I started out studied electronics and maths but I'd be going to a gig at the weekend and my classmates would be going to fix their ZX Spectrums. It was super nerdy. I didn't last long.
I then got myself a job in a company called ICL, basically dispatching engineers. My manager soon realised I was making a huge mistake and got me into engineering and computers. I have a lot to thank him for.
I continued there until I met an Irish man on a plane. In short, I ended up going out with him, moving to Dublin and teaching adults IT skills. About a year later, I got a job in Oracle in Blackrock, and within six months had applied for a transfer to San Francisco where I became a product manager.
Oracle was a great company: share options, silly money, and your own hours but I couldn't handle the whole pc'ness of California. Two years on, I met Paddy Holohan who told me about a new small Irish company and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. That was Baltimore Technologies.
I was one of the first few people there. I was there to help them drive in to the US markets and work on their marketing and product strategy. I started great guns then it quickly became too much.
It was very much jobs for the boys plus we were working crazy hours. I would have had to have a very brown nose to get on and I wasn't really prepared to do that. I was coming across everything from bullying to undermining. After two years, the company was flying but I was teetering on the edge.
I did yoga since I was about 17 but I'd stopped because I was working all the hours God sent. My friend persuaded me to go to a yoga class and it just blew me away. I went regularly from then on but all the work pressures were still there. I read a book called the "Dummies Guide to Dealing with Stress". Number 32 was "if all else fails, run away" so I did.
I ran off to the Bahamas to a yoga ashram. I arrived, hitched my tent up, but then everyone started holding hands and singing Krishna Hari Krishna and I just thought "oh man".
The teaching was excellent, but very hard-core. They employed every single brain washing technique I had heard of from sleep deprivation to repetition, but I was adamant to get qualified, I'm stubborn like that.
When I got back, I was really spaced for a while, when a friend said if I helped him with his business plan, he'd let me use the basement to teach yoga. The IT bubble hadn't burst so I was working two three days a week earning a fortune and gradually the yoga teaching built up and up.
Then a student told me the space underneath her studio was free. A former metal engineering company, it was derelict, had a crater, was strewn with aluminium, covered in oil and grease, with no window. I thought, "Yeah I'll take it."
I took the lease on, but 4 weeks later, I found out I was pregnant. The whole place just grew really organically as I had to get other teachers in as I was in hospital with the baby.
I had some money come through in March. It was either, go on a much-needed holiday, new clothes that I haven't bought since I had a baby or the second studio became available and I thought "shit I should really take it".
I'm unemployable now, there's no way I could work for anybody. I get complete job satisfaction and feel I'm generating general happiness. Thatıs comes at a price, I worked harder in the last 2 years than I have in my whole life. Its more than a job, its an extension of yourself. Doing all that and having a baby is quite a juggling act.
In San Francisco, I had a Saab, nice clothes and gadgets, now I have a second hand lap top, and I haven't been on holidays for a couple of years, I'm not super flash but I'm so happy.
Having started her career in computing in ICL, her corporate life included years as a product manager in Oracle and then Baltimore Technologies. Today, Wilkinson owns and runs the Elbow-room yoga studios in Dublin 7 which offers many different forms of yoga, Pilates and massage treatments. She is very involved in pre-natal and birth yoga and is currently completing a Doula course. Between managing the two studios herself, and looking after her daughter Tallulah, she still teaches about 6 hours yoga a week.
