My Work Life Has Taken Many Sideroads

I have domiciled in the Black Country now for 16 years. It’s bizarre as that’s longer than I stayed at school and yet it seems so fresh and new. In fact, I went to a school reunion last weekend and it was funny seeing them all as adults as I have not seen any of them from the day I completed school. I’m very good about being awful at ending contact with colleagues and not being in touch. I appear to find that you think ‘I wonder how so and so is’ and suddenly realise that you have not spoken to them in 5 years and feel too guilty to pick up the phone. Thank heavens for social networking!

I came up here initially when I started freelancing when I was employed by IBM on a job for the Midlands Electricity Board which was massive fun. Since then my career has taken a lot of changes in both job and region, but now I am running a company that offers SEO and IT support services to small firms in the Black Country area and the wider West Midlands. It means that I get work at home which is really the one place I’ve ever wanted to work. I have been privileged enough that freelancing has let me to see other places and I have been to Brentwood, Coventry, Newcastle upon Tyne and, most gloriously, Canberra before an all too concise return to the North East.

But I love being in the Black Country and getting out and discovering it. It really is very beautiful, much like my native Surrey, but different naturally in that we are slap in the heart of the Industrial Revolution. We don’t have to go far to be surrounded by the evidence of history. This bit of the Black Country was regarded for chain and glass manufacture. The chains and anchors for the Titanic were made here and the movement of them to the railway was recently re-enacted for a Channel 4 programming. There are also canals wherever you go connecting the coal, iron and steel industrial areas to the wider world.

Most of it has now disappeared of course, although expert metal bashing and steel product manufacturers still work. The current Black Country now revolves around small industrial companies, hi-tech services and some dependence on the car industry which is still strong in the West Midlands with Jaguar Land Rover, and Rover also making a low level return.

For me though, I am more than content now working for myself, using the abilities that I’ve gathered in my job history and using them on my own terms. I learnt how to do IT support many years ago when I was employed by British Gas and used a break from programming to have a go at something fresh, and that has stayed with me through the time where I have been able to repair problems for people I was working with quickly and not need to call out the support teams. SEO I have picked up in later life and have found that it is completely suited to the way I love to work and have always had an ambition to do as I have always adored creative writing.

So for the time being, I will keep my focus on SEO with a smidgen IT support as and when required.

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categories: SEO,Black Country