Schreiber

Well. [Employer]'s president just announced his retirement.

Practice last night: Theo (visiting from Cambridgeshire on business) telling P. (visiting from Cambridgeshire for job interviews) that the tech. industry is being hit by job flux and high demand for labor almost as much as all the restaurants and bars of Boston.

So this next week is going to be very interesting!

I mean, it was going to be interesting anyway. At work, our VP&Director, my immediate supervisor, and our...effectively CTO, even though that's not her title...are all going to be on vacation from my department, even as we all grapple with a Massive Proposal Deadline, a sudden spate of new projects from the NSF, the fact that we're moving to the other end of the building in a month, and the assorted fallout flow-down effects of all of this.

But that's just a small bit of what's gonna make it interesting for me.
Because, while I am officially in the office next week... I'm not actually gonna be in the office for more than about 60% of the time. And even when I am, my brain's not going to be.

Because next week is BellsCon! OK, technically that's "The Annual General Meeting of the North American Guild of Change Ringers", but let's face it, it's a whole bunch of people with the same somewhat obscure interest getting together for a long weekend to Do That Thing A Lot and hang out together.* ** So basically, a con.
(With a business meeting thrown in.)

( So: Scheduling! )

(Written while sitting around church because I'd forgotten that I'd never gotten the keys to the bell tower back, so I'm extra pissed off.)

So l just accepted a job with a tutoring company, and now my stomach feels like it has a bunch of snakes in it, and I'm kind of wishing I'd written back instead no, on second thought I don't think I want to go forward with this. 🐍

I'd applied because they supposedly pay fairly well, and I figured I had a good chance of actually being hired. (Self-evidently accurate.) But as the reality of the situation sunk in, I realized: this is going to be yet another job that I'm not excited about--which in itself isn't a problem, I've given up actually trying to figure out my vocation, ideal job or purpose in life, figuring that if my purpose in life is suddenly revealed to me in a flash of light, then great; otherwise I'll find meaning and identity in my hobbies and in trying to be a decent human being. But that' probably won't work as well--and it's a shitty way to live--if I have sharply limited free time and am stressed out all the time. And this is going to be another job that I'm not excited about, at irregular hours, where when you have to start and stop working is very nebulous. And that's going to stress me out and sharply reduce my useful free time (since tutoring presumably happens mostly in the evenings, when I want to be doing other stuff.)

Also, it's a job working with people. I hate those. And they tend to burn me out rapidly.


And then there's the mere fact that I have a bad feeling about this. There have been too many times in the past when I had a bad feeling about something, couldn't find a logical reason why, ignored it, and wound up wishing I hadn't. I hate to go all woo-woo or act like I'm claiming to have the least useful form of divine inspiration ever, but I'm starting to think my subconscious mind sometimes figures stuff out before the rest of me does.

So whaddo I do, internet? Take a chance on this job, try to give it a fair chance, and at worst...actually not worst, there are so many ways it can go worse than that...at second-best, then, kick the can of finding a job I don't hate a little further down the road? Or go with my gut and get the hell away from this?

...Maybe I should try to become a bank clerk.

ETA: My brother pointed out that, since it looks like I'm going to have at least SOME control over what tutoring assignments I take on, I can see what's on offer, and then if ALL of them suck (or look like they're gonna suck) for one reason or another, I can just say No to all of them, and say "I'm sorry, I don't think anything you have is actually the sort of thing I want to do."* So I think I'm going to go with that option.

OTOH, I am being reminded that the other thing I hate about part-time jobs is that, given too many responsibilities (and n>3), I tend to either neglect some of them until n≤3, or have my brain seize up and just surf the internet and do none of them.

* He had some super-brilliant phrase for how to do this (because of course he did), but which I've now forgotten.