Meh. Plus a lovely wedding

I haven’t written for a while, I suppose I’m feeling a bit ‘meh’. Mainly about work, I’m getting seriously fed up of my job now. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing particularly wrong with it per se. My colleagues are fine, it’s not stressful, I’m not being treated badly or anything. I just find it incredibly dull and unfulfilling. It doesn’t help that I have to do a 45 mile round trip every day to be bored and unfulfilled. I’m desperately trying to figure out a way to set up my dog walking/ pet sitting business. I know I’ll be a lot happier; working with animals, getting outside in the fresh air more, getting more exercise and working more in my local area.

I’ve figured out I won’t need much more than about £5,000 with most of that just being living expenses for a few months. (Jay doesn’t earn enough to support both of us, even for a short time)
My initial overheads are actually very small, I would just need:
* Various types of insurance such as PLI, key insurance, change house and car insurance to business use.
* Few hundred pounds for marketing.
* Sundries like dog crates, blankets/towels to keep the car clean, leads, toys, poop bags, treats etc.
* CRB check which a lot of clients understandably require as they’ll be giving me their house keys. I have no idea how to go about this, though, as you can’t do a CRB check on yourself, who can I get to do it?
* Joining of NARP which actually includes PLI in their membership fee.
* Invoice/ finance software

That’s about it really off the top of my head. All of that is only about £1,000. I looked into getting a bank loan but it was all very complicated and most of it seemed to be aimed at people who are already in business as you have to show them your books from previous years including incomings, outgoings, profit margins etc. If they were to ask me to project my expected turnaround as a new business, I wouldn’t even know where to start.

How do people become self employed??

We went to Rich and Jess’ wedding on Sunday and it was lovely. There were hundreds of people there, including loads of friends I hadn’t seen for years. I didn’t even get to speak to all of them as there were too many of them. They got married at Donington Park Farmhouse Hotel in their big barn, which was lovely. Jess was wearing a lovely Medieval/ hippy type dress and a flower garland in her hair, which is exactly how I imagined her. When they were saying their vows, they were both smiling so hard and looked like the happiest people on the planet. It was all very beautiful.

Apologies for the crappy photo, I took it on my phone, jostling in a crowd of people and I was quite drunk at the time.

I’m still looking for a car. It’s annoying that I can only go at weekends and quite a lot of our weekends are booked up right now. I’ve found one that I’m interested in, but it’s nine years old which is older than I wanted. It does only have 63k miles on the clock which is quite good for its age and it’s in very good condition. I’ve looked at the paperwork and it’s all in order, no advisory items on the MOT or anything. I want to try and take it for a test drive this weekend but we’re back in the East Midlands for David’s birthday barbecue so I’d have to arrange it around that.

Jay thinks I should keep looking as I’ve only found one car so far, but I’ve always gone with my gut when it comes to big things; houses, jobs, cars. It’s never taken me long to find such things and it’s worked out well so far (apart from this boring job I have right now). If I like this car, I don’t see why I should keep looking.

I’ll see if they’ll let me take it out on Saturday morning and go from there.