Where to start! The past weeks have been mind blowing. I have clocked up a bit of travel, mainly visiting Spain for my EVS planning visit, and had so many things to get in order before March. If you haven’t caught up on my 2 months ahead in Spain you can read about it here and watch my amusing video here.

The planning visit went well. I have an accessible room in the same living area as my co-volunteers. I have an electric bed, hoist and a shower chair there too. Filipe and Beata, my PA’s, will support me on my placement. The organisation I’m volunteering for are so cool and made me feel so welcome, as did the other people I met generally. I will be learning Spanish (of course), teaching English, working on some marketing projects, speaking about disability to local organisations and doing a couple of radio shows. Other projects and tasks will evolve as I go.

I leave this Sunday!

Apart from the magnitude of this project, I have been running my other projects and indeed everyday life.

I spoke at a local Cambridge business networking event and in Hackney on Personal Budgets. Disability Horizons are being featured in the Guardian with an interview of Srin and myself. I ran a great webinar last week on the topic of disability and relationships, with guest speakers Kirsty Liddiard and Mel Halacre. You can watch the video here and sign up for ‘travel’ on Wednesday 28^th March (live from Spain) on this link. Full details of my webinar series are here too https://martynsibley.com/webinars.  I have also interviewed 13 people on the subject of disability and employment for a new ecourse. You can sign-up for free, receive weekly email guides from myself and use other web resources. ‘Inspiring Employment’ will be launched in the next week 🙂

Beyond work I have overcome the challenges of broken wheelchairs and cars, at last. That was a hard and testing time. I found out yesterday my flat will be rented while I am away, which is a huge deal for me. My family and friends are generally well, although my step-granddad is in hospital at the moment. I saw Claire in York at the weekend, which was amazing as always. However with distances and so forth we are cooling things off. I hope life and fate will be kind to us, but whatever happens I know I am richer having her in my life in any capacity.

So, I am heading off now to a meeting about sponsorship. On that note: if you have any ideas on how I can get Horizons, the webinars and ecourses sponsored/funded please get in touch through twitter or my website!

Afterwards I am driving to Leeds, staying overnight, attending a ‘pre-departure training’ session for Spain and then back tomorrow evening. Thursday I have lunch and dinner with friends, with the Guardian interview in the afternoon. Friday is back to mums, before S-day on Sunday.

Watch out Aviles, Asturias; I am coming soon!