New Job

I started a new job on Monday the 2nd of October. I am working as an Editorial Assistant for a medical communications company.

It is my first ever job in a corporate role. I sit at a desk, in an office where lots of other people sit at desks, and I am supposed to be in charge of editing medical journals, manuscripts, presentations, posters and other such publications, which can be found online on journal websites, in medical magazines, on leaflets and at medical congress booths!

Because it is only my first week, I have found it insufferably boring.

Well, I lie.

It has been great, except for today.

Monday was an introductory and training day, but Tuesday through to Thursday I was given several pieces of work, one of which included an 80-slide presentation! I spent a good eight hours on that, over the course of two days, and the rest of my time was divided between other pieces of work, training sessions and meetings. So it was pretty full-on, and I was enjoying myself.

But today…

Today I had a very minor task, taking me about two hours in total. It really didn’t help that I came in 45 minutes early. So I finished that, and have now been twiddling my thumbs all day because there is no other work available. All very frustrating I must say. I know it’s because I am new, and haven’t particularly been trained in a great deal of things, so can’t be given any terribly important pieces of work but for goodness’ sake I just want to get on with it! I have been trawling the internet all day, and reading other peoples’ blogs, which is great because I haven’t had the free time to do that in a while.

Work is about 45min drive from my home, but it usually takes me an hour and a half, because the traffic is horrendous. A colleague told me yesterday that during the school holidays the going is great, and now I am lamenting the minimal holidays school children get in the UK. I tried to leave twenty minutes earlier than usual today, in the hopes that I would arrive early enough that I could leave half an hour early. It took me exactly 45 minutes to get here, with absolutely no traffic on the roads! That made me very annoyed, I have to say.

It means I either have to get in very early, or exactly on time with a risk of being late!

Anyway.

That was just an update on my first proper job in my chosen career path. I am an editorial assistant! Maybe one day in the future I can be an editor of a book publishing house! Maybe! Baby steps, amiright?

To be honest I was shocked they’d hired me, considering I have had no experience in this field, except for very minimal freelance work. Shocked and pleased, emphasis on the ‘pleased’.

 

 

I didn’t SORN my car.

I only have forty minutes left to do something productive. Writing this blog post is as productive a thing as any, eh?

In four days it will have been an entire month since I have left work. I have not done much since then. I have slept a lot and have vamped up my fitness regimen, but I still haven’t pumped my bike wheels (I keep leaving the pump at my mum’s house which is two hours away) and I still haven’t joined the gym. I wrote 5600 words in my ‘novel’ and I baked plenty. I also applied to plenty of jobs but nobody is hiring so I will inevitably have to wait forever and just keep trying.

I am being extortionately lazy and unproductive.

It’s becoming a little desperate.

I put off SORNing my car for so LONG that now I have to pay £50 in addition to filling out the SORN form. My front tyre is BUST and I can’t pump it up because there is no petrol in it and it is not insured so if I am caught driving it (which I can’t because the TYRE IS BUST) I will be fined £1000. Also have six points taken off my license, right? Oh I don’t know. Bad things will happen.

I kind wanna blame my husband, though? Even though it’s my car?

Listen, before you get all angry and het up about my ‘men-mysogyny’, here is why:

1. He forced me to cancel my insurance because he was going to insure me on his car.
2. He decided he didn’t want to insure me on his car, and refused to let me drive my own car home saying it’s too dangerous since I have only done motorways thrice.
3. I had no car so I gave him two options, 1. either sell my car or, 2. let me pay for insurance and just drive home.
4. He said he would sell it, but failed to do so.
5. He said I shouldn’t insure it because he was selling it, BUT HE DID NOT SELL IT. So I didn’t SORN it thinking it would be sold. BUT IT WAS NOT.
6. It is all his fault

Now he will be mad at the fine because it was my responsibility to declare my car off road (SORN) but HOW COULD I DO THAT WHEN HE SAID HE WAS SELLING IT?

See? So confusing.

Here is what I will inevitably have to do:

1. SORN my car.
2. Pay the damn fine.
3. Smile at my husband  and pretend it was not his fault. Also don’t tell him because he will have a fit. EVEN THOUGH IT IS HIS FAULT.
4. Sell my own goddamn car regardless of my husband’s controlling protests about my incapability to do it to his standard of perfection *rolls eyes*.
5. Buy a better car and refuse to listen to my husband’s protests about insuring me on his car (Which he won’t do because he doesn’t trust his WIFE with his PRECIOUS). *ROLLS EYES HARD*
6. Feel relieved that I now have my own car and don’t need to keep wasting money I am no longer earning on those damn trains.

352 Days Left

I got job today. Well, not today, but today is my first day. It’s minimal wage, and only for two hours a day, because I can’t go full time until I get me a first class degree, but its something.

I still feel like a failure though.

My husband pointed out that I have been running an online business for two years and not even scratching the surface of a liveable income. He is right. He reckons I have no gumption and spend more time and effort making excuses rather than doing anything productive with my life.

‘Where’s that book you said you were writing?’

‘Um, I’m writing it.’

‘Where’s that translation company you wanted to set up?’

‘Well I am studying a full time course, you know!’

‘You could stop your tuition that pays you peanuts and start your company, but no, you just have excuses, always excuses, and I am so sick of it.’

He is sick of it. I am sick of it. He is sick of me. He is also sick, which doesn’t help his frustration. I made him so many cups of tea and tucked him up in bed and brought him all his meals and made sure he was warm and comfortable in a clean and tidy environment. He is so cold to me though lately. It hurts me a lot, but I don’t have time to mull over it or confront him about it because I have all these assignments and now the job and in between that and chauffeuring my brothers to school I don’t have any time to talk to him.

I don’t blame him, really.

I’m upset, though. I know these things bother him a lot. They bother me too. Maybe it’s tough love.

I know we are at very different stages of life at the moment; he is a successful automotive engineer full of ideas for the future, liasing with other engineers about how to make software to promote the green lifestyle etc etc. He is innovative and hard working and aspirational. I am still studying full time. And he is right. If I spent more effort chasing my dreams, I would have made something of myself by now.

‘You’re 22,’ he said, ‘what do you have to show for it?’

Nothing.

My mum would say I have a driving license, I have an online business (which pays me peanuts), I’m working towards a degree, I bought a car. But those are things all adults should work for. If I didn’t have any of those things, given the opportunities I have in life, I would really be a failure.

I don’t have a real degree. Yet. My business is not at its full potential, and I could have made it so, had I worked hard enough. I have been writing a novel since I was eleven years old. When Christopher Paolini published Eragon at age 15, I thought, ‘I’m gonna publish mine by the time I’m fourteen.’

Did I? I’m 22 now. Did I? No.

So I feel like a failure. I keep doing this. I keep saying things and talking the talk but not walking the walk.

But all is not lost. I have been 22 for thirteen days. I still have 352 days left.

Photograph of Venice