Year 3 summary: life in New Zealand

The third full year of living in New Zealand and this is the first year that I haven’t been back to England. Another multitude of things have changed. 

• First year full time self employed.
• First time I have had to work evenings and weekends.
• First time in my life my wage has been below minimum wage.
• First time in my life that I have NOT worked as a teacher. Not even as a relief teacher, as of January 2016.
• First full year that I haven’t raced. Not even for fun.
• First time in my life that I have been an ’employer’. This also includes the first time I have had to conduct interviews.

It’s fair to say life continues to be a challenge.

It’s been almost three years since we lost mum too, each time my arrival date anniversary comes around I am also reminded of that too. Happy yet also sad times.

However, there’s also some positives to look at too.

• Job satisfaction.

Although being self employed is a real challenge, it’s also very rewarding. I love my job but I don’t always love how hard it is running a business. Always having to drive marketing, think of new ideas, new advertising, gaining new leads, changing services to meet the market needs, accounts, payroll, inland revenue banking AS WELL AS also actually doing the job. I have gotten to a point where business knowledge exceeds what Mark actually knows so I can’t always bounce ideas off him. My accountant has been fabulous but each question comes with a price tag as well as an answer! BUT, I wouldn’t want to change the fact that I am my own boss, I have no one to answer to, no staff and company politics to deal with, no long long stressful hours at the weekend and in holidays planning (I say ‘holidays’ in the loosest term!)

• Happiness

I often walk into work and look around thinking ‘I created this’! I am pretty proud of what I have achieved so far. Although it’s still challenging (mostly on the financial front) I don’t think many people can say they truly love their job. I have to continually set myself boundaries because I often don’t see it as a job. What’s the old saying, find a job you love and you won’t work a day in your life’?

Goals for the next 12 months

In the next 12 months I have some simple goals. I sincerely hope that I manage to increase Ryding2Health revenue to a point that I can increase the wage I pay myself to at least the minimum wage. That would help to take a huge financial burden off in other areas of our lives.

To that end, I would also like to get some of my weekends back too, even if it was on a roster basis. I don’t ever have two consecutive days off and that’s hard.