Saturday, February 21, 2004
When a man is tired of Adelaide, he is tired of the dole
In some exciting news, I’ve got myself some work starting soon. It’s only casual (sessional academic), but it’s still a J-O-B, till mid-year at least.
Moving into imminent employment has already precipitated one quite radical step in my life of recent, lean'n'mean years. A second change, to do with the nature of this blog, is still inchoate. What is definitely happening is that I’m having a holiday very soon – before the job starts on 8 March. Holiday: like, flying on planes’n’stuff. Like going interstate. Like, something I haven’t done for years. Six whole days: a couple in Sydney – which will hopefully be at its pre-Mardi Gras ripest and sluttiest, and then off to Adelaide, to catch Writers Week, and any other Festival stuff which is free, or nearly so. The trip’s being financed through frequent flyer (or more accurately, credit card spending from years ago) points, together with a calculated lateness in this month's rent, but I figure a break – in both senses of the word – is a justified forward expense for me at the moment.
In terms of this blog, I sometimes never thought the day would come when I’d have to consider the whole blogging, employment and anonymity thing personally. Being on the dole not only gives one a lot more time to write, it also mandates, if not compels – especially under our current government and its increasingly farcical system of welfare handouts (a little to the unemployed, a lot to the jail warden corporations) – forthright criticism of one’s "employer".
As I wrote previously, using a blogging pseudonym (which I don’t, anyway), and never directly naming one’s employer offers flimsy protection, at best, from real-world employment repercussions. Of course, one doesn’t have to blog about one’s employment, but I suspect that doing so is going to be nearly irresistible for me, after I start the job, and the novelty really sets in (as it were). So we’ll see.
In some exciting news, I’ve got myself some work starting soon. It’s only casual (sessional academic), but it’s still a J-O-B, till mid-year at least.
Moving into imminent employment has already precipitated one quite radical step in my life of recent, lean'n'mean years. A second change, to do with the nature of this blog, is still inchoate. What is definitely happening is that I’m having a holiday very soon – before the job starts on 8 March. Holiday: like, flying on planes’n’stuff. Like going interstate. Like, something I haven’t done for years. Six whole days: a couple in Sydney – which will hopefully be at its pre-Mardi Gras ripest and sluttiest, and then off to Adelaide, to catch Writers Week, and any other Festival stuff which is free, or nearly so. The trip’s being financed through frequent flyer (or more accurately, credit card spending from years ago) points, together with a calculated lateness in this month's rent, but I figure a break – in both senses of the word – is a justified forward expense for me at the moment.
In terms of this blog, I sometimes never thought the day would come when I’d have to consider the whole blogging, employment and anonymity thing personally. Being on the dole not only gives one a lot more time to write, it also mandates, if not compels – especially under our current government and its increasingly farcical system of welfare handouts (a little to the unemployed, a lot to the jail warden corporations) – forthright criticism of one’s "employer".
As I wrote previously, using a blogging pseudonym (which I don’t, anyway), and never directly naming one’s employer offers flimsy protection, at best, from real-world employment repercussions. Of course, one doesn’t have to blog about one’s employment, but I suspect that doing so is going to be nearly irresistible for me, after I start the job, and the novelty really sets in (as it were). So we’ll see.
