Those presentations went ok - but I've had nothing but stressful pitches to deliver to senior management ever since. Good news is I passed my last exam - no more of those forever! yay! I'm surprisingly unelated about it all really... partly due to my colleague having not passed (and she seems to have stopped speaking to me since the exam results were published!)and party because I suspect I was pretty much done with it all since I sat the exam (mentally unprepared to sit the exam again, if you know what I mean...) so in a way I've had about 6 months to get over it and its all a bit anticlimatic.

Going East looks less and less likely (except for a brief solos stint) which rather takes the wind out of the sails somewhat. It seems I rather misjudged that opportunity (or the lack of it) - they don't see the value in investing quite so much. I'm feeling a bit gloomy about these things at the moment. Strangely my ego takes quite a knock when I'm reminded just how plain/ordinary I am - listening to my colleagues and seeing them doing good work and making good progress ahead of me... I suppose its the blues that hit you when you've spent all your life striving for something and once you achieve it you kind of need something else to strive for... I wonder what it will be..?..?..? I suppose it was going to be "going east". I must admit that I've contemplated whether my sense of mental well-being is too much dependent on my ability to exceed expectations, outperform and rise above the rest. This cannot go on forever (if indeed it is going on now) and I must become comfortable with being happy with myself, no matter how well I perform in relation to others. I must be happy to be average, or even a bit below average on occasion. I suppose I'm part of this generation that fears unemployment, instability and rejection. The state of the world economy plays on my mind frequently at the moment. My mortgage (which needs adjusting next year to a much higher interest rate no-doubt) and the implications for our quality of life - these things worry me.

One thing I have noticed however is that having more spare cash is not necessarily a guaranteed way of improving happiness. I was always using my lack of money as an excuse for the miserably weekends, evenings and weeks and weeks or boredom. The fact is that money doesn't make you any happier, and it is incredibly easy to spend with seemingly little real reward. In a sense, I've learned to spend little-and-often or at least modestly and regularly to reap the maximum benefit - whether that is a single meal out with the family once a week, or a big trip out once a month, or even many small trips to the arcade (penny-falls!) or cinemas... its better than blowing all the spare cash on one big weekend of fun! In a sense, I need to be somewhat more comfortable just "doing nothing". There is something about me that tells me sitting at home watching TV with the kids, or even walking to the shops or going nowhere in particular is a sad thing to do. For this reason I am always trying to figure out something we should be doing on days off or at weekends - going to a park, restaurant, swimming, museum, even a particular shop for a particular purpose, but not just sitting and being... Overall I suppose I am getting much more used to the idea that I will continue to learn and realise a lot as I grow older. Its easy for young people (including myself) to think they know it all. We don't. We must be receptive to the teachings of our experiences and open to learning many new things about all aspects of our lives.

Life with G is still pretty fantastic (although she is exhausting me at the moment.. a husband shouldn't complain!) and the kids are doing really well. R has her first SATs at school soon so that will be interesting... I've been secretly training her in the evenings ;-) Have been a bit worried about H - we don't seem to have invested the effort into making sure he has any close friendships. This is playing out at school where we hear he can be pretty lonely on occasion. He is also often refusing to go to school for various strange reasons ("i'm not feeling well..." that sort of thing). Doesn't help that his class teacher appears to be clueless, despite the head teacher thinking she's fantastic... C is completely different to R & H. She's much more self-confident (at the moment) and knows her own mind. Nothing much seems to phase her right now - but she'll probably grow out of it knowing our kids (and the effect we have on them).

Fancy having a go at replacing the downstairs flooring at home - DIY always makes me feel better, even though its stressful, expensive and sometimes tedious. I'd rather make sure I have the money this time though - don't want to go massively over budget like I did with the kitchen and garden. Trouble is, its really quite hard to plan every little detail, and small trips to B&Q soon add up. I think I'll leave it a couple of months to be sure.

Memories for the future: Losing C in IKEA and finding her laying on a posturpedic bed admiring the quality and comfort ;-)