I work with two women who are friendly, intelligent and have the best social skills. The boss is a hardworker, kind and very personable. The work itself is a shadow of stuff I have done before - I've picked it up really quickly and I'm not afraid of learning more. In fact, I've been seeking it all week. I can hardly believe myself. And I work helping people - that makes me feel very proud.

Work sent me on a trip down to London and for the very first time I navigated train and tube on my own. When down there I swanned about like it was no big deal. I didn't suffer any nerves all day; just enjoyed myself.

I am managing my health. I understand what makes me hurt and what makes me ill and I have done, and will continue to do, everything to minimise both. It's not easy, but I can do it if I put the effort in, and the rewards for doing it are worth it.

I have noticed before that life can turn on a penny, and my life seems to have done exactly that. I can't bear to think much now of the pain I have gone through these last few years. But I feel a sense of pride that I never stopped trying to figure things out. Even when it felt like life was one big fist pummelling me down and down and down, I got back up again and carried on as best I could. I didn't see that at the time, I always felt such a failure, but I see it now looking back.

And so, I'm feeling I should move on from this blog. In this blog I have tried to track my attempts to get my life back together after my developing endometriosis so spectacularly blew it apart. It feels now like much of the major repair work has been completed. Although there are projects remaining that will need some work, the worst part is over.

Things are different. I have regrets and I carry much grief. I can however at least move my life forward now. That might be worth the starting of another blog. We'll see.

Earlier this week I bought a decent wool-mix suit from Zara, two shirts from H&M, and new shoes from New Look. It is the first proper shopping trip for clothes I have been able to indulge in in two years. I need these things for my new job. I still have my old clothes that I used to wear to my old job, but trying them on they felt cheap and stale and I am too fat for them now.

Today I bought a pair of warm, fully lined curtains for the bedroom, draft excluding things for doors, and that cling-film stuff for the windows.

We're going to have the loft better insulated too. I am determined to keep the house as warm as possible this winter. Getting cold makes me so ill. A drop in temperature took me surprise yesterday and I let the cold get to me before I realised that I needed to dress up warmer than i had been doing. My body and mind just shut down and I couldn't even think what to do to get warm. I recover slowly, even when warmed up I'm still confused and suffering from that odd sort of out-of-body pain that cold brings.

All these things I both need to do and can do because I've found work. Funny, when you're off work ill you have all the time in the world to do things, but no money with which to do them. But when you're well enough to work you have the money but no time. Funny. Funny. Funny.

I started going swimming. Every other day for twenty minutes to half an hour. I haven't been able to exercise in over a year; it always made me so ill. This time exercise made me feel the blood pumping around my body taking oxygen to every cell. it felt bloody fantastic, though it also made me a little tired. But naturally tired. Not CFS tired. Haven't felt that in a looong time.

I hoped it would help fix my neck and shoulder. It hasn't. And the pain is back with avengence. It feels like someone has interwoven steal string into my muscles. So sore. So stiff. Wrenching all my soft tissue muscle in the local area.

I e-mailed a practictioner of the Bowen technique, and got no response. I found that my local beauty parlor, sometimes frequented when I was earning before, do deep tissue massages. This was the only thing that ever gave me relief from this pain, though it doesn't ever fix it. For the sake of starting work a week today, I'm giving it a go next week and might do a few sessions. I'd like to see a Trigger Point specialist, but there are none in my area.

I've had a busy week or so, and today my body finally complained. Aching, clicking, stiff and sore. I just took a long soak in the bath and feel much easier. I will take extra Inflamol and magnesium before I go to bed tonight.

This morning I woke up with that painful buzzing head/ringing ears/blurred vision thing again. Felt like my head was full of cotton wool. Sound was muffled. My own voice when I spoke vibrated in my head. I was on the computer late last night. It sets me off as bad as sugar. Wonder why?

But this is the worst I can say about how I feel physically at the moment. The worst. And it's not bad, is it?

One week on from the interview and I finally got the call. I was restless all day, couldn't settle to anything and was fed-up of not knowing and having to worry about it. I was sitting by the phone upstairs, putting a pin to a nasty spot that's come up on my chin. The phone had already rung once, for three rings, but I hadn't got to the phone in time. 1471 told me that the caller had withheld their number. The phone rang again about ten minutes later and it was the PA. She asked me how I was. She didn't sound happy. I thought it was bad news. It wasn't. I got the job. I start two weeks tomorrow.

I had a job interview last week for that really interesting job I mentioned before.

I think the interview went fine, but I was a bit crap on a couple of questions. I'm fairly sure I gave a good impression of myself though and I think I did the tests well. I can't have been all bad because my possible future boss is taking up my references already, so I know I am short-listed at least.

Just waiting to hear now. I guess if I get the job it will be a phonecall, and if I don't it will be a letter. Keep your fingers crossed for me anyway.

It seemed like it might be a pleaseant place to work. A small but bright office, and everyone I met (and there were three on the interview panel) was smiley and welcoming.

In marked contrast to the awful interview I had last year for some charity. Had to traval all the way down to SW1, the building looked fine from the outside but was grotty inside, the office was large but packed out with boxes and files and awkwardly placed desks, and the people I met were very unfriendly. One of the two women who interviewed me just kept staring at me with her beady eyes, as if I had done something very wrong. I did an awful interview. I was tired from the travelling, only a few days after having an op on my eye, and so wound up about it all (I had spent days and days studying the charity and its work and was terrified I'd forget it all - in the end none of my newly gained knowledge was needed for the boring questions they asked and so I tried to get the info in with the questions they did ask. Bit of a mess)

I didn't expect to get that job. And lo! I didn't. My only hope would have been if everyone else was even more awful and they weren't fussy.

(Bad on them for having offices in SW1 anyway. Shouldn't a nationwide charity be saving money by having offices somehwere cheaper? And why drag all candidtates down there to be interviewed? It would have saved on all those travelling expenses they had to pay us all, just to hire a hotel room and do them up here)

Then, of course, there was the interview for the cattery job. Mr Cattery was so nice to me, always so nice to me. I still feel bad for walking out on him like that. I talked him into giving me a chance, and he gave me a chance and I really let him down.

I sometimes think of writing to him and fully explaining what my circumstances were at that time. I can clearly see now that the pain and anxiety that overwhelmed me then was a consequence of being on Prostap.

But there was as much wrong with that job as right. Working on my own with the cats, part-time, radio on, no computers, no phones, no office meetings and Team Briefs was lovely. But the older part of the cattery was oppressive for both me and the cats. I hated to see them in their little wooden hutches. It wasn't safe either. Cats could easily escape and be lost into the rafters and so nerves were always on edge. And I was told always to look out for poos, but some of the cats wouldn't come out of the hutch onto the floor and would attack you if you tried to move them or check the hutch. Some were truly vicious with me, not helped by the stress of feeling so hemmed in, in their little dark cages.

And then there were the other workers. Hard workers, but little in the way of social skills. Unwelcoming, sometimes down right rude. They would often stop talking when I walked into the little hut that served as washing-up and tea room. I was never invited on tea breaks or on their nights out. I don't know whether it was jealousy that I got to work with the cats (seen as easy compared to working with the dogs), and that I got to work part-time, or whether they just thought me "not like them". Perhaps I had too much of a manergerial manner about me to be amongst them slopping buckets of disinfectant around and scooping up poo and wee. Certainly I tried to keep true to myself and as myself its hard just to fade into the back-ground.

And OH GOD! The snitching. EVERYTHING reported to the boss without fail. I found out on my second day that the slightest percieved mistake was faithfully reported. Then along would come Mr Cattery, a jovial smile in that unusually fat, uneven and generally knobbly face of his, patting me on the back and talking to me in kindly sorrow about not having pulled a blind down, or wiped a smudge off some window.

I will never forget the humiliation of that. The sense of being such an open target for colleagues so willing to get me into trouble.

Blah! It was a horrible time in my life.

After the back-stabbing I had had in my previous office job it was everything to convince me that people and work were two horrible combinations and one could never be happy whilst one was made to be in such a toxic environment.

But I'm forgetting how my office job started. When I first joined the company after leaving uni I found a good band of co-workers. Two of the girls were best pals and aloof with me, but I don't remember letting it bother me. I got on too well with the others for it to be an issue. Friendly Mark, James and Matt, supportive Sarah, funny Dave. Even the boss, though later we had our issues, not someone I couldn't handle. The supervisor was the best. He would just piss off for hours and leave us to it. And because we were all good at our jobs we did just as well. We would even organise our own rosters and work out what overtime was needed amongst ourselves. The supervisor cried when I left the company, even though he hadn't managed me for a long time and we'd had our differences.

Makes me shake my head when i think about the people I worked with later. Organise their own roster? They could organise themselves to get in on time. They did half the work we had done for twice the pay. No wonder I often got frustrated with them.

Anyway. That job set me up for life. It got my house, my wedding, several trips abroad. It made me really, and I always feel grateful to being given that job when no other company even offered me an interview.

That's a bit how I feel now. That a need a break to get back into work. I've been off work for two years and I know that doesn't make me an attractive prospective employee. I think the people I had the interview with last week got that.

Perhaps I'll hear about it today.