A time capsule.

Sometimes you just know, even when you don't know that you know, you know?

It’s been a funny old week. The highs and lows have barely had a gasp of breathing space between them.

Let’s start with what was a really lovely moment. Someone who used to see me in old job, reached out to tell me how me quitting being an escort made him reassess what he was doing with his life.
He wasn’t reading these blogs and taking inspiration, he just took stock and started sorting his stuff out.
And that’s exactly my aim in life. I hope that I can gently prompt people into living more fulfilling lives, be it by writing here or just existing. It’s such a good feeling when I see it happening.

On a less good note, I have begun drafting my chapter on the ‘Women You Meet in Escorting’, in which I went off on a lengthy tangent about how ‘Payment on Account’ tax keeps you trapped in a cycle of working. This morning, who else but HMRC launched themselves in through the letterbox.

Brown envelopes are almost always HMRC or the DVLA, and it’s almost always a ‘We’re here to punish you, because you’ve been a naughty girl’. I barely work, I barely drive. Leave me be, please.

I used ChatGPT to generate an image of Charles in a faux-fur, purple pimp outfit, and have been using it as an iPhone ‘sticker’ sending it around to friends whenever there’s been mention of HMRC lately. Brought it on myself, didn’t I?

I was coming to the point where I felt I could delete my old work profile.
People had had two months to say goodbye & ask for the blog, enquiry emails had trailed off.
And when that letter got wedged through the door this morning, my first thought was ‘Shit, what if I have to go back to old job because there’s a huge, unexpected tax bill waiting?’
And then, in a moment of rational forward planning, I went in and deleted my old work profiles.
I feel so very committed to life as it is right now, that I wanted to remove the option of backward steps. I’ve been called ‘mad as a box of frogs’ a thousand times, so why not leap into it?

You can only control what you can control, and I’ve got no control over this.

Whilst I finish drafting the blog about the women I’ve met, and collating all my financial documents, here’s something else for you.

I had a time capsule sent to me the other day. How amazing is that? Someone interviewed me during the initial lockdown of 2020. He was representing his church radio show and wanted to give the listeners in the congregation insight into and challenge their preconceived ideas about, the adult industry. Apparently it worked and we’re due to follow up soon.

He sent me the recordings not long after, but I never could bring myself to listen to them. I know I waffle on at times, but actually, who likes the sound of their own voice?

He asked a lot of the usual questions. Any regrets? Biggest fears? Do I want kids? What are the men from escort meets like? What is your life like? If you did a different job, what would it be? Which famous person would you like to take to dinner?

When I did finally listen to it, I scribbled down a few notes. It feels like such a pivotal moment in life, to be hearing it now. Over 2 months since I quit escorting, and a month into the next steps of counselling college, I got to hear 28 year old me. I was arguably, at the lowest point of my adult life back then, so using it as a reference point, a gauge is amazing.

I thought as I started listening to it, that I’d feel some kind of embarrassment listening back to a naive version of myself, but I didn’t get that sense at all. I was so much more articulate and polite than I’d allow myself to believe, even now.

If I didn’t consciously know where I was going, reading between the lines, I had some inkling of a direction, and have ended up here.

It was recorded maybe a year or so before I launched my old life into the bin & started afresh. I was still working my ass off, and even though I didn’t want to admit it at the time, I was burning out a lot. I wasn’t happy but was still stuck in the phase of thinking ‘I’m married now, I own a house, I have to find a way to make these things work because I’ve committed to them.’ It didn’t occur to me that actually a) the responsibility to make it work wasn’t all mine, and b) I could get up and leave.

In terms of direction, I talked about writing more, about maybe becoming a therapist one day, about getting a dog. It was all very ‘one day’…. ‘maybe 10 years from now I’ll start looking into it’. And here I am six years later going ‘doing that, half way there, got two dogs, still more to do, can’t wait’.

There were themes I kept repeating over and over again. ‘Get up and get on with it’, ‘persevere’, I know I can, but I’m no longer sure that I should.

I could hear a need to be liked, a need to be nice all the time, and that was causing me a lot of pressure. The longest pause for thought came after being asked ‘what happiness meant?’.
‘Get on with what you’ve got. Live in the moment. It’s not dwelling on the past or future too much.’

I talked about resilience, and made a comment about how it would be shit if the house burnt down, but I knew I would cope. The funniest thing is my work-place was very slowly flooding whilst I was tucked away for a few months at home during the lockdown. The worst was happening whilst I made a flippant comment about the hypothetical of it happening, and it’s all worked out ok.

I talked a bit about anger, goodness me I used to have a terrible temper. A fuse so short I upheld the fiery red-head stereotype single handedly for a brief while.

It took a lot of therapy to find healthier coping mechanisms. You know what I know now? I know I’m a really chilled out person most of the time. If anger is seeping out, something is majorly wrong in life.

Listening back to younger me, told me something I already knew, which is to trust my gut.
The interviewer asked me, if I hadn’t been in the sex industry, which other job I would pick from - politician, accountant, lawyer, counsellor or doctor. I said ‘ooh no, I couldn’t never be a lawyer’ then promptly forgot, spent 3 years doing a law degree and hated it. Younger me knew what she was talking about, but merrily took the scenic route.

A question I loved was ‘Do you ever just want to give it all up?’ I said, ‘No. Find the good bits and move forward with those.’
And I guess even now I have given it all up, I did still find the good bits and moved forwards with them.

In the interview, I made reference to a woman who I’d met in an escort meet and heard that she had subsequently died.
Long after, I found out she was fine, she’d just relocated & changed her name to avoid having to tell a client he was getting over involved and she didn’t want to see him anymore.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is not how we handle stuff. Do not take notes. Find a way to say what you’ve got to say. If they don’t like it, that’s a them problem.

In the interview he asked about the last book I read, and I said about how I’m the type of person to read 3 at the same time and leave each of them half finished. That number has gone up to 8 part finished books at the most recent count. I’ve recently decided, if you can’t concentrate on reading anymore, maybe it’s time to start writing. Get all the words out to make space for some new ones.

Romantic relationships over the last few years have caused me a lot of confusion and doubt about the type of person I am. No matter what I did or didn’t do, there was a feeling like I wasn’t ever enough, colliding with the knowledge that I am more than enough.

It was a relief to hear, all those years ago, that I sounded very much like myself. There is a lot of consistency in who I am as a person. I still care about others, but know now that I can ‘put my own oxygen mask on’ before I choose who to help. I’ve been working so hard recently to find validation from within, getting a recording of my younger self has given me exactly that.

K xx