Eight weeks seems like a really long time. But it’s not. It’s like waiting for water to boil when you really need a cuppa. Or you are desperate for your grass to grow just in time for that garden party. Eight weeks is always the same length of time. The kettle will always take the same time to boil. The grass will always grow. Eventually.

Eight weeks ago I finished up at my job. Tomorrow, I will start a new one. The time in between has felt immense – long enough to drink endless coffees, attend interviews, catch ups, events, go away twice and blog almost every day. I’ve played with my niece – just four weeks old when I left my job, now three months. I’ve met wonderful people. I’ve taken the time to work out what I want and I’ve spent hours agonising over what I don’t.

Yet the list of people I haven’t managed to catch up with is endless. I never cleared out the spare room at mum and dads, housing my stuff from when I moved over 12 months ago. I never watched all those DVDs I insisted I needed to see. I never read the pile of books I picked up at the op shop, or the magazines starting to clutter my coffee table.

Morgan Freeman once said ‘I find I’m so excited I can barely sit still’ (The Shawshank Redemption) and I can completely relate. He may have waited over twenty years – I have only been waiting eight weeks – but the anticipation is the same. Time is a funny thing. You wait and wait – and when the time comes, it feels like you haven’t waited at all.

I spent all day today in tracksuit pants. I played with my niece, walked in the sun, spent time with my family and pondered on the past eight weeks. I may not have achieved any of the things on my ‘to do before I get a job’ list, but I think I have achieved something much greater.

So tomorrow I will take the next step in my life, starting another chapter and moving forward with a flourish. There is plenty more to come and so much more to learn. Thank you all for coming on my journey, I hope in some way to have inspired you to follow your dreams – with the simple lesson that should you need to take eight weeks, don’t worry. From the other side, eight weeks feels like boiling the kettle.