Categories: uncategorized
Date: 25 January 2005 22:32:54
Meeting went OK, thanks. It's going to be a tough road, there are clearly some difficult issues to look at, but we've agreed to discuss them together. It's a start.
In other news, my husband's cassock (with surplice and Blue Scarf of Menace) is hanging on the back of the study door and the cat appears to be setting up camp in the folds of its skirt.
I have loads of stuff to write up this week - an order for wedding photos (if I tell you I've been married for nearly 21 months now, you'll get an idea of how good I am at procrastinating), minutes of the two recent PCC meetings, and ... the blurb bit of a job application. I have had some 'downtime' at work today, and sat looking at a blank piece of paper, unable to think where to start.
I've been fretting for a couple of months now, since the rug of believing that I was appreciated at work got pulled from under my feet, about Really Unfair and Disastrous Potential Outcomes. A brief outline of job-changing situation:
I came into the job as a temp, and it takes a long time to get your application for permanent work processed, particularly if your doctor faffs around for two and a half months before getting round to writing you a 3-sentence medical report. So, I began doing the job in October 2003, but became a proper member of staff in May 2004. Then we have a one-year probation, not six months like other people have. So, after nearly 18 months, I still don't have full security. What I do have, however, is a decent wage, pension and career break scheme and leave entitlement, which will improve the longer I stay in the organisation. So I tell myself to be rational and not leave the organisation, but find a new job in a different department. But this involves submitting a form with my line manager's comments on it. There will then be a formal and by-the-book recruitment process, and should I be lucky enough to be selected my current department can keep me for not one but three months. So if I were to get one of the jobs I'm trying to apply for now, I'm still looking at another 4 or 5 months here. Maybe you can see why leaving the organisation, and thus being able to say, 'Right, I give a month's notice - oh, and you owe me 5 days' holiday, so that's 3 weeks and then I'm out of here!' looks so appealing. But at this stage I'm not going to do it.
Change does funny things to us. I've thought for ages that I'd like to move jobs, and then stuff happened that moved that on to 'I REALLY want to get out of here - now!'. And after a couple of months of background fretting about worst case scenarios, I get the go-ahead to apply for internal promotion. And then I get scared of leaving what's familiar and making a new start. And then, writing therapy kicks in as I read this post back as if I were the third person, and think 'It's a frigging form, for goodness sake, not 6 months' hard labour! Get on with it!'
And so ...