And It Goes On And On

Well we've gotten to the end of the week without any more solid information.

The supervisors (not contract staff themselves) have been assuring us that things won't be as bad as all that and that it'll be people from the other areas of the contract that will be let go, not their staff!

Yes, yes, thanks, so helpful.

We go through flurries of discussing the possibilities (cut hours but not cut positions, positions cut from one role but not another, the odds that people already part-time will be in more danger or safer) and then periods of not wanting to talk about it at all.

The question of whether or not this might be a bit of a rattling to keep us in our box or to get people to quit under their own steam has been asked but not answered.

I have in fact gathered my courage and applied for another job:
a) just in case, and
b) just because I'm freaked out about the future doesn't mean that I'm not still bored with the lessened amount of work on offer, because I am.

I'd been chatting to an old workmate around the time this whole situation broke and it turned out that there was a 1 year contract opening where she worked to cover someone's maternity leave.

Now a 1 year contract isn't ideal in a number of ways (eg, the bit where I'd be having to do all this again in a year's time just when I'd really gotten used to it, a bit of a salary cut) but it is:

• work in my field
• with a reputable company that would look good on my resume
• being vouched for by someone I've worked with before who knows the kind of work I've done before
• a chance to remember how change works without having to worry I've committed myself to an ongoing position that may turn out to be awful

Thursday I refreshed my resume which mostly involved updating the formatting, making it look a bit more professional and jamming in all the things I've learned since the last time I updated my resume a year or two ago.
That went OK and I felt pretty good with how it looked by the end of it.

Then I sat down and wrote my cover letter.
This was a bit trickier as I am pretty terrible at talking myself up. At first I can't think of anything to say and then I put in way too much detail but then have trouble trimming it down because it makes me sound good.
By the end of this I thought I could walk on water and was qualified to become dictator of a small country because it made me sound really quite good.

Then I had an hour and a half conversation with the friend who told me about the position, got her impressions of working there, what the workload and people are like, how she thought I'd find the place, what to remember for the interview if I got one.
I felt a lot better about my chances after this because job ads always make it sound like they're looking for someone with four degrees and mad juggling skills which isn't always what the position requires.

But then I hit a sort of wall of Thinking About This, felt kind of emotionally drained, and then got a phone call from my Dad who wanted to know how the process was going, was very encouraging but also suggested this was a good time to think about what I want to do in the future and what my long-term goals are.

No, Dad! Bad!

The thing about my long-term goals is that very few of them are to do with work.

Most of my long-term goals look like this:

• travel a bunch
• get better at things I find interesting
• eat delicious food
• maybe get some nice snogs with a lovely man
  

I don't have a vocation or any passions that lead me towards particular fields of work.

I want steady employment in something mentally engaging where I can contribute but don't have to be in charge.

I don't mind responsibility but I don't want to be leading the way because I am not ambitious.

I'll brainstorm the shit out of ideas for the people who are in charge but I don't want to have 'come up with ideas for the company/business/workplace's future' as one of my key tasks.

So yes, I do need to think about that shit but right now is not the best time for that.

I just ended up curled up on the couch, eating chicken nuggets and watching Archer like an adult while I ignored reality on the surface and pretended the undercurrents of my mind weren't wailing 'Argh! Change and decisions! Either you'll get the job and have to change now or you won't get the job and you'll either keep your boring job or get canned and be unemployed! Argh!'

Friday morning I woke up, remembered The Fear, got to work anyway, pootled around, submitted my application (which my friend who had name-dropped me to her boss tells me her boss had asked about) and freaked out some more.

No matter what happens in the next month I won't be in dire straits.
I have savings, somewhere to live, a supportive family and won't be in the desperate position some people would be in.
I had just forgotten about this particular brand of my own anxiety because I haven't had to deal with it for a while.

I get notoriously nervy around big decisions because I am terrified of making the wrong one and ending up in the shitty storyline of the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure that is life.
But making no decisions can often dump you there anyway.

Oh, and Friday evening I got an email asking to set up an interview for next week so the 'What If...?' train has started building up steam in my brain and is barrelling along down the tracks 0_0

So either:

• I'll get a new job and it'll be lovely and a good intro to the next phase of my life.
• I'll get a new job and it'll be OK and I'll just have to get a new job in a year when it ends.
• I'll get a new job and it'll turn out to be stressful and horrible, leaving me extra put out because it'll be shitty AND involve a long commute (I'm not moving to a more expensive area for a year's contract when my next job might be elsewhere), then have to get a new job.
• I won't get a new job and will have to stay with my boring job while looking for another new job.
• I won't get a new job and will be out of work and will have to look for another new job.

So yeah.
Life.
Change.
Flipping out about things that most other people have to deal with more often.

I know I'm not the only person who gets anxious about this kind of stuff and I'll eventually get better at dealing with it as I get the opportunity but right now I'd rather like to go into some nice soothing denial but honestly can't.

Time to be an adult or some shit like that.

Bleh.

Change Ahead

Damn damnit.

Real life you are ruining my weekend!

At work a group of us are technically contracted to our workplace by an outside employment agency.
I say technically because we found out about the job independently or through people we knew, interviewed with the people who run the place, were hired and then signed a bunch of paperwork with the employment agency because they were the ones who were technically running the contract and paying wages for these positions.
The contract for these positions used to be renewed every three years for a three year period.
Two years ago management decided instead to renew for one year with two options for renewal.
Last year they signed the first renewal.
This year we've been told there's to be some more negotiating.

They told us this on Friday afternoon because that's what we all needed to hear before two days without any additional details!

Work has been slowly down steadily for the last two years and as a result they've decided the amount of hours they're going to contract the employment agency for is lower.
They of course don't know how much lower or anything helpful like that.
All they know is that they will probably end up with more positions that people and a few of us may not have jobs come the 1st of July.

Thanks for the heads up, incredibly well-organised and thoughtful management people! ← This is sarcasm!

We've all known for a while that this was probably coming considering the amount of work we were getting now compared to the old tempo but they obviously knew this too, they've probably been planning for it.

What would have been nice would be if they had let us know at the start of the year that this was a strong possibility and given people longer to assess their finances and look at whether they wanted to continue on here or look for work elsewhere.

Now, considering how I know these things are handled*, we'll probably be told how many positions are being lost a week or two before it happens.
Some of us have a bit of annual leave saved up so we'll have a few weeks of pay to survive on if that happens, others do not.

They've said that it should hopefully only be a small reduction and for all we know it'll be more along the lines that a few people have to work 4 day weeks or 6 hour days but until we know everyone is nervous and on edge.

I've been working here for 7 years now so I have been a bit bored and looking to move on but I was hoping for the time to look for something appropriate before then.

I've no reason to believe that I'm one of the people on the chopping block but it doesn't do to assume yourself entirely safe either.
That just leads to heartbreak and panic if you find out you're wrong.

This whole situation combined with the fact that there's only one year left before the entire contract goes up for tender again means there's only one year of guaranteed work before there's possibly even greater changes in the works.

This has prompted a lot of thinking, some panicking, some panicked thinking and some long overdue updating of my resume.

Ugh.

I hate unexpected change.

I'm no so great with planned change either but this?  >_<



*I'm not saying it's been a bad place to work, for at least 5 of the 7 years it was pretty excellent. The last 2 have been dull because we've had less to do. The bullshit here comes in from the fact it's an organisation that has a lot of red tape and bureaucratic bollocks and it gets snarled up at times when it would be particularly handy if it didn't :-/

Puncture Panic Paranoia

Darn frobishing kerning trammelling heck!*

Luxuriating the in warm weather I decided to go for a lordly stroll about my rented domain.

Clad in the finest of boxers and singlets I meandered through the flat, out onto the sheltered back balcony from where I can survey all that I don't own but could hit with spit balls from behind some handy lattice screening if the mood takes me.

I considered having a bit of a sweep, tidying up the ancient retro bar and evicting the resident spiders to make way for possible frivolities this summer.

I took a step backwards to take in the scope of said task.

I took another step backwards and felt a sharp pinch on my left heel.

I aborted the 'lower foot' process, reversed the motion and looked down.

I'd stepped on a cack-spackling rusty nail!

Some rampaging flag-noggin had - at a point in the past - decided that the best way to secure one of the floor boards was to hammer a back-up series of nails in from the crawl space below.

Having never pranced about on the back balcony shoeless before this was the first time I'd noticed the little death-march of rusty stupid nails and boy did I notice them now.

I knew I'd had a tetanus shot at some point but damned if I could remember when.

All my hazy memories of immunisations and boosters seemed to feature my school uniform which didn't bode well for currency.

So in the grip of a mild bout of panic, wondering how long it took for tetanus and lock-jaw to set in, I began staggering around the house like a pirate with a peg leg, trying to remember where I kept things like disinfectant and bandages and my clothes.

I thought about ringing my GP - I remembered it was 8pm at night.

I decided to look up tetanus online - I wished I hadn't.

I called my aunt who is a nurse - she told me I had a 72 hour window in which to get a tetanus jab and to calm down.

I looked up the address of the local hospital, made a note of their phone number and then curled up on the couch under a blanket to await my impending doom, moving my jaw every now and then to see if my body was an overachiever which was going to seize up days or weeks ahead of schedule.

I considered popping along to the hospital for an injection - I remembered it was a Thursday night and all the just-got-paid-gonna-drink-my-week's-wages brigade would be turning up in the emergency room soon. Or driving the streets under the influence.

I reconsidered.

This kind of malarky is exactly why it's a good thing I'm so easily distracted and so very lazy.

If I were a more focused person I would be a full blown hypochondriac.

At various times in my life I have been briefly convinced - until diverted by something shiny - that I had the various ailments:

• sore wrist = early onset arthritis
• sleep away the weekend = chronic fatigue syndrome
• rash = meningococcal (it wasn't a rash, it was red ink from a pen)
• blue-green marks on wrist = varicose veins (it was vertigris from the work key I had clipped to my watch)
• forgetfulness = early onset Alzheimer's
  

It's counterproductive and pointless to get myself all in a tizzy over almost unfounded imaginary ailments - especially since I'm planning to die of twitchy old age atop a pile of money and be ceremonially eaten by my squadron of highly trained attack cats - but every time I fall into the same pattern of runaway speculation.

In this case what I had to fight off the knowledge of my impending grisly doom by applying a healthy dose of the original Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy radio play for long enough to get to sleep so I could make two important stops the next morning.

The hospital for a tetanus jab.

And the hardware store for a hammer.

Those nails are going down.



*Yes, yes, words made up or used out of context but you get the point.

Get Over, Get Over The Third Of October

OK, that's it!

If anyone else wants to celebrate their plans to be happily entangled for the rest of their lives they will have to offer me bribes or hold the celebrations in my backyard!

Look, I know that people face far more complicated and serious dilemmas every day and that I'm a huge crybaby but I get a bit stressed about other people's exciting days going right and like them far apart so I can help, can go months without any big events or demands on my time cropping up and then this happened...

Saturday was the day of my cousin's wedding - aw! *cue ecstatic aunts!*

It was also the day of my mate Awesome's engagement party - aw! *cue overexcited friends!*

Both events were on at almost exactly the same time... in two different towns... two hours apart... *cue freaking out and screaming!*

Crud! Crud! Crud! Crud! Crud!

I didn't want to miss either event but going to both was going to be a bugger.

Not to mention I was in charge of organising the cake and signature book for the engagement party from a third and completely unrelated town and was doing the Prayers of the Faithful during my cousin's wedding ceremony.

Things sort of shilly-shallied about for a few weeks leading up to the wedding/engagement party weekend.

The cake was fine.

The people at the shop decided that the picture that was to go on top of the cake was too dark and wouldn't turn out.

I found a new picure.

They were no longer accepting pictures by email, the picture had to be printed on photo paper and brought in personally.

Oh and the day you leave work early and drive an hour to bring the photo in we will have closed early.

Eventually I got the bloody cake squared away, found a dress for the wedding, hand-cut 80 pieces of ornate cardboard for the engagement party signature book and bought metallic ink pens and badass stickers for them to decorate them with, explained the situation to both occasion-stressed women without being torn a new one, looked at transport options and then began Operation EVERYBODY STOP TELLING ME THAT THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE! WHAT ARE YOU A BUNCH OF QUITTERS!?*

Step One. Wake up, get preliminary dressed, go pick up cake.

Step Two. Drop off cake with another friend, hand over cards, pens and stickers.

Step Three. Drop car off at the train station, get sister's fiancé to pick me up and drive us back to the house.

Step Four. Collect clothes and sundries for the wedding, herd entire family into cars and drive for two hours.

Step Five. Get changed into wedding clothes at a relative's house, herd everyone back into cars, have argument about best way to get to church, misidentify church, have another argument, find the right church, get everyone out of the car.

Step Six. Find the other cousin who I am doing the readings with, find a seat, sit down and make chitchat.

Step Seven. All agree she looks lovely and he is probably not a serial killer and can be let into the family, realise the priest is mental as he starts rambling about changing the wording of 'what God has joined let no man put asunder' to gender-neutral because 'people are running off with all sorts these days', ruins part of the service by trying to make comments addressed to the the groom and bride separately gender-neutral and then forgets to ask the bride to say her vows before being reminded by the wanting to be happy couple.

Step Eight. Deliver prayers without saying a swear or making any embarrassing noises, agree everything went very well except for the mental priest.

Step Nine. Get back to the house, change again, drag my father away from all the cheerfully enthusiastic family shouting, say goodbye to my parents as they happen to be flying to Italy after the reception, drive to a train station, get a bit lost, use logic to find track, use track to find station, get out of the car, leg it through construction works, find ticket counter, buy ticket, get to platform at the same time as the train, get train, collapse.

Step Ten. Spend two hours thinking 'this is stupid, if we had teleporters I would be there by now'.

Step Eleven. Arrive at station, get changed in the bathroom, get into car cleverly left at station earlier, drive to engagement party, spend the whole drive hoping I hadn't confused the location with another.

Step Twelve. Arrive in time to preside over the revelation of the cake, be crowned Dëity Mønarch of Cake and join the party.

Step Thirteen. Help pack up, drive people out to the bottle-o for some travellers as I'm the only person who hadn't been drinking**, drive back to Awesome's place and spend the rest of the evening*** having a drink, eating chips and watching Wayne's World and Wayne's World 2.

Step Fourteen. Finally relax and realise that I've enjoyed myself.


*sigh*


...


OK, OK, I'll probably come to your bloody wedding/whatever but at least have it in an area well served by public transport!

Remember! No teleporters yet!



PS. An engagement party might not seem very important compared to a wedding but it is going to be a few years before Awesome and her fella can afford the wedding and what with all the going out of her way she does for other people she deserved something nice dammit!



*I'll be the first to admit it doesn't really roll off the tongue...

**Or eating, no time dammit!

***And some of the morning

That Old Familiar Song

Ricochet?

Er, yes Always Slightly Accusatory Voice That I Hear Inside My Head?

Remember that talk we had?

Er, which one? We have so many.

The one about the short term relief of wussing out versus the long term benefits of following through on doing things that you've always wanted to do?

Oh, yeah. That one.

You're having a panic attack, aren't you?

It's hard to say...

You're having a panic attack about being abroad by yourself.

Well it's somewhat perilous being a broad by yourself.

None of your smart mouth.

But it's the only one I've got...

You're getting all nervy about being overseas by yourself even though you love travelling and this way you won't have anyone whining when you want to spend an entire day in a museum or being whimsical and giving yourself airs in a particularly fancy lookin' café.

I do like doing that...

So you're going to stop moaning about only having two weeks to get ready, remember that you've already got your ticket, your passport and at least a week's worth of clean underwear and open a can of harden the eff up.

Hey now, steady on Always Slightly Accusatory Voice That I Hear Inside My Head! No need for strong language! They don't appreciate that kind of thing on the internets!

But you get my point?

Yes, Always Slightly Accusatory Voice That I Hear Inside My Head, I get your point.

Excellent. Then I think we're done here.

Good.

See you tomorrow morning when you don't want to get up for work then?

Yeah, see you then.

Sweet Jiminy Christmas!

Crap in a hat it’s almost September!
How the hell did that happen? Where did the rest of the year go?
I don’t remember slipping into a coma but I suppose you wouldn’t… though if I did you'd think people would at least have the decency to ask me how I was recovering…
Anyway, it’s almost September which is practically October which – apart from heralding the indecently early arrival of Christmas carols in the stores – is right next to November which, as everyone knows, is NaNoWriMo time. Holy shits!

I haven’t done any preparation at all!
After I dragged myself weakened but victorious to the end of last November I had all these plans of writing various length pieces of a specific nature, having plotting practices and working on my dialogue until it sparkled like a very sparkly thing but um… I didn’t do that.
Oh jeez, what am I going to do!?
I already used a swag of ideas to get through last year’s run!
What if I can’t think of any more!?
What if that was it and I end up staring blankly at the screen, the cursor burning its blinking image onto my retinas as a cold sweat breaks out of my brow!?
No! Keep it together Ricochet! You can do this!
Stop listening to the Doubty McLogic part of your brain! When has logic ever done you any favours? You’re barely on speaking terms except when it comes to contemplating how to ‘remove the head or destroy the brain’ in the event of zombmergencies.

This fun-time panic all boils down to the fact that I can indeed talk a lot of shash but wouldn’t even be able to keep my own interest for 50,000 words without some kind of structure and direction. Being equal parts lazy and – if I’m being honest – perennially terrified of failure there is always the temptation to bail out on an idea when finding a Step B to follow my current Step A gets particularly difficult.
Finding a story worth telling is also tricksy – on an entertainment level or a deeper meaning level – as I certainly don’t want to end up with the ‘let’s say there’s a person a lot like me except with awesome powers/abilities and she saves the day and totally shows all those people who gave her crap; also she has this mysterious and alluringly dangerous guy hanging around her who in no way resembles any pre-existing sexy fictional characters’ story. If that kind of thing is allowed to run unchecked it can go very very wrong and the sense of achievement at the end wouldn’t be as high as an effort of 50,000 words should warrant.

I guess it’s just time to buckle down and have a think about the basics and psyche myself up to actually let something really bad happen to a couple of my characters this time.
I am such a wussie when it comes to really putting the screws to my little darlings. They give you the most betrayed looks. Big eyed puppy dogs have nothing on figments of your imagination who only wanted to live free under an endless sky and not accidentally or deliberately get booted off the top of a 20-storey parking structure just to keep your plot moving along.

Hmm, you know that could work…
Just have to calculate the velocity of a plummeting 80 kg man, factor in the wind resistance for the Panda suit and the probable impact on the vehicle below… let’s say it's a Rav 4…