Career Break Time? - make it a real adventure worthy enough to tell your grandchildren! (Career Breaks)

Member Name: snootybutnice

Product:	Career Breaks
Date:	27/01/09 (159 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Discover a different "you"

Disadvantages: Nobody said your new adventure wouldn't come with some pitfalls!

I was made redundant in 2002.

I made the bold decision to sell my house - and decided to go and find a place in Spain to live! I ended up visiting Spain lots of times to assess different areas and eventually bought an almond farm with 45,000m2 of land with a house (well...a stable really...but I thought I'd "big" it up!) - and another house by the sea which needed a complete overhaul. I bought in Southern Spain (Granada province) on the basis that I could spend the morning skiing and then the afternoon on the beach - perfect!

I then fell pregnant with my daughter and quickly rushed back to Spain to sort out the renovation of one of the Spanish properties - because I knew I wouldn't be able to do it once she was born. But...a quarter of the way through the renovation the house fell down...well, the house was number 13 afterall!.

Shortly after, I began to meet with architects/builders and came up with a design for the new house i.e. a house with a pool on the roof. Strangely there would be 3 near fatal accidents when building the house. I decided I would call the house "La casa de la suerte". The house of luck. This was because none of the accidents were fatal...just very near misses!

During this time I furiously learnt the Spanish language every spare minute. OK...I never had many spare minutes - so my Spanish - according to my Spanish friend at least - was, she confided with certain assurance "horrible" (said with a Spanish accent!) OK so I forgot the tilde over the 'n' one Christmas changing her Christmas card from "Happy New Year" to "Happy New Anus" - but the point is...I tried!

I then teamed up with the famous restauranteur Pierre Levicky (famous for the Pierre Victoire chain of restaurants). He was running an estate agency and had just parted waves with his Spanish business partner. I came in to build up his business channel so he could sell the business for a profit (and concentrate on another business venture he'd lined up for himself - this guy is a true entrepreneur!). We turned the business around ...and as the business grew so did I (with my pregnancy!). He then sold the business and I allowed myself to put my feet up - a few weeks later my daughter was born 5 weeks prematurely. Perhaps I'd been overdoing things?

Anyway great birth experience with no pain relief because they didn't believe in giving you anything unless it was an emergency (boy was that a shock...and I found this out only when it was too late to go back home to England).

Pierre's ex-business partner Maite was a close friend of mine and she also came to be my birth partner (as my hubby lived/worked in the UK). It was funny since she didn't speak English - but what she did do was speak Spanish more slowly so I could understand it!

After my daughter was born, she invited me to join her business as a partner - which I did. With my partner working in the UK, I became the sole carer for my little one and worked on the business with Maite inbetween feeds/sleeps etc while also employing builders/architects to rebuild my house by the sea and keeping them focused etc.

My Spanish language improved ...well it had to - because there were the inevitable trips to the doctor who only spoke Spanish - and my daughter puked for England and loved getting high temperatures which worried me sick of 103-105!

After 3 1/2 years in Spain - I finally came back to the UK because I wanted to spend more time with my father who had cancer - and of course more time with my partner who was missing out on our daughter growing up as we only got to see him every other weekend.

This career break was honestly one of the best things I ever did - I still have my properties in Spain and loved it out there and one day will go back! I recommend if you're going to have a career break - make it a real adventure and don't just pussyfoot around!!

UPDATE!
I forgot to mention that I had also arranged for "This Morning" to come across and film me for the day to talk about my life in Spain (ITV lifestyle programme) - which was a bit of a shock for friends and family who were having their toast & coffee one morning...only to find me looking right back at them LOL (I'd only told immediate family about it!).

COMING BACK HOME TO THE UK
You know I mentioned that there's always a "pay back"?

Well, for various reason we came back penniless...(OK Plymouth City Council didn't pay the c£20K they owed my self employed partner ...you got it out of me (!)... and they did this to various small businesses) and the cost of the rebuild was higher than anticipated - so we'd used up all our available money thinking Plymouth City Council wouldn't/couldn't possibly NOT pay a bill they owed...they were simply being tardy in payment. BOY was THAT naive!!

Well...we'd been talking about returning to the UK anyway because my father was ill with cancer and because we only saw each other once every other weekend. So things progressed more quickly when we ran out of money LOL!! :-)

We had to borrow £5K from my partners sister to stay afloat and buy food because our credit cards were maxed and my best mate let us rent her house for £0 rent for the first 3 months until we could get some work/get back on our feet. It took us a little over a year to pay this back - and bless them they didn't want any interest payments!

My brother runs a HP LaserJet and DesignJet repair business and said he needed my help as soon as my feet touched the ground on UK soil! (He was being sensitive....because it was actually the other way around!). I now work there as the contracts manager and have increased the contracts revenue for his business by 4 fold since taking over this side of the business - and streamlined his systems for him. My parents initially helped to care for my daughter in the early months while I worked - but then I gradually got my daughter a full time placement with Kiddi Caru Nursery which she loved (she's now going to school). My partner decided to take regular employment rather than be self employed - so we could another avoid a financial hit. It was hard work - and we had no chance to sit on our laurels.

It's now 3 years later - we bought a 4 bed house last year for £250,000 (when I say bought I mean we got a hefty mortgage ;-) ) and I'm finding my dream of being able to foster children has been realised and we're now fostering teenage girls.

We're gradually clawing our way back to a good living - and aim to go on our first proper holiday this year. It's been hard work...but the coming back has also been a journey of discovery too!

Summary: Don't be a pussycat - a career break is your one big opportunity to change your life forever!!