August Look back 2019

It feels like just 5 minutes ago I was typing up my July look back, and yet here we are suddenly in September! Where the hell is this year going?? July was a jam-packed month, and as predicted in my August goals, I had the feeling this month would be a little quiet by comparison. Whilst I don’t have quite so many things to talk about for August, it was still a good month, with more happy memories to look back on.
 
The very start of August kicked off with my mid-year review at work, which if I’m totally honest I’d been really apprehensive about. I work as an Insurance Broker, and in my company we are usually paired into teams of two, made up of an Executive and an Account Handler. Whilst neither is ‘manager’ of the other as such, it is considered that the handler ‘works for’ the executive in doing the work needed for our renewals to run smoothly, as well as handling most of the day to day queries and changes.
At the end of last year the executive I was aligned to, and with whom I worked well left the company, and I started working with a new one just before Christmas. We initially got on really well, referring to ourselves as ‘dream team’ but after a month or so started to clash and disagree on how different things should be done. To cut a long story short, with my every move or action being challenged or questioned my confidence in my own ability was being slowly worn down and after a long discussion with my actual manager, where I admitted I was looking to leave, I moved teams.


Things have changed dramatically since then, but naturally those first few months of 2019 had to be taken into account for the review of the first half of my whole year, so I felt a lot of stress around whether or not I had genuinely been terrible at my job or if my exec had just been picking holes for no reason. When it came to sitting down with my manager we had a lot of discussion, talking about both my old role and the new. It transpired that I need not have worried, and whilst my new team were happy with my work, it also turned out my audits for working in the previous team had come back fine as well – bearing in mind, we obviously don’t know which of our files might be audited. My accuracy scores were even 100%! You can imagine how I felt hearing these scores, having previously thought I was performing to terrible standard. Plus, it meant a nice bonus toward the end of August! I guess it just goes to show that just because someone has been working somewhere longer than you, doesn’t mean they are always right, in this case there had been nothing wrong with the standard of my work, I’d just been unfortunate enough to be teamed with someone who would never be happy.
 
Sadly that bonus was rather short lived and a lot of it went before I even had it, as my new bike needed various bits done to get it on the road, including an MOT. The bike isn’t in amazing condition, (in fact I’m surprised it runs) and the left hand grip came off while it was being wheeled into the garage… fml… hopefully this isn’t a sign of things to come! It subsequently failed its MOT anyway following a totally separate issue with the suspension and the brakes, which were thankfully not an expensive to fix.
The poor little thing is decrepit, and covered in rust, but its mine and it will more than do for the time being. A little TLC will get it most of the way to where it needs to be and after spending a day giving it a good old clean it looked much better.
Things have moved along on the wedding front this month too, and things are starting to feel very real now. Whilst our wedding will be overseas, we’ve opted to do the legal side in the UK to save money and just make life easier. This will literally be the paperwork and as far as we’re concerned, not really special, to the point that we’re debating using council staff members as our two witnesses. We can’t have any more than two people there on the package we’ve chosen, so inviting no one prevents the possibility of anyone feeling left out. The ‘special’ bit will be in the USA with our friends and family. The legal side still needs doing though, and we’ve now booked a date to officially get married, with our notice appointment early this month.
Over the bank holiday weekend we had Mike’s nephew come stay with us, having recently turned 18. We took him on a night out in Norwich, doing a bit of a pub / bar crawl to show him as much as the city as possible – especially given he isn’t from Norwich. Given that our little group are guilty of going to the same places a lot of the time (I’m pretty sure we’re on first name basis with almost everyone in the Waterfront now) it was nice to get out and go to some different places.
 
With the lovely weather we had loads of BBQs over that weekend and got to spend some time enjoying the sun and the bikes – including mine!
Other than a couple of girls nights filled with chocolate and chic-flicks that just about sums up August for me. We’ve got a couple of bits planned already for September, but a primary focus will be finishing off all out costumes for Halloween. We’ve decided to make our own this year, with the theme being video games and so far, it’s going well!
What did you go in August? What are your plans for September?