End of Life Planning So our Federal Treasurer thinks we should work until we die, because life ends at retirement. No, Mr. Hockey, you bullying creep, life does not end at 65 or 70 or at whatever age we retire. Work does not define life. The economy is not society. We are not your serfs. Who voted for these jackasses?

Fits and Starts
Or Fitnesses. Or something.

Today I started my new job. I had a week off inbetween, which was nice (and unusual for me), during which I recovered from the Blackmore's Running Festival Half Marathon (see previous entry) and lazed around getting nothing accomplished other than, by Saturday, finally having achieved sleeping in past my usual waking hour of 6 a.m. Sunday felt like it came too soon.

Today, however, my appointed hour in the CBD was not until 9 a.m., so I slept in by about forty minutes, went for a 5k run, had some breakfast, and still made it into the office by 8:30.

First days are all about orientation, and there was little enough of that, as the project proper hasn't really kicked off. That will change. I'm scheduled to head up to North Sydney a few times over the next weeks for training on the new system, and there are meetings and presentations to attend as well.

This is my first job since coming to Australia where I'm working close to home. Not only that, but by reason of being pretty much in the center of town, all the amenities I've been lacking heretofore are lacking no longer. Record stores, clothing shops, pharmacies, doctors, dentists, the post office, decent places to have lunch . . . it's all here. This could well turn out to be the best job yet.

Fiduciary
I reckon I'm not too bad with spreadsheets, but I've always avoided any sort of "treasurer" duties in my stints on one co-op/condo board or another. Sadly, this isn't the case where I am now, as there are only four units and none of us have much in the way of mathematical expertise. So I'm running half-assed balance statements and account registers (and that's probably half-arsed in this country), and trying to keep everything on the up-and-up. Well, I'm only eighty cents off on my own checking account register for the last two years, so maybe I'm better at this kind of thing than I think. I really hope so, because my MS-Excel skills are critical to the success of the project I'm on at work, and my boss has guaranteed to the CEO that "everybody will be paid, correctly and on time." Thanks for writing checks for me to pay, boss. But I'm absolutely committed anyway, if only because this is the best job I've ever had, even if it is the hardest. I guess there's something in that.

Pets Peeve
Oh, the cats hate me now. I'm working back so often, they're unfed for many hours beyond their expectations. Here it's 7:30 already, and no way I'm done here before 8:00, with another forty minutes or more to get home, assuming there's a bus still running at that point. I don't like them being out after dark, not least for the one who sits patiently and invisibly outside the door until I get home, which isn't a deliberate act of ambush, but might yet come out that way some night. Sometimes I think it was a mistake to leave my last job, which always finished up by five.

Employment Matters
With reference checks underway, it’s entirely possible that by this time tomorrow I’ll have a job offer. Unfortunately, it’s for a job I don’t think I want.

While my present employer is wonderfully flexible and pays generously, the work, well, there is no work. I’m bored beyond belief here, and there’s little I can do about it. The database can’t be managed by me, only by consultants, so I can’t actively improve its functionality. There simply aren’t enough reporting requirements to give me much joy in running the extracts. The underlying database is technology from the 1980’s, unused in mainstream corporations, and clunky at best. But I’ve been trying for a new job for nearly two years now, getting nowhere. So what’s wrong with this one?

It’s a maternity leave replacement contract, mainly, which means it’s employment for a set period of time. Given my current job-hunt experience, that presents a worrying condition. It’s also located in a relatively remote suburb, accessible by public transport (a bus + a train + a bus or a bus + another bus), but far from most recruiters and most major corporations. This means that interviewing for a new job would be difficult and time-consuming, whereas right now I need only adjust my hours by 30 minutes and I can make any interview anywhere in reasonable time.

Although it affords a marvellous opportunity to work again with mainstream software (SAP – about co-equal with PeopleSoft, and probably well above Oracle – a program I haven’t used before, but by learning would increase my profile in the HRIS marketplace), can I risk short-term employment?

Sure, new mothers don’t always come back, and some extend their leave, which would mean no guarantee of returning to the same job, and some want to come back to a modified role, potentially leaving room for me (and there was some suggestion that the function was perceived as requiring two people, although also that there wasn’t room in the headcount). In the course of the two interviews, I got different impressions of the incumbent: she didn’t care for the job was one, but the other was suggestive of her investiture in it. The company also does consulting work, so there’s a potential to transition to that team, if they’re satisfied with my work, get the impression that I’d make a good consultant, and have enough projects to go around.

What to do, what to do? New jobs come up all the time, although I don’t always get the interview, or the second interview (and, obviously, haven’t been getting the offers). Is this just too vague to take the chance?