Author: maddieisoutoftheoffice

A little more than ten years ago I sailed for the first time.

It was then just an excuse for a holiday with my father, who was giving retirement a second attempt; he decided a hobby would be key to making retirement stick. It didn’t, and he now works just as hard as ever, albeit with an increasing number of holiday days.

I, however, have since embraced the sailing life, as you may know!

Given that almost precisely ten years ago I was introduced to this world which is now my life, it is interesting that a lot of people have been doing the “ten year challenge”; comparing themselves photographically then and now, and the compliments flood in for those who look no different, especially for those who look better than they did back then, or who are living their “real life” versus a life in the shadows ten years ago.

I loved my life ten years ago, I was working in the City, commuting back home to Bristol every weekend to see friends who still lived there (many still do!). The City job had allowed me to buy a flat before most of my friends got on the ladder, and whilst I was spending a lot of time on coaches, living out of a suitcase during the week (I had a single bed in a cupboard under the stairs in a rental flat beside the DLR right round the corner from the office), gosh it was fun!

Working til 2am when needed, barrelling downstairs for happy hour in the bar in the building at five to seven otherwise, dashing across London from the Wharf to Victora at 5pm on a Friday to make sure I got my coach, a sneaky glass of wine in a water bottle for the journey. Wearing the highest heels and the shortest dresses the office dress code would permit, only leaving the trading floor to go to the gym, literally running smack into Bobby D (the CEO) once on a snow day when I was the only TA who made it in (further to living so close to the office)…. nowadays I live in shorts, both in and out of the office!

Do I miss it? Of course.

Would I go back and do it all over again? Probably, because I loved that time.

Would I change anything? Maybe the occasional wine-based decision.

Am I happy with where my “ten year challenge” puts me now? Abso-blinking-lutely.

My cats no longer flinch with the evening fireworks.

They don’t even seem to notice them, it’s just a part of life on this Canarian Island. So, to echo that, some of the other adjustments we have made as an expat cat family:

(Aside, reading back, it’s embarrassing quite how many of these are food related!)

– We have locally sourced cat litter rather than World’s Best; delivery was the same price as the litter itself, at £30 for 7.5kg including delivery, it became a bit silly to continue that tradition, new litter is €6.90 a bag from the pet shop four doors down.
– Especially hard to rely on Amazon nowadays, since post only arrives once every two months, New Look excluded; somehow they can deliver within five days, whilst Amazon only managed to deliver something to me I ordered in August, from Spain, in December.
– I walk 45mins each way to the one and only Waitrose to buy English cat food, there is no Ocado delivery equivalent here, and the local stuff doesn’t agree with my old lady cat.
– Lighting scented candles is a huge treat, as replacements cannot be found out here (the ones you get in the Chinese shops smell so fake they don’t count), however, I was super lucky to get a lovely selection for Christmas from friends and family: yesterday I lit TWO!
– I have become someone who bulk buys and freezes vegetables because I don’t know when I’ll next see fresh ones, and (even half mushy) berries are hot property on the rare occasion they arrive in supermarkets.
– They have finally started selling Alpro soya yoghurt, but they insist on flavouring it with coconut.
– Edamame beans are not available, even to the Asian restaurants, however, I have discovered green beans make an excellent alternative.
– I permanently have less than perfect nails; partly due to sailing life admittedly, partly due to not knowing where one would get a decent shellac.
– Sailing life also means I can’t plan with certainty more than ten days ahead; of all the items on this list, this one requires the most mental adjustment to accept; plans changing makes me very nervous, but sometimes there’s nothing you can do but breathe.
– Mostly because the weather does not follow any sort of regular pattern, a la British standards, out here we can have weeks of idyllic sun and calm followed by force eight wind and a day of rain; it is unwise to ever leave the house without both waterproofs and suncream.
– I wear waterproofs.
– I wear suncream.

It’s a life of bizarre extremes; you can feel quite isolated, the distance and the ridiculous postal service means it is easy to feel a bit left behind with those back home, yet we live on islands out here, so everything is familiar and everyone is connected. Once you find your place, and your small routines among the unexpected and the unplannable, the adjustments don’t feel like sacrifices.

Especially when you wake up, the sky is clear, your soul is free, there is a whole new day and new experiences ahead, and your commute is a walk along the promenade.

Recently a blog disappeared.

It wasn’t mine, it wasn’t even a friend of mine, but it was one which I read routinely while it was being published, and I find myself looking up every couple of months when I need inspiration. Or I should say found, as it has now been deleted.

We can never know what other people’s reasons were for a choice, whether some other actor was behind their action, indeed whether some larger-than-thou corporate decision-maker forced their hand. All I know is that the blog is gone.

The words I used to look forward to reading, even though they hadn’t changed in years, were a reminder that whilst life is hard, there’s still hope. And when there’s no more hope, when life is gone, you can still have a voice. Still touch people, make an impact.

Unless someone deletes you. The act itself feels so final, the idea that there is no more to learn from someone who has passed; I never feel that, I re-live the moments I had with lost friends and family, and often feel I learn and develop new memories of them just from whatever pieces of their life and world I am lucky enough to read, see or hear.

I confess that I realise that maybe this scares me and affects me more than most because I could well find the same thing happening to me one day. I won’t have children as a legacy, I hope I will leave friends with many memories of me, but of course those fade and alter with time. What I hope will last as an essence of me after I am gone are my words. My thoughts, dreams, hopes and experiences written down for you all to read, now, and sometime wonderfully in the future. To pass something on from a life which is often confusing, lost, ridiculous and entirely embracing the unknown.

I’m not planning to stop writing anytime soon.

But when I do, please don’t delete me.

Being in charge is full on.

The instructor day starts bright and early, and finishes at whatever time your candidates decide to go to sleep. You can’t completely cut off responsibility there though, many “person accidentally in water” incidents occur during the night…….

And it all starts again at dawn. Even earlier if you’re sleeping in the saloon and you have early birds on board.

Then there’s deliveries. With a delivery there is no off; everyone is on, all the time. Even if you’re off watch you are expected to step up if needed, and if you’re skipper then you really don’t have off time at all.

The ability to sleep whatever the time of the day is incredible, but essential. Likewise the ability to keep one ear on the radio and the mutterings of your crew whilst the other ear is asleep. Also to interpret the creaks and groans which tell you which sail or winch is being tampered with at a given time, and whether that’s correct it not. And, most importantly, the ability to go from sleep to on deck in but a moment.

At the same time, to take a moment for yourself is so important. It’s the only way to keep sane, to breathe, to rationalise, to walk through what you have experienced and to anticipate what may come next.

Things break. People don’t listen and flush things down the loo they aren’t supposed to. You have to deal with the worst traits of people in confined spaces. You have no-one to defer to, and as the person in charge there’s no option except to step up.

The moment your skipper takes to sit at the chart table, or to lie in their bunk, to speak to no-one, to answer no questions, that’s what keeps us going. It’s how we appear divinely up the companionway, move the hatch aside, look ahead then back, smile at the crew, and ask “Anyone for a hot drink or a biscuit?”

We just need a moment to remember why we do this, and breathe.

We are so lucky to live in the time we do, and yet still, almost every day, in every aspect of life, there is stigma.

Life gives us choices, but there always seems to be a preferred one, usually the conventional.

– To work full or part time, when you can afford to choose to spend more time with family.
– To eat meat or follow a plant based diet.
– To continue into further education and acrue debt, or take an internship in industry and work.
– To breast or bottle feed.
– To follow a passion or pick a career.
– To wear the latest fashion or recycle your comfort clothes.
– To stay single or marry and have children, or find a life partner, or bring up children as a solo or same sex parents.
– To restrict yourself for the bikini body, or enjoy dessert, wine and cheese when the whim arises.
– To work a conventional gender biased role, or step out of that box.

Recently I went to a convention in Brussels for women in transport, an amount of it was posturing by people looking for funding for research projects, but the majority was experience sharing by people in the industry with the desire that together we can learn and be a stronger force. Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t consider myself a feminist, I don’t intend to march or protest any time soon, but I definitely don’t like to be put in a box, whether it’s because of my height, weight, size or gender.

I’m so delighted that so many of my female friends have insanely high profile roles in the City. Yet it’s almost a shame that it’s a big deal. There should be no reason why they can’t.

But the reason is twofold: compromise and stigma.

Compromise. It took me aback for a second at the conference when, after being asked approximately how many of the instructors I know are female, and I proudly replied 20 to 30%, which is significantly higher than the rest of the transport industry (5-15%), I was then asked how many have children. And my answer was one.

I am lucky, I don’t have to compromise to do a job I love; I have to accept that some weeks I won’t be at home, and have to hand over cat care to others. I acknowledge that this would be much, much harder with small children. And nigh on impossible as a singleton.

Stigma. It shouldn’t exist, but it does. I met women at the conference who work on railway tracks and in the docks, who followed their fathers footsteps but then had to work twice or three times as hard as the men alongside them to earn their place and the respect of their male peers.

I also don’t face much stigma in my role day to day, but I know of female instructors who have, and I am sure it will happen to me. When it does, I will channel the power and fortitude of those women I met at the conference.

Unless it is about winching prowess; I’m happy to leave that to the men. But I can sweat a line with the best of them.

I posted a comment last week on social media about being proud of myself.

That day’s accomplishment wasn’t massive, it was a small step in this huge adventure and challenge I have set myself, so I just wanted to say how proud I was of myself for pushing myself forward in this life, to take a moment to be a bit self indulgent. The achievement itself was only a day’s work, nothing in comparison to the hours (weeks!) of sweat and tears I put into getting my Yachtmaster, and a minor part when I think about how proud I am of myself after a fantastic day of teaching, when it clicks for my candidates, they absolutely excel, and I know I’ve made it happen.

And yet it seemed to resonate with people. I received words of encouragement and praise from people I didn’t know were following my story.

I think that perhaps what made people speak was the fact that I spoke first. I said I was proud of myself. I wasn’t afraid to be a bit bold and say I was happy with something I had worked to achieve, put myself forward for and promoted myself. I wasn’t demurely accepting congratulations from someone else, or indeed denying that I had done anything worthy at all.

In banking I was encouraged to follow a certain path; three years to Director, etc. But in many places you are just encouraged to be happy with the status quo, and it is sorely tempting to do that. What I have done over the last two and a half years is push myself forward, make myself better, ask for advice and assistance in stepping up, and accept that I might fail. But what I have discovered is that most of the time I excede my own expectations, I achieve more.

And I am proud to say it.

I not only teach, I learn too.

Being on a yacht with someone more experienced than you is always an education, yet I still find I learn something new every time I’m on a boat; no matter the background of those on board, their input is fascinating, and to listen, to allow people to speak up is to learn more yourself. That’s a wonderful thing about sailing, everyone wants to share, to help you know more, to better yourself.

It’s a rare environment where the mere fact that if everyone around knows and can do more than you, then you’re better too. There’s no information or knowledge hoarding on a yacht; you’re asked to step up, you’re required to listen, you’re given the opportunity to learn, you’re expected to share what you know. What they may not know about reefing, sail trim, or coiling, the engineer who just stepped on can teach you ingenious knacks or facts you’ll remember for a lifetime, and pass on to others in turn.

From my time in the City, and this wasn’t unique to me, I witnessed many different attitudes to learning; indeed there are those who never hire someone who professes to have experience in their area, because they may already be closed off to learning new ways of doing things.

The right way is itself a strange concept, and largely grounded in custom. In the City there was a clear BarCap way, a Lehmans way, a Goldman’s way, a BAML way….. At sea there are undoubtedly even more ways of achieving what you need from your yacht, especially since that changes at any given time, but really, truly it’s about finding the safest way.

I used to keep a spreadsheet, trying to learn something new and recording that fact every day, and sometimes I had to go out of my way to find something; step out of my routine, my safe world of apartment, cats and work, to force myself to learn. Although I did used to love it when my boss called me into his office for a meeting, purely because he’d learned a new fact he wanted to share, anyone looking in would assume we were discussing something super work critical…..

Now I think it’s safe to say I literally learn something new every day, that which I can use and share on too.

And it’s not just the difference between raisins and sultanas, or how many penguins a polar bear can eat in a single sitting.

I’m a teacher now?

Not something I ever foresaw, not a box I or the career advisors ever ticked as an option for me, yet throughout my time in investment banking, because I kept finding myself in the “change” arenas, I often had to pass on information, to educate others.

I stood up and presented to dozens of colleagues and strangers. I attended conferences and answered questions on panels. I taught new team members one on one. I helped my IT teams and developers understand what exactly it was they were building for me. And finally I passed on everything I could before I left my derivatives world behind…..

But I never considered myself a teacher. Then I started this new life, and now I am a qualified instructor, and I hope soon to be a tutor too.

I have friends who teach, who have worked crazy hours and weeks to become heads of department and even head teachers. I have friends who lecture at universities and those who educate their peers. I have friends who picked up my baton of conferences and presentations in the City. And, of course, I have friends who are sailing instructors, who inspired me to take this life leap, and encouraged me to know that I could.

Instructing is very different to teaching students who don’t want to learn, who are in your classroom because they have to be. When we are out on a yacht, sometimes in terrible weather, it is entirely out of everyone’s comfort zone, the only way anyone can or will learn is if they want to.

If people don’t want to be here, or just don’t want to learn, the best thing for them is to speak up or step off, and thankfully we are all adults so that’s an option. But for those who want to learn, to experience, to stretch themselves, to have their eyes opened every day, that’s what I do, what we do. We teach.

I can recall all of my most influential teachers, tutors and instructors over the years.

It’s amazing to think I may now one day feature on other peoples lists.

There seems to be a lot of it nowadays.

I’ve said goodbye to close friends over the years; my sister asked me once how I stay so happy with life when I have been to that many funerals.

It’s a hard question to answer.

I will never forget the people I love but no longer have in my life. They feel as real and as alive as any of you. For example all of my grandparents; I frequently want to write to them, and I try to enjoy the moment of thinking about it as much as I would the action, because of course I can’t. And the friends who passed too soon and are perpetually their twenty something selves, I try not to miss them, or wish a future they will never get to have, but remember them laughing and loving life.

Then there are the friends we have disengaged with, who disappointed us and we walked away from, or who cut us out seemingly without reason. I miss them too, but it’s not the same. I do wonder, I try to reach out, to reconnect, I never get a response.

And, poignantly, but least spoken of, I know there are those of you who have lost someone when they were still growing inside of you, or shortly after their birth. It’s something I don’t expect to know myself. Something I would never wish on anyone else. The hope and knowledge of life and love, the expectation and feeling of a new creation, to lose that must be an emptiness you cannot describe.

Yet I see you, sharing your experiences, trying to help others find the words, hoping they don’t reach the same depths of pain, or just trying to provide a space for outreach and comfort.

I don’t mean to compare my losses to yours.

But please know I care.