waiting

Gosh, it's been a while since I popped in! This last week kind of ran away with me a bit. The weekend was filled with cake and cheeriness, and preparation for The Interview, which was on Wednesday.

Now, I don't have lots and lots of experience of interviews... but this one certainly involved a considerable amount of preparing, and a HUGE amount of waiting. The two weeks before the interview were filled with reading websites, investigating the interview panel, dreaming up ever-more-ludicrous potential interview questions and trying to think of sensible answers, and talking to everyone I've ever met who's ever had an interview for anything.

Anyway, it went alright, I think, apart from the waiting in the middle, but now I'm waiting again, because one of the interview panel was off sick, and they can't confirm without her approval, and she could be off for a couple of weeks. A couple of weeks!

So, here we are waiting again, and trying not to plan life around a new job that might, or might not, start some time in the next three weeks.

Well, it's exciting anyway. I have to confess to being pretty pleased with myself for all the preparation I did, rather than leaving everything til the last minute, and it meant that when they asked whether I was an Organised Person, I was able to say 'yes' without falling about laughing... (only just though).

All this has been on my mind a bit today. After all the build up, and the event, today's felt a bit flat, especially with the waiting (did I mention that already?). And I've been pondering the nature of work as a whole. I quite often joke that I don't really approve of 'work', but what I really mean is that I personally can't get stuck into the idea of working full time, doing something that I might like, or might not, to earn enough money to spend on things that if I wasn't working all the time, I'd be able to do for myself. Rhonda writes beautifully about this, much better than I ever could - particularly about cutting back on what you spend, and about simple living.

I'm actually more than happy to work, and frequently do many hours more than I would if I was 'working full time'. But that's because I'm starting to class all this business of living as work, not in a negative way, but in a 'good honest toil' kind of a way - growing food, making meals properly from scratch, baking bread, making presents, sewing and mending, fixing things rather than getting someone in to fix them, going without, and generally making do.

The time I spend on these things is instead of the time I would spend working in a job full time. If I did that, I wouldn't have as much time to do all those things. But it takes sacrifices, and lifestyle changes, and I'm fully aware that not everyone is in a position to be able to do it - I do consider myself lucky.

Several things helped me on this road - having a good, long think about what I wanted my life to look like, and working out how I could get there; making sure I didn't have any debt left; slowly cutting back the food budget and making changes - making my own yogurt, bread, pizza, crumpets...; working out quite a tight budget and sticking to it (which took me a Long Time!); dealing mostly in cash; saving for things like van insurance before I spend anything; planting veg in the garden; meeting friends at home for tea and cake rather than expensive cafes... Little things, but slowly, slowly they're adding up and it's all coming together nicely.

Goodness, I was only going to write about my job interview, and look what came spilling out! I think in a kind of way, I'm secretly trying to justify to myself why it's perfectly acceptable for me to only want to do 2 days a week of paid work, when to many people this doesn't at all count as a Proper Job.

But you know what? I actually don't have to justify that to anyone :)

So instead, I'll think about the lovely day out I had yesterday, wandering around a city I haven't been to for years, meeting up with an old friend, and drooling over the window display in Betty's - chocolate badgers, people, chocolate badgers!

(I suppose this is one of the downsides of a tight budget - no spending £12 on a chocolate badger. But then, I just would NOT have been able to eat it anyway, so I think, all in all, a photograph is better...)