We need to get through this bit

We Just Need to Get Through This Bit...

We said that for three years. There was always another bit.

So, hello. It's been a while. A proper while, actually…

And I wasn't planning to start writing Tales of a Reclaimed Life again this week, although over the last couple of months I kept thinking: “I’ve really missed writing on the blog! When will I finally be able to start doing that again?!”

…

Then last Monday, at the UK border, a lovely Border Force officer who looked like Robert DeNiro (yep, I told him that!), he said something to me that apparently my brain decided we were going to think about for the next few days.

“You have to be human. And communicate with each other.”

Well. Fuck. He's got a point! This really stuck with me.

The whole border thing wasn't even particularly dramatic, the opposite actually. They were asking questions about my friend Leszek travelling with me and his reasons for coming to the UK. Mind you, for the first time in my 10 years of crossing the Channel it was the very first time when at the passport control booth I was told to pull over behind it and wait for someone to “examine” my companion. Huh!?

I was tired and feeling stressed. If it wasn’t for the antidepressants and mood stabilizers I’m currently taking, I definitely would NOT be able to keep my cool the way I did. So, we sat in the van and waited for the mystery officer; Leszek, cool as a cucumber and me, silently praying for somebody nice to talk to… And then this officer appeared. He asked me to open the back of the van, and when he saw the parquet floors we were carrying, he absolutely loved it! Asked a few questions about what exactly are we doing with them, and so I told him: we reclaim old parquet floors in Poland, clean and deliver them to our clients. When he heard that in Poland most people burn these floors down and replace them with laminate, he was absolutely petrified… Right there and then, I decided I liked that guy! And obviously remembered to thank the Big Guy for listening to my prayers a few minutes earlier ;)

Next, he told me to close the door, lock the van and follow him to the administration building. I was still a bit nervous, but way less than at the passport booth! He was asking questions about Leszek, then about our business and how things have been going – I told him truthfully that things have been hard over the last couple of years, but even despite mental health problems linked to it we just… keep going. Somewhere along the way it stopped feeling like an interrogation and turned into an actual conversation between two human beings. Which, considering how stressed I get about borders these days, was quite an achievement. He went to speak to his chief officer twice, after asking me some follow-up questions. When he returned with Leszek’s detained passport in his hand, he said to me: “Well guys, I’m really sorry, but you won’t be travelling to the UK today”… In that moment, my stomach and heart felt like 200 kg stones in my body! And after seeing the look on my face (what a sight this must have been!), he started laughing – only then I realized he was kidding! Ha-ha-ha. Very fucking funny, eh? Well actually… yes! ;)

After he walked us over to our van, I told him I'd recently said I didn't want to keep doing these trips anymore, and that I’ll want to find alternative ways to deliver the floors.

No more Poland–UK–Poland.

No more customs. No more paperwork. No more standing at borders wondering what today's surprise is going to be. No more vans breaking down in ridiculous places. No more trying to solve some completely unexpected disaster hundreds of miles away from home. Basically: I'm done. My nervous system has resigned. Thank you very much.

And then I told him he'd fucked it all up. Because he was so bloody nice and so easy to talk to that now I'd probably want to come back just to see him again. He laughed.

And somewhere in that conversation came:

You have to be human.

You have to communicate with each other as that’s what makes us human.

I drove away.

And that bloody sentence has been stuck in my head like a song…!

Maybe because communication is something I haven't exactly excelled at recently.

Which is slightly unfortunate when you run a business.

I've communicated, obviously.

I've answered emails.

I've answered messages.

I've apologised.

I've explained delays.

I've told customers that production wasn't going according to plan.

I've written variations of “we're really sorry” more times than I ever want to count.

But there's communicating.

And then there's actually telling people what the fuck is going on.

I haven't done much of the second one, because I was ashamed I guess. And scared of the reaction.

Because what do you say?

“Hi, sorry your parquet is late. Our entire life appears to be on fire at the moment.”

Bit much for a Tuesday morning, don’t you think?

So when things became too complicated, too embarrassing, too personal or simply too fucking ridiculous to explain...

I went quiet.

Wood Job went quiet.

And then eventually we'd pop back up with a nice photograph of some oak every now and then: ”LOOK! PARQUET! Nothing to see here. Everything is absolutely fine”.

…

Except less and less things were fine. And few weeks ago, I finally broke. Properly.

Not “I need a weekend off” broke.

Not “business is stressful” broke.

Broke broke. No no no, wait… Fucking BROKE.

So badly, that I landed in hospital. And since then I've been trying to understand how the hell I got there.

How WE got there.

Because obviously these things don't happen on a random Tuesday.

There isn't usually one enormous event and then — boom — you're fucked.

At least there wasn't for me. There were hundreds of little things. And quite a few very big ones.

Fear.

Money.

No money.

Orders.

No orders.

Landlords.

Warehouses.

Moving.

Moving again.

And again.

Pregnancy.

Babies.

Alcohol.

Depression.

Vans.

Moving lorries.

Forklifts bursting into flames.

Customs.

Arguments.

Bad decisions.

People we trusted.

People we absolutely should not have trusted.

Things other people did to us.

Things we did entirely to ourselves.

And probably a few more…

And through practically all of it, Maciej and I kept saying the same thing:

We just need to get through this bit.

Then we'll be OK.

Just finish this order.

Just get this money in.

Just get through this move.

Just get out of this place.

Just solve this problem.

Just survive this month.

Then we can breathe.

Except...

there was always another fucking bit.

…

And while thinking about all this, I remembered something. I used to write about our life here. ACTUALLY write about it.

Not captions.

Not stock updates.

Real life stories – our stories.

So I went back and read the old Tales of a Reclaimed Life and very quickly went… HOLY CRAP.

There I was. Me. Three years younger.

Completely oblivious to the absolute shitshow waiting around the corner.

And incredibly confident that whatever happened, we'd deal with it.

Actually, that's not entirely fair.

I'd already dealt with quite a lot by then - in one of those old posts, I wrote about yet another completely ridiculous delivery disaster.

The sort of trip where a normal person might reasonably conclude:

“Fuck this, I'm never doing this again.”! My conclusion? Apparently it was simply: “more the reason to keep going.” I read that sentence again this week. And just stared at it. Because... there it fucking is.

Possibly our greatest strength.

And possibly one of our greatest weaknesses.

We don't know when to stop.

We keep going.

If something goes wrong, we find another way.

If that doesn't work, we find another one.

If the door is locked, we’ll look for a window.

If the window is locked, apparently I'll drive a van full of parquet across Europe and see what happens.

For years, that attitude got us through things that probably should have stopped us.

Until eventually...

it didn't.

…

And then there's the title of those last stories.

In 2023, we were moving out of our warehouse in Trzcianka. The last place I considered a truly happy one for the three of us. For context, we weren't just working there. We lived there. You can read about it in “The Treehouse” story and others.

Because of course we did!

This is Wood Job.

Normality has never really been our thing. Well… define ‘normal’, eh? ;)

Anyway, I wrote four posts about that period when we were moving out of there, and I called the series: “The Beginning of The End... Again!”

I meant Trzcianka. The end of that warehouse. The end of that chapter. We were moving somewhere new. Somewhere bigger. Somewhere better.

Somewhere we thought Wood Job could finally grow properly.

Back then I thought I was writing about an ending and a new beginning. Reading that title now, three years later, is fucking hilarious! In a slightly horrifying way.

Because apparently I accidentally gave the next three years of our lives a title.

It really was the beginning of the end.

Just not the end I thought I was writing about! FFS.

…

And Christ, a lot happened after that blog went quiet.

Some things were done to us.

Some things we did to ourselves.

And I really want to make that distinction before I start telling this story.

Because I'm not interested in rewriting the last three years into some inspirational tale about two wonderful, hardworking business owners who were repeatedly attacked by Evil Outside Forces. Nope. We fucked up too.

Quite spectacularly sometimes.

We trusted people we shouldn't have trusted. We stayed in situations long after we should have left. We took on too much. We didn't ask for help.

I drank. We made terrible decisions. We sometimes let customers down.

There are things I wish we'd done completely differently.

There are also things that happened to us that I still struggle to believe actually happened.

And somewhere between those two things is the truth.

And that's exactly the story I want to tell.

…

But — and this matters most — there were also some bloody wonderful people along the way.

Customers who waited.

Customers who forgave us.

People who helped us when they had absolutely no obligation to.

People who turned up at exactly the right moment.

People whose names you don't know but who are part of the reason Wood Job is still here. Even customs officers. Yes. Customs officers.

Turns out they're human too. ;)

One particularly lovely customs officer helped me sort out a customs mess there and then instead of turning the whole thing into another disaster.

She still follows us on Instagram.

Still cheers us on.

Hello, if you're reading this. 👋

I haven't forgotten, I never will.  Hell, one day my grandkids will be hearing all about it so much that their ears will ache!

There have been quite a few people like that over the last three years.

People who treated us like human beings when we desperately needed someone to. Helped us whatever way they could and still do to this day – Maciej’s side of the family especially. The very few friends we have left in our lives. Our neighbours in London. But also, at times, random strangers the Universe has sent our way, and still does so!

And I remember them.

All of them.

…

Which brings me back to Monday.

Be human.

Communicate with each other.

Maybe that's why those words wouldn't leave me alone.

Because perhaps the solution to three years of going quiet whenever things got too difficult to explain is actually embarrassingly simple.

TALK. Tell the truth. And people will understand. Not all of them of course, but most.

So that's what I'm going to do. But better than before.

I'm going to tell you what happened:

The things I'm proud of.

The things I'm ashamed of.

The things that make me angry.

The things that are fucking hilarious now but definitely weren't hilarious at the time.

The people who hurt us.

The people who saved our arses.

The things that happened to us.

And the things we did to ourselves.

And, obviously, a completely unreasonable amount of reclaimed parquet.

Because somehow the bloody parquet survived all of it.

…

So. Where do I start? I've been thinking about that too.

And I think I know.

There are four little scars on my left hand. I'm looking at them while writing this. I got them in 2023.

During the move from Trzcianka to our wonderful, bigger, better, everything-is-going-to-be-amazing new place in Niemieczkowo aka Deutschendorf Barn - you can still find it on Instagram under that very name– not much there, but oh well, if things got as far as creating a separate account for documenting progress, it means it really happened…! ;)

Anyway – during the move a dog attacked me. It was under the care(less) of our then-landlady.

The bastard fucking bit me in the palm of my left hand. Left two ginormous holes there. The woman rushed me into the hospital.

Four fucking stitches.

I still have the scars.

And looking back at it now, the symbolism is almost too fucking obvious:

We arrived at the beginning of our new life already bleeding.

We just didn't know yet that my hand would be the least of our problems.

But that's the next tale.

For now, I'm going to take the advice of a very nice Border Force officer who completely ruined my plans to never drive to Britain again.

Be human. Communicate.

So...

Hello again.

It's been a while.

And apparently we have quite a lot to talk about.

Welcome back to Tales of a Reclaimed Life.

Love,

Mel x

woodjob uk , tales of a reclaimed life , small business , london , poland