Where have we been?

We disappeared from Social Media and YouTube which may left your wonderings Where have we been?  Well, to be honest I have just been in survival mode.  Coming to terms with everything we have been through with the loss of the companies, the stress of trying to keep everything together and well, not and so losing pretty much everything and having to start again from ground zero.

Back Track

Let’s back track a bit.  The pandemic caused many issues for many people and in different ways.  I was running our Lettings and Management Company and a property Networking company.  All of which could not trade as the world shut down.  The issue was costs still kept going, tasks still needed to be done, especially on the Lettings and Management side.  I navigated Covid responses for the HMO (house in Multiple Occupancy) we were managing.

I also had an amazon business that I was also trying to build to bring in an income to support the family.  I’ll cut a very long laborious story short.  Mark worked 16 weeks straight without a day off as his role involves ordering all that is needed for a hospital for the Nhs. He worked longer days with needing to accept deliveries from 4 in the morning to sometimes 10pm at night as PPE became a thing and the hospital navigated additional safety measures and increased cases.

The companies were struggling, we had tenants that stopped paying rent but that we needed to still front the cost of the property, we could no longer draw a wage and so I added working 12 hour night shifts and then also still worked during the day on he Lettings and Management Company and so was sleeping every 3-4 days.

The Breakdown

It does not take a genius to work out that I could not keep all of that going.  And I’ll be honest I was broken, mentally, physically and emotionally.  I had way too many days and thoughts that I had ruined everything for my family and that they would be better off without me.  It was a very dark time.  You cannot always see the truth in a situation when things are like that.  All I could see was that it was all my fault and that I had made our family in a very precarious financial situation.  

I was so tired that at home I lost my footing on the stairs and then tore all the ligaments in my knee.  When you don’t stop sometimes the Universe finds a way to make you!

Controllables Vs Non-Controllables

Glossing over many details but it was such a long time and i’d bore you to tears so let’s fast forward a bit.  I retreated, I needed to come to terms with what had happened and most importantly I needed to take stock of controllables vs non-controllables.  The pandemic was completley outside of my control and had not featured in any of the business plans.  A contingency had been but most certainly not to that extent!  I had not even factored that in before during my beat-myself-up stage.

Could I have done things better?  Of course, hindsight is a wonderful thing!  Could I have been prepared for what happened?  No, so I needed to give myself some slack!

Pheonix

The choice was mine and mine only. Wallow in self pity and ‘what ifs’ or learn from it and rise again.  Thankfully I chose the latter 🙂