OK I’m going to confess to being wracked with the green-eyed monster. I am so jealous of DM’s recent success. Today and yesterday I have also been sooooooo jealous of a stream of hopefuls who’ve been at my company being interviewed for a job that I could have applied for. I didn’t realise how badly I’d be affected by it because I’d reluctantly decided the job was not for me so I’d not put in an application myself.

Let me set the scene. My lovely friend Bryony sidles into my office and drops a bit of paper onto my desk. She tells me it’s a job that’s being advertised in the company and I’m getting the ad the day before it goes into the paper. I look at it and realise with dismay that I’m not qualified for the role because they want someone with accounts expertise, which, in my 30-year-long career is something I’ve never done and can claim no relevant experience for at all. Not only have I not pertinent training but I can’t see myself, at this time of my life, having already woefully disastrously retrained as a teacher only to be thwarted by failing to get a job in teaching, learning yet another completely new set of work skills. No, I decided, I need to stick in an area that I already know, be that marketing, market research, sales or teaching, it has to be one (or more) of those.

The trouble is I love being involved with the company where I’m working, with a passion. I love its youthful enthusiasm. The people whose business it is are inspirational. My colleagues are simply lovely. The bears are just wonderful and we make people happy. How have I found myself in this special place? I would so desperately love to work there on a more “official” basis but sadly there isn’t an opening for me there at the moment. The best I can aspire to is more temporary work for them in the hope that something that’s right for me turns up. So I’m going to nail the lid on my jealousy and enjoy the pleasure of going to work each morning in such a fantastic place. I’m going to try really hard not to worry about my future any more. (Mind you, I don’t have a very good track record in not worrying.)