career change

so, big news!  having an early mid-life crises, assuming i’ll live to more than 72.  actually i don’t think it’s any sort of crises at all.  still, big news!

 (note: i use the word “so” too often.  if i left in all the “so’s” before publishing you’d stop reading this blog; quite a few get edited out.  i think i picked it up when i was flying; all the austrian crew said it all the time.  maybe i’m ethnically inclined to pick up the usage, what with being mostly german and what with austrians and germans being much the same people- don’t tell the captain!

on the other hand, i love using punctuation marks and i won’t stop!   think we all should use a lot more punctuation.  spice up your sentences and messages and put your personal twinge on it.)

so!  (ha ha, just kidding!)  the big news is i’ve quit my job.  first time ever in my working life i’ve put in my notice with nothing to put my hand to next.  hummm, errr, ok.  mostly.  i know my working life would generally be counted as a short one.  i’ve been having a tilt at this town planning thingo for 15 years now.  tho i would like to claim my working life, with real responsibility started when i was six years old.  there was a considerable hiatus from age six to sixteen but at six i put myself to work at the caravan park my parents managed.  i don’t recall being asked to do that job i just wanted to, i’ve been a pushy thing all my life!  (i prefer to think of it as supremely well organised and nearly always right now, thank you)  what job was it?  i answered the telephone and made bookings for people to holiday at the park, i manned the office when mum and dad were away and allocated spots to drive-in holiday makers and i led people to those allocated spots.  i did wonder later what the grown-ups used to be thinking when they were driving slowly down a dirt road with a scrubby six-year-old marching ahead of them to show them where to park their ‘van.  or when they were greeted in the office with my piggie-tails sticking out and me probably picking a scab on my knee.  (i didn’t have the finer points of personal presentation in the fore front of my mind at that time.)  i never fucked it up either; never made double bookings, never put people in a spot they wouldn’t fit, always checked whether they’d like to be nearer or further away from the amenities block, near the play ground, how much space they needed to manoeuvre the ‘van, etc. 

mum and dad were often away from the office because they had other duties about the park and mum ran the household too.  one of the things dad did was build a fantastic playground for all the kids that came to the park.  this ‘van park was in blairgowrie on the mornington peninsula, south of melbourne.  during the school holidays it was packed!  really packed!!  there was a large house with substantial outside areas that as the manager’s family we had the run of.  during peak times even these outside areas filled up with caravans and tents too- i wonder if that was legal?  so all the parents of all the kids (there i go again, another “so”) and the kids themselves, were very happy to have a great jungle gym built right next to the bbq tables.  i’m sure it would be an oh&s nitemare now but we loved it.

where was i?  job quitting… well, i’ve got a little under four weeks to go before i’m unemployed.  i haven’t been unemployed in a long time.  i’m not scared yet.  i’ll probably wake up in cold sweats in three weeks time.  the hiatus from when we left the caravan park when i was eight years old (two years that i do like to revisit in my memory, might write about it later) to when i left my parents home at age 16 was pretty much filled with school- so i wasn’t slacking off, a’right?  upon leaving home i picked up some cash-in-hand cleaning jobs, to supplement the $120 a week austudy i was entitled to, to pay the rent.  let me make clear there are not a lot of jobs for a 16 year old in glen innes.  even the only fast food place, the tiniest kfc you’ve ever seen, didn’t open up until after i left town.  since starting uni I’ve had a job ever since.  i feel i’m some what justifying getting to 36 and choosing to be unemployed, by citing the past 30 years have been filled with endeavours of one kind or another.

i will say now that there is a plan; i’m not choosing to be unemployed, i’m choosing to start something new.  it gives me butterflies to think about it, i’m really excited and i’m out to prove something.  stay tuned!