My interview at Love Sewing

In December 2019, when Love Sewing magazine were advertising the job of editor to replace Amy, I decided to apply for the job.  When Amy got the job five years previous, I was more than a little bit jealous!  What a great job!  I didn’t think I had much chance of even getting an interview, but seeing as this was basically my dream job, I applied at the last minute, encouraged by Amy herself to submit my application.

Within a few days, I was invited to interview.  I could not believe it.  I had an interview for my dream job!! Getting this job would have involved lots of changes and sacrifices, but it was beyond doubt what I wanted.  I felt as though my life was about to change dramatically, that I was about to reclaim my sense of self, my independence, my education, my career.  I was so excited about my potential new future, so nervous, so terrified.

Because this job was my dream job, and I couldn’t imagine how gutted I would be to not get it, I barely told anyone I had an interview.  I didn’t tell my closest friends or my children or my family.  I already could not bear the idea of having to tell everyone I did not get this job that I so desperately wanted.

I went to the interview.  The interview went really well.  I left feeling amazing, happy, nervous, but quietly confident.  I waited 4 days before finding out that I had not got the job.  The job had been given to someone who had publishing experience, something which I myself lacked.

This was the week before Christmas.  I had been imagining all the changes 2020 might bring my way, but it wasn’t to be.  Christmas and New Year came and went.  I remember obsessively checking Love Sewing’s social media output to find out who the new editor was.  I was so fed up.  I told a few people, and they said that it was great that I had gotten that far in the first place, and that I should be proud that I was interviewed, but it was hard to think positively.  People also said ‘something better will be around the corner’, but how could it be?  There is no job the same.  I had an affinity with Love Sewing since it first started.  I didn’t want to look for a different job.  There was no other job I wanted to do.

Nine months later, in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, I am starting to get over it.  With what has happened this year, I cannot imagine how me being the editor of Love Sewing would have worked.  Would I have been able to work from home?  Or commute to Stockport as I had been planning originally?  Or would I have rented a place to live there during the week?  One thing is for sure – I would probably have spent a lot less time with my children, and that time is something I can’t ever get back, so in many ways I am truly thankful that my current employer has kept me on furlough since April and I haven’t had to worry about trying to balance work with home schooling.

Now that my furlough period is coming to an end, I find myself wondering what my future holds.  I’m not sure I can continue working 16 hours a week in my current job, which is based on organising community events for families and groups to attend, seeing as all of the groups have stopped meeting.  I was running a weekly after-school cafe, a monthly after-school family event, a fortnightly club for the elderly, helping out at the weekly babies and toddlers group and organising special events for half terms and school holidays.  All that has stopped due to Coronavirus, and I’m so uncertain about what lies ahead.

The only positive thing I can focus on right now is that, for the brief time that my children are back at school, and I am working restricted hours on a part-furlough basis, I have the time for sewing again.  From March to September, the only sewing I did was making face coverings.  I made something like 80-100 for free for my friends, family, neighbours, acquaintances.  I didn’t have the energy for anything more until the kids went back to school and suddenly my days opened up with possibility.

This week, I finished sewing a pair of pyjamas that I started in February.  I also made a pair of pyjama shorts that I cut out a couple of years ago, and I fixed a dress that has been in my mending pile for a few years.  I found a baby dress that I had cut out but not sewn, so I’m going to sew that up too, and give it to a new baby girl (the intended recipient has grown too big).  It feels like I’m starting again.