My trouble with blogs is that I always want to write too much, but in too much detail. I suppose it’s because I’ve always been a writer and I try to write it all down and make things as interesting and honest as possible. But then I get behind, and I never like to update the blogs until I’ve got the lot done. That’s meant that I’ve been sat on a few for a while, but I’ve come to the conclusion I’m never going to catch up fully. Maybe sometime I will, who knows, but I have to draw a line in the sand and say, well it’s time to leave what’s gone on behind.

That’s a bit of a theme for me at the moment. Some of you may have noticed that I was not as available as I usually am in June. Well I’m sorry, I got to a point where it all became too much. I’d been heading off the rails for a while. I’d overstretched myself, taken on too much at once, and simply not coped with the pressure of everything I’ve taken on. But I wasn’t the only one under strain, and the way that I have been has driven my wife to demanding a divorce. And I don’t blame her, I’ve let her down, I’ve not been there when I needed to be and I’ve not done all the things I could have and should have. I’ve kept the pain inside, felt there was no-one I could talk to and drunk too much and never managed to stop smoking no matter how many times I tried. There’s been too much on my mind; being away from Lorna and our baby Xan so much, and seeing the pressure that was on her, being threatened with redundancy for almost a year; me doing a job I’ve always wanted to which would also give me some prospects and fill the hole in my CV, but having to cope with the fact no-one else in the organisation seemed to want me to do it; knowing that we had totally overstretched ourselves financially; us both being away from home so much and so many other little things.

I remember at the start of the year, Kat had said to Andy that it would ‘interesting’ how NUS coped with me, as there had never been a National Officer like me, with my circumstances, before. Well I didn’t cope. It wasn’t the workload, it was the unnecessary political shit, bitchiness and the stress that went with it. From an NUS point of view felt I wasn’t supported in anything, in fact that I’d been hung out to dry. It’s been terrible, and the worst thing is that people –well not that many people- deliberately made it much harder than it needed to be. So why did I restand? I restood because I knew how well I would be stood for something a bit better paid in a years time when we have pulled off NUS Extra, when we have continued the massive, massive increase in getting unions to pay their affiliation fees that we have this year, to have been there and to have been an integral part of turning what was a financial basket case into a stable organisation, and of course I restood because whoever won the other elections at this years conference, they wouldn’t be the same as people have been to me this year. But this year has been too long, and too hard for both of us. It has ended in my impending divorce, and I should have seen it coming, I should have done things differently, but I didn’t and now I’m always going to regret it.

I can’t blame NUS, I can only blame myself. I could have walked away at any point. When JK quit so early in the year, I turned to Damien Kavanagh and said that “At least now I know I’m not the only one who has felt that way” He said he had felt that way too. But all the promises from ‘The Organisation’ when JK went, to look more at what it was doing to NEC members, well that was just bullshit, something that seemed the right thing to say at the time. When Will Page went for similar reason, all of a sudden no-one gave a toss, but there was no faction to suck up to with him. My response to what has been done to me has been “Why feel bitter, when you can drink it?” That wasn’t the right response, but with all that was going on, it was all that was left.

I’ve just spent too much time thinking of the long term “If I can just get through this year or two years, think where we’ll be, it’ll make up for the years gone, I’ll be able to earn enough to look after her, like she’s always wanted.”. I’ve done it all for the long term and not noticed what was happening in the short term. I’ve taken my eye off the ball and from having everything I’ve always dreamed of their in my hands, I’ve lost it all.

It’s taken a while to accept it all, and I have to thank everyone who has helped me through this and I was definitely right about people in power being nicer this year. Anyway, I’m back now. What is done is done and we have to move on. I don’t know how things will work out with us in the end, but it doesn’t look promising at the moment. I’m sorry I’ve been AWOL, but some of you are going to wish I still was when you start getting chased about the fact you usually pay less than half of your affiliation fees!!

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