I am 47 years old. That seems odd when I type it out, because in my head I am still twenty! I was born and grew up in the UK, near Reading (about 30 miles west of London). I left school at 16 and worked for ICI with lots of nasty chemicals, before leaving and working with computers including on a Help Desk for a couple of years (yes, we used to ask people "have you turned it off and on again"!). In 1994 I changed track and trained as a mental health nurse. About this time I trained as a hypnotherapist and volunteered on a suicide helpline too. When I qualified I worked with adolescents, although that is 20 years ago I still think about those kids. After a couple of years I left and worked in a forensic unit working with people who had been convicted of crimes, or were awaiting trial, and had mental illnesses (or sometimes feigning illness). I once sat in the dock of the infamous Old Bailey, in London, with a patient who was on trial there, and spent several hours in the cells beneath it. After that I worked in the community and finally went into management and helped set up a Home Treatment team
About ten years ago we decided to do something different. We moved to France and opened a B&B. It was hard work: I had to learn French, and learn lots of new skills too. As a small B&B owner you never really get any time off (even if you are on holiday you have to take bookings for when you get back!). Even in February we have had people call us at 10pm at night wanting a room.
The town we live in (Felletin, in central France) has a wool festival every october, and a Felt festival every two years. It was these festivals that inspired me to give needle felting a go. I became addicted and it is now a sideline (I don't earn much from it, but I enjoy it). It was trying to promote this business that led me to the site Tsu. I had lots of fun on that site (sometimes it irritated the crap out of me too - particularly the aggressive recruitment angle), but as it evolved and changed I fell away from it... and then it died. Luckily, lots of the very nice people I had met on Tsu found me on Facebook. I had seen a few posts about Steemit, from these friends but it was the post by @deadgrlsuppastar that spurred me on to check out the site.
I have various interests: crafts, photography, writing, arts, reading. I am not sure which of those channels is my main one (depends which I am blogging about) but you can follow my posts by searching for #feltbuzz You can have a look at my felt creations by visiting my blog, and you can visit my B&B website too!
I am pretty new to Steemit, so have not had any negative experiences yet, everyone seems pretty friendly and helpful. I am old enough to realise that in any community there are always some a-holes, so I am sure I will come across some in due course! But so far, so good!
I hope to enjoy Steemit for a long time, not sure about life after it. I will continue to blog on my wordpress sites, facebook too. Looking forward to more interactions with you guys though!
Tell me about your story! This is the link to the original post about the #tellyourstory contest