remember that work is just a temporary intrusion into the rest of my life

I have to admit that I’m feeling much better about things. I still say that I wouldn’t have picked this job to apply for myself, but I am content with it overall. Yes, I’d prefer to make more money, but I am hoping that I’ll get a pay raise when they make me permanent. We’ll see about that. Anyway, I think this might just work out after all.

I’m really enjoying the fact that everything I do at work is … not earthshattering. There is no urge for me to “take it home”, to worry about anything work related after hours. I LOVE that; I don’t need anything else to worry about in my “free” time. Work is work and the rest of my life is separate.

And it isn’t what I had hoped for. However, it does have a paycheck and benefits, and isn’t that the important part?

I’m going to try to focus on the fact that work is just PART of my life, not the entirety of it. I can certainly focus on enjoying the REST Of my time, regardless of my job.

I think this is an excellent goal for me to keep in mind. Maybe it will help me adjust. I certainly hope so. (I’m going back for financial reasons.)

Since I don’t have a job this should be pretty easy, but since I obsess over not having a job maybe this will be harder that it sounds…

no intention of thinking about work for the next 13 days! So this goal is going off for now but may well come back next year, to remind me not to lose my head!

why is it that, the more you bend over backwards to try and accommodate people, the more they seem to moan? Must stop putting myself in the firing line by relaying other people’s decisions.
Sigh. I can’t even muster a Grrr these days!

I have been looking on the bright side of this job, thinking about the training, about the experience, about the opportunity to use my Japanese, etc. etc. When I first joined it was a stretch, because I’d never translated before, and actually last year was pretty sweet, as I was on that translation course as well as learning accounting, and I felt like I was growing in my job.

But to be honest there is just too much randmin, too much troubleshooting, too much running around after people, and not enough of the stuff I love and that is going to help me grow. It took a long time to find the courage to say I can do a better job than this, but I think I’ve come to terms with it now, and if it weren’t for the nice non-nutty people here it’d be all I could do not to spend my days screaming get me outta here!! The only thing stopping me getting a better job really is… me.

It is weird to say that – I always try to love whatever job I’m in, and work hard, contribute whatever I can, and look for opportunities to develop myself within the role. I am annoyed at myself for staying too long in yet another job that is not really going anywhere, for waiting too long to see that this company has done all it is going to to develop me, and isn’t really interested in the rest of my potential. I was tempted to leave in April, when my old boss left, and I stayed out of loyalty to the new boss; but really they don’t have enough to offer to keep me here any longer. If there was less nuttiness then the boredom might be tolerable and the time in between paydays might scurry past in a peaceful flutter, but as it is…

So I am going to leave. Not yet, but at the earliest opportunity (just as soon as I have a plan B…!) I have no idea what the next phase of my life is going to look like (well, a few ideas maybe ;]) but I have been here long enough and it’s time to show what I am capable of. If not now, when?

In the meantime I am going to try and muster as much motivation as possible – at least with the studying and with keeping my head above water with the Randmin. I am so glad I finished that goal about working as hard as I could!! The main thing is to get through the days in as light-hearted a way as possible, and focus my energy on getting my life to be how I really want it.

here i am, lucky enough to be able to pop off to madrid to go to a conference that looks more exciting than … oooooh, many things to talk about commata and corpora all day long in the botanical garden, which is right next to the prado, meaning i can go and visit las meninas in the lunch break—and all i can do is worry about how much work is piling up and castigate myself for being so behind.

experience tells me i’ll forget about anything that ever happened here as soon as i get there, but …. argh, i wish i either (a) was truly productive or (b) truly didn’t giveashitium. or both, both would be really good.

i’ve just spent about 5 hours packing and have enough stuff for 5 weeks. i’m taking all my running stuff, including the next 2 weeks of the podcast. i’m afraid i really do think i have a time machine. in the future ago.

the notion of ownership of texts came up at the bochum conference this summer, and i’ve been returning to it on and off ever since. i wonder if it’s part of what makes things so very difficult for me as a translator/editor—that i’m permanently trying to own texts that will never be mine.