Reasons why I believe in fate

I've mentioned it before in other lifestyle/philosophical style posts and certainly people who know me will know this, but I whole-heartedly 100% believe in fate. I believe in destiny and serendipity and the power of the universe. And I think that a lot of people believe in it to a certain degree (a lot of people believe that 'everything happens for reason') and I think that very few people believe that everything in life is just a series of random accidents. But I think that if you look close enough, you see the reasons behind things more often than you might have realised.

All the people I have in my life are a direct result of the choices that I have made and things that the universe has thrown at me. If I had chosen a different primary school, I wouldn't have met Katie and Katie. If the sister secondary school to ours hadn't started falling down, forcing the students to go to ours instead, I wouldn't have met Sian and Staci. If I had chosen a different college, I wouldn't have met Laura. If I had never worked at McDonalds (or even if I had worked there but not stayed as long as I did), I wouldn't have been friends with Justin, Dom, Sophia, Emma, Chantelle, Abi or any of the other amazing friends that I made there over the years. If I had never worked at the law firm I'm at now, I wouldn't have met Joe and Rachael. All the people in our lives are in them for a reason and everything is interconnected. Even down to the fact that I got my cat when I did. Getting a little grey kitten was weirdly more competitive than I ever expected and they were getting snapped up in hours. When I text the woman about getting her, she said she had actually had another person message about her but it turns out I was first by about 10 minutes. 10 minutes later and Bella would never have been mine but the timing worked out as it was meant to, as it always does. My heart is at peace knowing that what's meant for me will never miss me and what misses me was never meant for me.

Sometimes in life, it's hard to see tragic or heart-breaking events for anything other than just that. But life isn't perfect and if you want to see it, there's usually a silver lining there. When my grandma died in 2007, it was the first time that I had really experienced loss and having been married to her for 50 years, my grandad was obviously devastated. But it's true what they say that time is a great healer and so 11 years later, it's easier to look at things without a film of sadness covering your eyes. I went in to hospital in March 2008 and was in and out for the rest of that year, and then back in in 2013 and with my grandma being such a sensitive soul and me being so ill and so young the first time around, I really do believe that we lost her when we did because going through all that the way we did would've broken her heart. My grandad (on the other side) then died in February 2008 and even though you could say that he went then for the same reason, I think there was a larger one. My grandad had his leg amputated a few years before that and as such my grandma largely had to care for him. And after all the initial sadness and grief had subsided a little, my grandma was given a second lease of life and the freedom to enjoy her retirement. 10 years on and she has a thriving social life, a great group of friends and she spends more time at the pub than I do, and having had her kids at 20, I think the universe has given her these years by herself because she never got to enjoy her life in that way when she was younger. But not all tragedies end in death of course. My mum and dad met at 16 on their apprenticeship, became great friends and then finally got together aged 19. They had only been together about 6 months and weren't sure how things were really going for them when they were involved in a car accident together, where another car ran a red light and smashed in to the passenger side of the car. My mum was really badly injured while my dad probably had a few scratches (being on the other side) and mum spent the next 3 months in hospital. Being involved in something like that brought them closer together than ever and my dad ended up doing all his apprenticeship work twice; one submitted for him and one for her (apparently they managed to get the company not to notice that she wasn't there for all that time or she would have failed the course). They're still together 30 years later, now with 2 adult kids in tow, but who knows, maybe if the accident hadn't happened, they wouldn't have gone the distance. It begs in to question as well, is there such thing as an accident?

The main places in which I see the reasons behind things though are in my career. I started working at 16 when I got a job at McDonalds (after months of rejection elsewhere) and despite turning my nose up at it at first, I ended up staying for 4 years and made lifelong friends with people who I would have never otherwise met. I also think that timing is a big part of fate and when I started looking for jobs in fashion after college, I managed to bag an internship at a start-up online fashion company, based in Nottingham. And in the 4 years since I started there, I have never seen a similar thing again so I couldn't have timed that better if I tried! Then I went for an interview at UNiDAYS a year later and at first, I applied for a full time position but they felt I didn't have quite enough experience for that one (they hired a graduate), but they said they liked me and offered me a part-time position instead. Obviously at the time I was buzzing to have been offered the job at all, even if I would have rather been offered the full time one but in retrospect, I know that it all worked out for the best. I wasn't ready for a full-time 9-5 job back then; I still just wanted to get drunk on weekdays and go to rock city every Thursday and live the student lifestyle (despite not being at uni). The halfway house that I ended up with prepared me for going in to work properly while still allowing me to be a care-free 19 year old. Then I had a bit of a career hiccup in late 2016 when I left McDonalds for a job I had been offered in Burton-on-trent. I have probably told this story before but basically I hated it and quit after 1 day and then had a string of jobs (including charity door knocking) that I lasted a grand total of 1 day at. Not my finest hour but then I was offered a temporary marketing contract (they said maybe 2-4 weeks) at a law firm in town that I had never heard of. I took it mostly because I needed money and was bored being at home all day but pretty quickly, I decided I wanted to stay. They were hiring for the position full time and so I interviewed and got the job. This is where the fate part comes in though; my firm is all about excellence and they pride themselves in only hiring the best and while I know how good at my job I am, my CV doesn't necessarily tell that story (no degree etc) so it can be hard to get my foot in the door sometimes. So I think that if I had applied without already working there, they wouldn't have given me the job (maybe not even an interview). But with my feet already under the table (or the desk), I had a chance to show what I could do before going through the official interview process and it paid off. It also works the other way around though; I think that perhaps if I had seen the job advert without already working at the company, I wouldn't have given it a second look because it was pretty different to what I'd done before. So without fate playing a hand, they probably wouldn't have chosen me and I probably wouldn't have chosen them. Fast forward a year and a half and me and my team are the best of friends (you will have seen Joe and Rachael in multiple posts), we get company days out, parties with paid-for bars and £175 gift vouchers at Christmas. 

And then back in April, Nisha (the girl working in the position above me) handed in her notice so that she could get married and move to London with her new husband, leaving her job up for grabs. I'm a very ambitious person, I'm money motivated and I always have my eyes on where I want to be in 5, 10 or 20 years time so I was never not going to go for it. And even though I knew I would be able to do the job (we did virtually the same anyway), I had my doubts about them promoting me because I felt like they wanted someone older and more experienced. So in a bid not to put all my eggs in one basket, I started applying for other things too while I awaited my interview date and ended up getting an interview at an events company. However, that role was only a maternity cover, it wasn't offering as much money as the promotion was and the office wasn't all too ideally located for me. But the role itself sounded exciting and it got me to start thinking more seriously about whether I wanted to stay at my firm or whether I was ready for a new challenge. In a bid to let fate decide, I figured I would just follow the money and go for whichever job was paying the most. But I got dealt a double blow because I was rejected for both roles. I wasn't too upset about the maternity one (I wanted something permanent anyway) but not getting the promotion at my firm did hurt. I wasn't some random interviewee they had just met; I was someone who they knew how good I was, someone who they had seen pull off successful campaigns and events, someone who was always super efficient and organised and someone who they knew could do the higher role perfectly well. But they decided that that wasn't enough and (like I predicted), they hired a 29 year old who had experience working in marketing at other law firms. But I decided not to get mad but to get even, if they wouldn't promote me then I would find myself a promotion elsewhere. And I did. As of Monday 23 July, you are looking at the new Content Marketing Manager at Snizl Ltd. It's true what they say, everything really does happen for a reason. If I had got the promotion at my firm, I would have to stay atleast for another year despite being in desperate need of a new challenge and with my daily list of petty frustrations getting longer and longer (working in professional services is not always a walk in the park) and only with the job title 'Assistant'. So even though the money was good, the job title on my CV wouldn't reflect that. And if I had been turned down for the promotion but offered the maternity cover role, I would have been tempted to take it despite all the reasons that I shouldn't. Thanks to my knockbacks and disappointments, I have been offered a role with a £5k pay rise, a job title shift from 'administrator' to 'manager' and the opportunity to get my teeth stuck in to something completely new. Our lives really are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss. If you believe in fate like I do, you will soon see that all your disappointments are just blessings in disguise.