Hi, I’m Sammi.
I left school back in 1989, and how I got here is a bit of a long story — but it’s the honest one, so here it is.
In my final year at high school I damaged my right knee during a games lesson.
At the time it didn’t seem like much, just some mild pain, so I carried on. I left school, went to catering college and became a chef — something I properly loved doing.
I did that for a good while, but the knee pain kept getting worse, and other chronic health issues started showing up alongside it.
Eventually my consultant told me straight: if I kept working, I’d be in a wheelchair before I was 30. So I gave up the one thing I loved doing, with no real idea what came next.
After that, life did what life does. I got married and divorced twice, had my son, then married my best friend in 2007, who has brought up my son as his own since he was 18 months old.
In 2017 — after a few failed operations — I finally had a knee replacement, Unfortunately this did not resolve the issue so I am still having the same issues today as I had back then…
Then in November 2019, I was rushed into hospital with gallstones. I ended up in theatre, my gallbladder had actually burst, and I very nearly didn’t make it.
I was in hospital for a while recovering, and then just a few weeks later I was back in again — this time with chronic pancreatitis, which has since left me with type 3c diabetes.
Just when you think you don’t need another chronic illness, one turns up anyway.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, I started looking online for something to keep my mind busy. I tried a lot of things. Most of them didn’t work out, or needed more time and energy than I had to give.
What I actually needed was one thing — just one — that I could manage properly, without it taking over.
That’s when I found affiliate marketing, and it’s why this blog exists.
I’m not here to sell you a dream or tell you that you’ll be quitting your job in three months.
I started this blog because I needed something realistic that fit around bad days as well as good ones, and I’m sharing what I’ve learned in case it helps someone else in the same position — whatever their reason for needing something that works in small pockets of time, not a full workday.
So that’s me. Just someone figuring it out a bit at a time, and writing about it as I go.
Sammi x
P.S. If you asked me to recommend one piece of information that helped me and could help you get started this is it.