One of the terms of my redundancy is that I have some support from a professional career development company based in The City. I've had my initial meeting and now I've got a lot of self assessment exercises to complete. I've never really enjoyed staring back into the mirror as my forms of self reflection tend to be quite negative. I think the problem is that I see things differently this kind of approach as a positive exercise. To me introspection has always been my refuge from hapiness.

After this moment of self reflection I met with my career development coach on Thursday. It was a strange hour passed largely with me be funny and charming. His conculsions were that I need to re-vamp my CV and stick all the key achievements at the front of it so that all the key things a reruiter is looking for are there. The average CV is checked by a recruiter for an average of 15 seconds. They look for key factors and, if they don't see them in this time, they stop reading and your chance of progressing any further is gone. So that's the key ammendment. It's not much for the time I was there.

The coach listened to what I had to say and I just rambled on with the usual series of jokes and stories I tend to pepper my conversations with strangers. It's probably why people tend to remember having a conversation with me very clearly. People never forget my name, so it seems, although I must confess I have difficulty remembering the names of people and friends. It is something which has plagued me all my life. So, should you meet me, remember that I won't remember your name unless it's repeated about 3 times or I can recall something which will aid my memory.

His conclusion was that I should try as much as possible to get my foot in the door and do it face to face as I would be able to give people a better impression of who I am and what I can offer. It's probably true of some more maverick people that they do better this way. I suppose I really am one of those people who you have to see before you can really appreciate where it's at.

When I got home I was called about a job, which looked quite promising. The key skills covered things I'd done and the role would also stretch me due to the responsiblity encompassing the development of other trainers. It wasn't a directly managerial role, more one which permitted me to develop people and be responsible for that happening. I dared to dream for a while until speaking again to the agency the next day when we realised, not for the first time in my case, that I would need to be able to drive in order to get the job.

I'm seeing the world a lot more clearly at the moment. I'm able to see a little further down the line. Things like the possiblity of doing this is something of a bonus. I'm almost resigned to packing up and living a very small life for a few months while I get an idea of what exactly I can afford in the way of living and how that will all work out. I have to shut off the emotions about this and just live it without thinking too much about the loss. That's the price I'm paying for the greed and incompetence around me. There are things I could have done in order to change my circumstances but there are also ways in which there is virtually nothing I could have done to prevent this happening. I am just another victim of the downturn. It's just in my case it's going to be a steeper downward trajectory than some. That's what tends to happen in my life. The story isn't quite set in stone. Something totally unexpected could change all of this. Well, you never know.