How’s it all going in Cornwall, Claire?

Photo by Monika Kubala on Unsplash

This is the question most people ask. To understand if it’s really possible to live the dream.

So here goes:

2017: Girl quits London marketing job (I’m still hanging onto Girl even though I’m forty-something)

Girl meets Cornwall Boy (On a dating app. It works, folks!)

Girl goes to Bali for a month (Bliss)

Girl sets up freelance marketing consultancy business and lives between London and Cornwall (Happy days)

Boy and Girl want to be together all the time (Aww…)

Girl moves out of London and lives happily ever after in Cornwall with Boy, where they walk hand in hand on the beach and eat delicious food forever more (He’s a chef)

Is this the story? Well yes, it is. But here are the other chapters....

2018: Girl gets to Cornwall and Boy has to close down restaurant business (Bugger)

2019: Girl panics and takes a marketing job in Plymouth which involves a 4-hour commute each day (Not fun)

Boy finds a shiny new job (Yay!)

Girl and job don’t work out so she’s not sure what to do next (Hmm, this isn’t going to plan)

Girl finds new job with a brand agency which is 10 mins from home (Yay!)

2020: Boy is let go from new job (Shitballs)

There’s a global pandemic (Mega shitballs)

Boy takes each day as it comes and Girl worries a lot (Damn you, anxiety)

Boy has moped accident and Girl is full-time nurse for 2 weeks (Ouch)

Global pandemic is much worse than we thought (When will this shit be over?)

Girl is let go from new job due to Covid. Girl works on Plan B (See below)

Boy doesn’t work for a year but finally finds a new job (Thank god)

What's the moral of the story?

I’ve learnt that life changes can be messy. Exciting and invigorating, but also multi-layered, tough and unpredictable. But mostly, I’ve realised that it’s a step-by-step process, one that has its peaks and troughs; a process where I’ve got to know myself much better, warts and all. A real mixture of “ah-ha” and “uh-oh” moments.

I’m also grateful. Grateful for the opportunities and situations that have presented themselves since I took the leap, both personally and professionally. Grateful for the support of loved ones. Grateful for the downtime I’ve enjoyed in the last few years (most of it unplanned), allowing me to take a breath, pause for a moment and re-evaluate. And hang out with the Boy.

But hell, there been many moments of sheer terror. Lying awake and wondering what on earth to do next. Worrying about money. Having no stability. Wondering if I made the right move. Getting sick of soooo much change. And agonising over whether I was making the best decisions.

Onto Plan B. Or is it actually Plan C now? Because let’s face it, 2020 was a bit of a shit-show.

Plot twist

So, during the crazy year that was 2020, I grabbed opportunity by the balls, and decided to retrain as a coach. It had been on my mind for a really long time, but it just hadn’t been the right moment until now.

Why coaching?

I benefited from working with a couple of coaches when I left my marketing job in London, and experienced first-hand how transformational it can be. It helped me to understand my messy, tangled thoughts, to unpick the voices in my head saying “You can’t do that!’, or “You should be doing this”, and to face the ‘What next?’ with much more confidence and resilience.

So, how’s it going?

Change isn’t easy. It takes self-compassion, consistency and patience. And it’s definitely not a linear process. There have been big steps forward, small steps back. Followed by small steps forward and then big steps back. When it’s got really uncomfortable, I’ve found myself questioning everything and missing my ‘old life’. But then I remind myself that I pushed out of my comfort zone for a reason. Not only that, the sooner I realised there wasn’t such a thing as a ‘perfect life’, it got much easier to weather the ups and downs. Life is about compromise; balancing the pros and cons to find a way forward that works best for you.

You also have to celebrate the small steps. Each decision you make leads to more options, more opportunities. When I made the decision to quit my job initially, I didn’t have a plan at all. If someone had told me I’d move to Cornwall, I wouldn’t have believed them. But by embracing the unknown, and taking each day as it came, it’s created a magical chapter that I could never have written.