I’ve not been on this blog in a long time, I started it as a
way of sharing my experiences of founding and running a small charity. Its not
something I ever set out to do but here I am doing it and I imagine there are
quite a few people who’ve found themselves in similar situations.
Looking back over the past year it’s been an incredible time
for us, we’ve grown the Gig Buddies project so it’s now working with over 60
pairs of buddies across Sussex, set up sister projects with partners in Sydney
and Midlothian, and successfully bid for £202,000 from the Big Lottery. Plus we're also now aiming to share the project with other organisations www.gigbuddiesinabox.org
On top of that we’ve grown our team so we now employ 4
staff, and I’ve been able to develop our campaigning work with funding from the
Esmee Fairbairn foundation. We’ve also run trips to taking participants with
learning disabilities to Australia, Spain, Malta, and Poland as well as another
great week at Glastonbury and other trips to Northern Ireland, Belgium and
Scotland. We also moved office, spoke at conferences up and down the country
and all manner of other things.
It’s been a truly immense year, and we’ve got a truly
immense team working for us.
I’ve been trying to do this on 2 days a week, balancing this
with my other job in London. I love both jobs too but working crazy long days
and not taking proper weekends off meant something had to give. And what gave
was me!
I’ve totally knackered myself out and so I’ve decided to
take a month out. A complete break from everything in an attempt to break my
terrible habits, recharge my batteries and rekindle my other interests.
That means I’m going to play music every day, read, do lots
of walking, go swimming, I may even give up meat and above all spending much
more time with my friends and family.
That means that I’m also going to go completely off line –
no Twitter, no Facebook, no emails, nothing. I love the internet, and I love
the things you can get up to through social media, it’s brilliant. But it can
also take over your life and be bad for your health.
That’s why I was thinking it’s like chips. I love chips but
I know that to eat them every day wouldn’t be good for me.
So for the whole of December I’m unplugging myself to see
what happens.
When I come back I’ll have stopped my job in London with
Think Local Act Personal (something I’m really going to miss) and just work for 5 days a week for
Stay Up Late with the aim of getting my family life back in check.
I think I may also instigate a new quarterly meet-up group
in Brighton called ‘Knackered voluntary sector CEO types of small organisations
who love beer’ as an informal support network. (We may need a more snappy title
for that – and also I’m not promising, no more projects or ideas from me until
at least 2016!)
Thank you to everyone who’s supported me around this and I
look forward to being back in cyberspace in the New Year.
I’m now going to enjoy a nice bag of chips before I embark
on my month of living healthily. If you’re up on the downs and you see a
slightly less knackered looking individual tucking in to a mung bean and lentil
salad do come and say hello!
I might even try going to bed early too!
I might even try going to bed early too!
Paul
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