Stuff and Nonsense & mid-life crisis
Jun. 12th, 2003 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulroWork's been really boring this week, so I've been rather missing LJ access. (There really is no correlation between no LJ at work and increased productivity. I keep forgetting that when I go in regularly, I go through the work faster than it piles up). I do now have a completely OTT Amazon wish list. Things are so quiet that I've lent out the temp to other departments and still not been terribly stretched. In view of the fact that I have more to do at home than I do there, and I've been feeling a bit iffy the last couple days, I'm having a day off tomorrow.
One good thing about my job - I can decide at 3 pm that I want to take the next day off. I had meant not to be squandering my annual leave like that, but oh well. My health is never improved by sitting at work being bored.
Oh, Entropy is re-starting in Bath on Saturday night. At the Porter Butt (location of Exile). I have Nice Boots and should be rested, so I am probably going. I just have to embezzle the car tax fund for admission money.
Once I get my loan paid off, I'm seriously considering training to be a nurse. This idea isn't as silly as it sounds. For a start, to get any of the good NHS management jobs (i.e. sorting out peoples' needs and problems rather than moving money), you need to be a nurse. There's lots of interesting things you can do that don't involve traditional working on wards roles these days.
Plus, it's like this. I've spent my whole life in pursuit of careers that have at least 10 outrageously overqualified applicants for every position - media, publishing, the PhD and university teaching. I got nowhere with that. I want a skill that's really in demand, that I can use anywhere at any time. What I do now is pretty damn close to that, but - well, I really want something that's a little bit more like a career. I don't have a burning desire to be a nurse, but having worked in hospitals for so many years, I have a hell of a lot better idea about what it involves than 99% of the people who start the course do.
And, they pay you to train. Yeah, it's a pittance (though as a mature student and long term NHS employee I should be eligible for extra money), but it makes a great big change from having to come up with several thousand for tuition and then attempting to survive on no money for a year. Academically I'm not afraid of it - I know lots of nurses and even in my current dumbed-down state I'm way ahead of the vast majority. My people skills aren't as piss-poor as they used to be, and I can always be an OR nurse and never deal with awake patients anyway.
Did I mention the article on Thursday last week in the Guardian about how all the high-tech jobs are going to India?
For the record, I'm turning 35 in a couple of months, which is probably what has prompted this thinking about ways for me to improve my livelihood without bankrupting myself to do another qualification which will probably just leave me fighting to get into another over-subscribed line of work.
One good thing about my job - I can decide at 3 pm that I want to take the next day off. I had meant not to be squandering my annual leave like that, but oh well. My health is never improved by sitting at work being bored.
Oh, Entropy is re-starting in Bath on Saturday night. At the Porter Butt (location of Exile). I have Nice Boots and should be rested, so I am probably going. I just have to embezzle the car tax fund for admission money.
Once I get my loan paid off, I'm seriously considering training to be a nurse. This idea isn't as silly as it sounds. For a start, to get any of the good NHS management jobs (i.e. sorting out peoples' needs and problems rather than moving money), you need to be a nurse. There's lots of interesting things you can do that don't involve traditional working on wards roles these days.
Plus, it's like this. I've spent my whole life in pursuit of careers that have at least 10 outrageously overqualified applicants for every position - media, publishing, the PhD and university teaching. I got nowhere with that. I want a skill that's really in demand, that I can use anywhere at any time. What I do now is pretty damn close to that, but - well, I really want something that's a little bit more like a career. I don't have a burning desire to be a nurse, but having worked in hospitals for so many years, I have a hell of a lot better idea about what it involves than 99% of the people who start the course do.
And, they pay you to train. Yeah, it's a pittance (though as a mature student and long term NHS employee I should be eligible for extra money), but it makes a great big change from having to come up with several thousand for tuition and then attempting to survive on no money for a year. Academically I'm not afraid of it - I know lots of nurses and even in my current dumbed-down state I'm way ahead of the vast majority. My people skills aren't as piss-poor as they used to be, and I can always be an OR nurse and never deal with awake patients anyway.
Did I mention the article on Thursday last week in the Guardian about how all the high-tech jobs are going to India?
For the record, I'm turning 35 in a couple of months, which is probably what has prompted this thinking about ways for me to improve my livelihood without bankrupting myself to do another qualification which will probably just leave me fighting to get into another over-subscribed line of work.
