interview. In the meantime I had been working in a residential mental health unit as a healthcare assistant, which is one of the formative experiences of my life.

I had never lived on my own and I was desperate to try it, so I needed stuff – kettle, toaster, duvet, TV, plates and mugs etc - to kit out my very first flat (a tiny little thing in the attic of a townhouse, which had sloping ceilings so there was a very limited amount of space in which you could actually stand upright).

The first few months living in a seaside town and starting my training was wonderful, particularly because I had a friend there and people to hang around with, but when the Winter came and everybody left, I had a few months which were the loneliest I have ever been. It took me a while to realise it, but when I did, one of the things I did to lift myself up a bit was learning how to cook (assisted by the kettle). I made my first lasagne in that flat and I remember there was not enough counter space so I had to do some of the assembly on the floor. I still use that same recipe (it’s a belter to be fair).

I moved to York after a while, into a house share where I was much happier, and the kettle went into storage (AKA my mum’s house) for a bit. I settled into my job and loved the 1:1 work, even when I found the system I was working in frustrating.

It was at this point I became passionate about sharing what I was learning, because I was so annoyed that about the idea that we tend to wait until people are in a really bad place in order to talk about how they think and feel, which is what led me to take up an opportunity during this time to train as a coach as well, which was a major turning point for me: learning more about interesting and creative ways to help people think about things, gain confidence, find decisions that work for them. It made me a better therapist and it gave me further opportunities to then teach on the course, which I loved.

I wanted to move back to the midlands eventually because it was high time that my then-girlfriend-now-wife and I actually lived together. So, I started looking for jobs in the midlands and happened to come across a teaching job at a University. I took a punt on applying for it and actually got the thing. We rented our first flat together, and we used the kettle for our lazy morning coffee on the weekends.

I loved teaching but it was a challenging year because there was also the age-old story of a very problematic person in the system making it pretty miserable for everybody, so when the 1-year contract came to an end I was at a bit of a crossroads. I thought I might try something new, like doing a PhD (I liked the idea of being called “Dr Ted” but in reality that just isn’t for me, even if it had been on the cards), perhaps doing teacher training (I was sure I would have loved the teaching but I felt a bit intimidated by just how much work it would be), and even went for an interview as a sales coach for a car sales company (absolutely bizarre in hindsight, but I only really knew that when I parked up in my grandma’s old polo, looked around and thought “What am I doing here?”).

My clarity came when I was attending the retirement party of a family friend. For some reason it made me ask myself this question: “When I retire, how would I like to have spent my working life, in order to retire and feel content?” and my answer was simple, really:

I want to have helped someone in some way, and I don’t want to have spent all my time at work.

All of a sudden, my choice became a lot clearer. Even on the most frustrating days working in mental health services, I had always gone home at the end of the day feeling like someone’s day was a bit better as a result of me doing my job. I can’t quite describe to you what this gives me.

So, I went back into my old therapy job but for a different service, and I was very happy for a long time. During this time we found and bought our first house, and the kettle came with us. At some point a team leader position came up. I applied for it but mid-interview I realised I really didn’t want it (my boss told me that she could tell, which made me laugh). It was only then that I realised that I wanted to stay doing as much of the actual 1:1 work as I could, so I decided to do my “full” CBT training, which was something I had previously thought of as way too intense for my liking.

It was intense, but it was one of the best things I have ever done. I thought I knew therapy, really, but I learned so much more, I got so much better and I made some very close friends. A few months into the course, we had our first child, so the kettle moved first to hot-water-bottle prep for uncomfortable pregnancy moments, then to sterilising and bottle-preparing.

I was happy where I was, and having a job I could go to, enjoy and come home and put aside while I focused on being a new parent was invaluable. The kettle made a cups of tea for midwives (and possibly for the paramedic who came when our second was born at home on the bathroom floor).

It stayed with us when I was offered another role at the University and I took it because I felt I had to give it a go, even though in my gut I was pretty sure I would find it frustrating again. I was right, I loved the teaching but found the job very stressful, so when I was offered another role with the coaching company I trained with, I had to take it.

I happened to start the job just before our third was born, so I went on paternity leave a couple of weeks in, which also happened to be just as the first COVID lockdown hit. It was an intense year where we also moved house again. I learned a lot and made wonderful friends, but for some reason I wasn’t particularly happy. It was very confusing because on paper it was an excellent job, but the conclusion I came to was that really, I just wanted to do my 1:1 work and I missed it.

So, after a year, I spoke to my bosses and they were so blooming helpful about the whole thing, and I took the decision to take a leap and go self-employed. That was only an option for me because during COVID we had all got used to doing Zoom, so actually I could set up to do all my stuff online and I wouldn’t have to rent an office, which just wouldn’t have been possible previously.

I started out mostly working for agencies, but I had made a promise to myself that I would also start doing what I wanted to do all those years before: share the stuff I had been taught. That is what got me going sharing my little videos. Nothing really happened for a while, and then at one point one of them just blew up. It was one I had no idea anybody would care about - one about place mats on our kitchen table – but there you go.

So, in my walk down the driveway to take the kettle out to be collected for our local small-electricals recycling service, this had all run through my head.

The thing I wanted to share here, really, was that when I bought that kettle, I thought I had a career path laid out in front of me and I would just follow it, but really you just don’t know what is going to come up, and you often can’t tell what is right or wrong for you until you give it a go. Life might look like a straight line, but it's not. That’s what I would want my kids to know.

Well, that and: replace your kettle before it gets to the stage where it trips all the electrics in your kitchen.

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Thanks for reading. Until next week,

Ted

P.S. The toaster is still going.