Leaving the big lights

Our class of 2009 has done well. There’s a fair number of us with jobs – in our chosen field, no less – but for every one of those, there’s another who’s moved back with their parents, jobless.

This weekend I caught up up with one of my classmates, who was tossing up between going on a planned overseas trip, and staying here in case she gets a particular job. Basically, it’s a toss up between a holiday, and the possibility of a stable, FT position – one that she’s applied for, but won’t hear back from until after she leaves the country. And it has an immediate start, so carrying on with the trip would disqualify her assuming she’s successful. It’s about as sucky as a choice can get.

I found myself telling her even if she does go, it’s not the last job in the world. There’s plenty of opportunities – just in the last few weeks I’ve seen a handful of entry level PRINT reporting jobs advertised, and who knew those still existed? But she was adamant she didn’t want to leave Auckland, and after all, she still lives at home.

It’s definitely got me thinking, though. Am I a hypocrite? Here I am, telling others there are jobs around if only they were open to leaving Auckland. But how would I react if I was offered my dream job – IF it meant moving to the middle of nowhere? (Unlikely, but I’m trying to make a point here..)

Right now, if T was given a great opportunity almost anywhere, I think I would happily relocate without much of a struggle. Today it really hit me that I could be out of a job in a month or two. Once this project is over, there really is no place for me anymore. It’s unlikely that I’m going to be able to move up into the kind of position I want, and my current role is somewhat redundant.

But if I was to move (and especially, move by myself) I’d have to get a car. And learn to drive it properly. I’d be away from everyone I know, and be making trips back home to Auckland. I’d be cooking for myself again (ugh) and possibly still be helping out T (although things are picking up – theirs is a seasonal job for sure).

I suppose I’d have to give thought to it, but it wouldn’t be a decision to be made lightly. Obviously. Financially, it would be really hard, combined with the fact that I’m more likely than not to take a pay cut should I move to a small town. Rent would be cheaper, I guess, but the second car would kill us. Honestly, at this point I think I’d be better off staying here, working freelance or in an admin job, whatever, until the right opportunity. Things have already started picking up in the last few months, going by the number of job listings around, and hopefully the new year will bring more.

New resolution

Like Kyla and Amber, I moved in with T at a really young age. One of the reasons for that was getting hassle from housemates (may sound silly, but if you’ve been there you know what it’s like) but I think we would have done so sooner or later. And I’ve never looked back – I mean, he’s a mega cook, is handy around the house (and to a lesser extent, the car), drives, and lets me warm my cold feet on him.

The one drawback is that it’s so easy to retreat into ourselves – we both enjoy the comforts of home and when faced with the choice of getting dressed and going out vs lounging around in PJs, well, it’s a tough one. And our flatmates aren’t super social themselves (although for some reason, they do like to hit town on a Thursday night – god only knows why. T sometimes goes with them, but Thursday is when I put together the weekly newsletter for my side job, which chews up three to four hours.)

So my resolution is for us to get out and do one thing every weekend: be it rockclimbing, bowling, a picnic, tandem biking, swimming or just a nice meal out. The cheaper the better, like driving to Cornwall Park and letting him loose on all the fitness bars. And the museum is promoting free entry for the summer, so that’s next on our list!

(Tomorrow’s post is protected. Hit me up at eemusings[at]gmail.com)

What a week!

View from the bach

I’m back! Back from what, you ask? A lovely couple of days off in the Coromandel, relaxing, swimming and getting a tan. Followed by graduation – the culmination of the last three years, the last time where we get together and cut loose and congratulate ourselves for making it through.

From guest speaker Tessa Duder (legendary Kiwi children’s author) to our ‘doffing’ of hats to acknowledge our friends and family, it was interminably long, and by the time we’d finished with all the communications grads and moved on to the engineers, we were exhausted. I simply couldn’t clap anymore.

I have to admit, I got caught up in the whole ceremony, from the crazy ugly regalia, to standing up for one of our tutors who received her PhD, to singing the national anthem (I got a lump in my throat). I managed not to trip, or miss my cue; I knew I’d be called out under the legal name that I’m not used to hearing. I’m just so proud of all of us for making it through.

Now, to catch up on my google reader, laundry (there’s sand EVERYWHERE) and most excitingly, Perfect Fifths!

Perfect day, 5 years from now

Frugal Dreamer had a GREAT idea for a post last week, which I am totally borrowing.

T and I both did it, and it was interesting to compare the two.

To be honest, I found it incredibly hard… I don’t know if it’s a lack of imagination, or the fact that I’m feeling a bit ambiguous about my career path and life in general… I’m not really sure what I want and so struggled to articulate where I might want to be.

We decided to pick a Thursday, approximately five years from now. We’ll both be 26, and although he’d like to have kids by then, I’m not so sure. Doing this visualisation without babies in the picture made our future life look pretty empty, actually – something I never thought I’d say!

T

1. What time do you wake up, and how are you feeling as you greet the day? 6am, as usual. Feeling pretty all right.
2. Where are you? If you’re at home, what does it look like? At home, in a 2bedroom open plan house, with a nice kitchen, bathtub and garage.
3. Who is with you? E (that’s me!)
4. What kind of work are you doing? (if you have no idea what kind of work you’ll be doing or want to be doing, list the qualities you want to find in the work you do and the kind of work environment you want.) Environment: a clean, quiet workshop with a steady workflow, where I have my own workstation
5. As you head out to face the day, how do you look? What are you wearing? What I’m wearing now (singlet and shorts). And shoes
6. How do you get to work? On a mountain bike
7. When you’re done with work, how will you spend you spare time and with whom? What activities do you enjoy? With E, watching old horror or zombie movies on my large screen TV. Fabricating in my garage, working on my toy (project) car.
8. What is your evening like? In front of the fire with a glass of whiskey or cup of tea
9. When you go to bed that night, how are you feeling after spending the day doing exactly what you love? Fulfilled
10. What are you most grateful for and what are you looking forward to as you go to sleep? Spending the next day with E.

E

1. What time do you wake up, and how are you feeling as you greet the day? I’m up at 7, feeling energised
2. Where are you? If you’re at home, what does it look like? In my own house (maybe a Lockwood) with big kitchen, walkin pantry, garage, ensuite bathroom and decent sized closet
3. Who is with you? T. Maybe a pet (preferably a cat, but more likely a puppy if T has his way)
4. What kind of work are you doing? (if you have no idea what kind of work you’ll be doing or want to be doing, list the qualities you want to find in the work you do and the kind of work environment you want.) I’m in the prime of my career, as a subeditor or a web editor, in an airy, sunny open plan office. I work in a friendly, supportive team and regularly have lunch with coworkers
5. As you head out to face the day, how do you look? What are you wearing? I look polished and effortless (ha!) I am wearing nice jeans with a shirt and flats, because the office environment is fairly casual.
6. How do you get to work? Walk
7. When you’re done with work, how will you spend you spare time and with whom? What activities do you enjoy? With T. I’ll bake, catch up on blogs, watch some TV or a movie. I enjoy photography, playing guitar, travel.
8. What is your evening like? I might catch up with friends at one of our houses for a few hours – lots of laughs, maybe a silly retro boardgame, good food.
9. When you go to bed that night, how are you feeling after spending the day doing exactly what you love? Contented and fulfilled. Glad that it’s nearly the weekend.
10. What are you most grateful for and what are you looking forward to as you go to sleep? T, a warm house, great job and good food.

New goals

My goals for the rest of the year:

• Learn to drive our car (it’s a manual).
• Pick up my guitar again.

I am LOVING the fact that my after hours time is now my own. No more staying up late reading. No more studying. No more spending all hours working on assignments. Plus, it’s coming up to summer, so the days are even longer! The possibilities are endless.

Quitters

This month T sat his final test for his course. Depending on his results, he may or may not be guaranteed entry to university. Whether he decides to carry on with that… well, that’s another matter.

They’ll have a graduation ceremony in late November – exactly a month from now for friends and family. Obviously I’ll be going. But I asked him who else he was going to invite… and he said no one. Not even his mum? No, not even her.

Apparently, he said, she doesn’t think he’ll end up going to uni.

“Why not?” I asked

“She thinks I’ve quit too many things before.”

Now, I think that’s a little hasty. I think that’s completely unfair, actually. What has he started and not completed? He didn’t finish out school, and joined the army, which he decided wasn’t for him. So there’s that. Then he got into a good line of work, and got laid off after two years. (No dropping out there). Then with some prodding from me, he enrolled in a foundation course so he would have the option of going to university. Even if he doesn’t, it’s a fantastic thing to have under his belt. And it’s a darn sight more than any of his siblings have.

Even going further back, what else has he started and not finished? He decided not to carry on with high-level athletics. That’s not uncommon. And let’s be honest, a career in sports is not the best of career plans anyway. I can think of so many activities I did throughout my school years and never carried on with… violin, badminton, debating, tennis, soccer… I got a kick out of all those while I did them, sure, but I didn’t want to keep going with any of them on a regular basis.

Sure, he’s messed up a lot of things. Some of it is due to being naturally carefree, or careless, even. He’s never relied on his family to bail him out, although they have helped him out on countless occasions. And yes, he’s 21 now, and it’s time to start getting serious about something, especially with people bleating about the recession ending and things picking up. But he certainly isn’t the first, nor will he be the last, 21 year old to be drifting, to not have their shit together. Maybe more is expected of him, because he has possibly the most potential out of anyone in the family.

Where to?

Those of us with partners who’ve been laid off – or have experienced it themselves - know just how disheartening, demoralising and downright depressing it is. It’s been a year now – a WHOLE year – I cannot believe it.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. It’s not a lack of ambition that is T’s problem; it’s more like a lack of direction. Not all people know what they want to do in life, although this seems more acceptable if you’re female (it’s okay, increasingly, to say you just want to be a wife/mother/homemaker; not so much for a guy to say the equivalent).

I’m very proud of him for having finished his course, and he now knows he can apply to university and that he can do it. Jumping into the academic world isn’t easy when you’ve been out of it for years, and when you’re not super academically inclined in the first place.

He may not be a straight-A  student, but neither am I, and I shouldn’t expect him to be – as long as I do my best, I’m happy, and that’s the same standard I should hold him to.

If he simply wants to work whatever job he can get, that’s fine – but having been absolutely bollocked by the recession, I’m wary of that path. In the longterm, I firmly believe that having a qualification (trade or otherwise) is essential.

So, I guess I don’t really know where to from here. I’m not expecting him to come up with a 50 year plan, but I do expect him to have some sort of direction. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

We’ve clashed over this lots of times – he always reiterates: “I wouldn’t care if we were living out of a car, as long as we have each other.” Call me heartless, call me unromantic but there are some lines I’m not willing to cross.

At the moment, he’s fired up about one of our flatmate’s fathers, who is keen to start up a business and employ both of them. Not a career type of job – just a job. He’s been to the careers counsellors at uni, who clarified the options that we’d already settled on, without giving him anything definitive. He could go ahead with the plan to become a teacher, or he could try to get trade qualified in engineering/fabrication, which is what he was working before. (Or the army, again…something he’s increasingly talking about).

It’s October now, and I thought he would have a pretty good idea of what he wanted to do. It looks like uni is out of the picture, at least for the first semester of 2010 - applications aren’t going to stay open forever. I’ve spent many hours late at night sitting up with him helping him with assignments. I feel I’ve invested a lot of energy into this, and although there’s no way I’d ever force him to do anything, I really do think carrying on with study would be in his best interests.

Whether he could stay motivated through the three years, slogging through papers that he might not enjoy (some he definitely won’t) would be another challenge. For me, I see deadly dull core papers as a necessary evil, but I plough through anyway. To him, he’s so disinterested that he doesn’t put effort in. And that’s something you have to deal with at university.

I know I keep saying I want a crystal ball…..but I really, really, do!!

Either I don’t know how to be social, or I just hate people

You know what’s really hard? Being in attendance at a party where you don’t know half the people and the others are mostly ones you vaguely know and dislike.

What happens when you transplant the ultimate bogan party into a city bar? Go on, guess.

Call me cynical, but I find it extremely hard to humour wasted people who think they’re being deep and meaningful, or females in too-high heels and too-short skirts (IQs usually diminish in relation to how high the hemline is). Oh, and I’m sure I saw a nipple or two flailing about last night. Seriously girls, put it AWAY.

Also, I obviously need to learn to dance to drum n bass. You may laugh, but it requires a totally different style from the usual poppy/hiphoppy club fare.

Lastly, I never in my entire life thought I would see a crowd of people dancing – yes, dancing - to Limp Bizkit’s Rollin‘.

I want to be the kind of person who…

Inspired by Saving to Pay Down my Home!

Basically, I want to be one of those people that has their shit together. I definitely don’t think it’s possible to be supremely successful simultaneously in all aspects of life, but some areas of my life are severely neglected right now.

I want to eat better. This means meal planning and taking more care grocery shopping, and it’s going to mean increasing the grocery budget. This kind of clashes with…

I want to travel. Around NZ, and overseas later on. It’s going to mean a lot of saving – starting up a travel fund once I start working – and getting a handle on the budget. Still, money is limited, and I’ll have to prioritise between travel, groceries, eating out, general saving, clothing. Unless T randomly strikes out job-wise, things aren’t going to change drastically once I graduate. We’ll be a little bit better off, with a bit of breathing room, but there definitely won’t be room for luxuries.

I want to be greener. I’d like to start up a compost heap again, but it’s way too easy just to dump scraps down the in-sinkerator! Still, it’s better down there than in the rubbish bin.

I need to get fit. I’m not a gym kind of person, but I think I should aim to go running once a week. I’ll start off slow.

I want to be better organised. I think I’m going to go back to a physical diary and try that out for a while. Right now everything goes into my phone calendar, but I think my system could be better. And seeing as I’ll be spending all my working hours in front of a computer, I might start using my Gmail calendar too.

I want to catch up with friends more often. At least once every other week! Will schedule this and try to make arrangements ahead of time, rather than seeing if anyone is free on the spur of the moment.

What areas do you want to improve on?

(Photo / Mike Baird)

What would you do if money was no object?

My semester break was a fortnight of absolute bliss. Even though I was sick for a few days, and had to deal with moving, I didn’t work any extra hours for the first time, and spent all my free time bumming around, doing absolutely nothing. I slept, ate, watched TV and movies, ate some more, and slept.

Normally, I’m the kind of person who likes to keep fairly busy. I feel guilty if I’m not doing something productive. But depending on what happens jobwise, it could be a long time before I get time off to do whatever I want again. Just to be able to relax, and remove myself from the strain of a final-year workload, was AMAZING. It went by far too fast.

I’ve always thought it would be boring to retire – imagine 20 or 30 years of not working!

But as much as I like my job, those two weeks really made me think again. If I didn’t NEED to work for the money, would I?

I’d probably do some parttime or volunteer work for a nonprofit, or an organisation that works with migrants/refugees or the disadvantaged. I’d like to do something rewarding and give back (corny as it sounds).

For a while, at least, I think I’d eat out once a day or every couple of days. I’m not talking Subway or Starbucks; more like dinner at a restaurant, so I could indulge my love of Thai/Indian/Malaysian cuisine which I don’t know how to make myself.

I’d go visit family overseas, and travel to Europe, Asia and the States like I’ve always wanted.

I’d go to a lot of live music events, and pick up my guitar again.

I might dabble in the stockmarket,and I’d definitely do tons of reading, and maybe start a book review blog – or try to get a gig as a reviewer.

And maybe, like a few people I’ve come across, I might pack it all in and go live on a boat for a while, or something equally crazy.

What about you?