Hi guys,

I haven't posted since July, I have a good excuse, I swear! (Okay so maybe not.) I haven't fallen off the face of the planet, I swear. So I've been working for 5 months now and I've been panic attack free for 4 months, yeah I'll explain that in a little bit.

So I'm working for this amazing charity called Leeway, they support victims of domestic abuse and I'm really loving it. I'm doing it as an apprenticeship, so I'm supposed to go to college once a month (I don't go, college is still a huge no no for me but whatever) and I do my NVQ work in Business and Administration and I see an assessor, it's all fun and games. It's so nice to have a routine, I wake up at 6:15am every morning, get on the bus at 7:10am, get off the bus, walk a mile to work and I get to work at 8:45am. Yes, I'm getting the bus now and managing to stay on it for over and hour without having a panic attack. It's so weird.

My first day of work was so weird. I hadn't explained my anxiety at the interview so the first thing I needed to do was make my supervisor aware, she was super supportive and she gave me loads of options I could take if I felt panicky at work. So first day was over and not one panic attack. Second day came, I was meeting more people on my second day than on my first and it was a bit overwhelming and I was a panicky mess, they all turned out to be so nice and I knew I had nothing to worry about. Third, fourth and fifth day came around, and I still hadn't had a panic attack. The only one I can recall was one morning on the bus, there was a whole load of students sat around me and I just felt incredibly uncomfortable, I got off the bus in my town and my mum ended up driving me to work, that was the last time I had a panic attack. Most people at work are aware of my problem and they're all super nice about it and I wouldn't feel like such an idiot if I had a panic attack. I think because I'm so busy at work, I don't have time to be feeling anxious.
I work the reception desk at work, I have to greet people from external agencies, on my first week I was avoiding meeting external people like the plague. Now I'm much more confident with meeting new people (adults, still not cool with meeting people my own age) and now I can answer the phone wiithout panicking about who's on the other end of the line.

It's safe to say I'm pretty proud of myself. I'm probably never going to be totally okay around people my own age for the time being but because I'm working in a place where the majority of the women there are 30-50, they're obviously a lot more mature and that's totally fine.

As for blogging, since I'm working 5 days a week, I leave at 7am and get home at around 6pm-7pm, I'm not finding much time for blogging, bearing in mind I also have to fit in my NVQ work whenever I have time to myself, so evenings and weekends. On the plus side, I now have a working laptop. That was another factor of me not blogging, my laptop totally just crashed and didn't want to do anything, I'd load it up and everything would just crash, so I had nothing really to blog on, but now I have a lovely new bright pink HP laptop, it's hella fast and does everything I need it to, so I may be blogging more frequently now, we'll see.

So really, these last 5 months have been pretty flippin' cool. I'm a much happier, positive person and I'm super proud of myself for not letting my anxiety ruin this opportunity for me. Good job, brain.

I hope you're all doing fabulous, it'd be cool to hear what you've been up to these last 5 months. :)

That's all for now,
Rachel. xo