We originally moved to England for my career but since I no longer had a career then fuck it why the hell not. So an absolute shit ton of money to movers this time. God damn moving countries is expensive. When we moved from N Ireland my company paid to move us but this time we had to fund it. Annoyingly as this was our second move this year and I was starting to run low on savings I had to make a tough choice and decided to sell a lot of my gear to fund it. My Princeton, Hot rod delville, Mesa Tremoverb, JCM900, my R7 Les Paul 335 and my taylor acoustic were all sold to fund both moving to N Ireland and also paying deposits etc when we found a place.
So where are we now? Well we’re now up to June and we’re starting to see the light. We finally moved into a nice bungalow in the countryside in N Ireland. W00t. Move on a few more months of working on the house, school hunting, getting medical referrals for my wife and son etc until today.
So where are we now? Well, we love our house, my son has just started a new preschool which has experience working with kids with autism, my mental health is pretty good, my wife’s physical health is better due to much less stress and me being here 24/7 to look after both her and my son. We see my family every week and we’ve even reconnected with friends we lost when we moved to England.
I hadn’t turned on a soldering iron since August 2021 but I now have my own space setup (mostly) and I’ve been working away on a few builds. Despite the gear purge to fund the move I managed to hold onto my favourite prs, a tele, a strat and an old epi les paul I have sentimental attachments to I’m still ampless but at least I held onto my helix so can still play through studio monitors and an amp will follow in time. Oh and I’ve got a gig in a few weeks playing with some old friends in a homecoming they organised for me. I’m gonna try the hx stomp direct into the PA so we’ll see how that goes.
So what did I learn?
1 - Don’t ignore your own health while looking after someone else. You can’t look after them if you’re ill dummy.
2 - Family first. Your job is important but not as important as your health or family. They also won't remember all the hard work, missed sleep and times you pulled their ass out of the fire when you need them to do something outside of the norm.
3 - Always keep receipts and emails of anything remotely questionable/dodgy/incriminating your employer does. That way if/when they try to screw you over you actually have something to bargain with
4 - Gear is nice but a peaceful existence in a lovely little bungalow knowing your family is comfortable, happy and safe is much nicer
5 - I missed my friends. When you’re concerned about career and don’t look after yourself things slide and to my shame I left a lot of good people who cared about me in the dark.
6 - I missed this place. I’ve not been active much at all between Nov 2021 up until a few weeks ago. The last few weeks have been nice catching up on all the things you guys have been building. It’s nice to be back. It also took a lot of effort to sit down and write all this crap out. Hopefully it helps someone else but ultimately even if no one else reads it, it has helped me
7 - Damn I missed playing the guitar.
Oh and
@Paradox916 thankyou for the shirt dude. My in laws sent it over earlier in the year but I was in no place to log on here to thankyou for it. I do, however, wear it all the time -)
. I'm honestly not sure if I'd prefer knocking over chairs to knocking books off the shelf. I'll need to think about that
)
