Today I…..am feeling a little down contemplating the future. Next year will be hard, really hard if T takes the skills4work apprenticeship. Everything will be so tight, I’ve done up a rough budget and on training wages he’ll just have enough for the bare necessities. Plus of course all his various payments. That is why you need some emergency money in the bank! And not to do favours for loser friends as it will cost you big time. I shall also be in a permanent state of stress, I imagine, if I get into journo. broke+stress=tears and pain.

BUT I do feel friggin thankful to have a job at all after talking to a lady from the photo desk who got made redundant. Apparently she knew for quite awhile (and I mean when they publicly announced layoffs they didn’t mention her name, I don’t think – in fact I only remember them saying that editorial would be affected, though I guess photo staff are editorial too?) I feel terrible for her she has three kids and god know when she’ll find a job,
esp in the media. It’s such a small industry, there’s not many publications in auckland at all.

We also got a mass email about salary, wage and pay raise freezes. love the spin – somehow they figured we will actually be BETTER off, coming from a higher base pay in the next year (not sure how they worked that one out, may well be true in some twisted way, but I really doubt it. It’s probably just some word play. After all aren’t we in the print business?) Pay reviews are meant to occur as normal, just any raises won’t occur for six months. I wonder when my pay review is? If I have one lined up at all? Apparently HR conducts those, so I guess I’d have to approach them rather than my boss. Which is strange, because how would they monitor my performance when they don’t see me ever?