By now, most, if not all, of you will have figured out that a) I landed a job and b) that I started it last week. I haven’t written too much about it despite having written a fair amount prior to that as to the impact of this relatively prolonged stretch of unemployment on me, which culminated in my writing The Accidental Guide To Enjoying Life While Unemployed, which, face it, was pretty much a guide to enjoying life no matter what kind of circumstances you’re in.
If you haven’t read it, you should. I’ve been told it’s good, by people who aren’t friends, and who didn’t have to say any such thing. And, yes, I am proud of what I’ve written, because it’s a labour of love.
Anyway, for someone who’d been off work for so long, I’ve written woefully little about the job or how happy the news that I’d been offered a position made me, particularly as the offer came just two days before my self-imposed deadline of deciding whether I should remain in the UK.
Yes, I came that close to deciding to leave, because the job market here is so dire, to the point that the only people who seem to have advertised since I landed this position are my old employers and the company I rejected in order to join the former.
I’m not entirely out of the woods yet, mind you. The job that I’m doing now is a contract role, with an initial term of three months and may be extended for a longer period following that, or may turn permanent. I’m obviously hoping that the job will go on for longer than just the three months, but, for now, I’m grateful that it’s giving me some breathing space and that some income is coming in, as opposed to just going out.
Still, because of the temporary nature of the position, I’m being as careful as I can not to go crazy now that I’m making some money. I have allowed myself the occasional splurge here and there, having just completed my first purchase of clothing this year (lingerie does not count), but only because the prices were very good. *cough*
“Enough about the cash and your frugality already!” I can hear you say, “what about the job?”
Well, it’s been good and bad. Good, because I’ve been off work for so long that the lack of activity was driving me crazy and I was losing touch with the market, and, bad, because I’ve been off work for so long that returning to the workplace has been quite a shock to my system. There’re so many processes I need to familiarise myself with, so many acronyms to get my head around, and so many people I’ve been forgetting the names and faces of.
Also, I am a one-woman team. I don’t mean that I’m the only woman in the team. I mean that I’m the only person doing my function. And it’s scary. I don’t feel nearly as experienced as I need to be in order to be performing this role without any guidance.
My predecessor, who has since moved on, told me, “I know they were hoping to get someone more senior than you, but, with the money they’re offering, they were never going to get someone more senior.”
And that’s been stressing me out. I don’t want to muck this up. And I sure as hell want this to be able to go permanent just so I can breathe more easily.
I’m still continuing the job hunt though. And, since I was offered this job, no one else has been hiring, other than my old employer and a company I’d rejected a few years back.
Sigh.
For the most part, I’m happier. But I’m also still very stressed. So if I don’t manage to post as often, or the quality of the posts go down a little, please bear with me.
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