this blog needs a new title...

I wasn't planning on posting anything today, but since I clearly have time to write comments on other people's posts then I have time to write my own post too.

Week Two at work now. So obviously I am no longer unemployed. I have even received my first pay  cheque (Yesss!) and begun plotting all the fun ways that I can spend it. Theatre tickets, restaurants, new clothes, more books (for fun, not research). You know, all the things that you tell yourself you can't have because you're on a very strict budget. I am so innured to not spending money though, that so far I have only gotten as far as a new pair of sunglasses, adult beverages and a fancy meal out to celebrate my amazing luck success. Maybe this weekend I will be able to, gasp, go out!

hooly dooly. I am getting waaay ahead of myself.

I don't really have much to say. I don't mean to make anyone jealous at my new exotic life or anything. (I work for a not-for-profit, so I am hardly earning the big bucks either). But it does feel good to do something somewhat complex (yet simultaneously quite straightforward), that does require intellectual labour, utilises some of the skills I developed while I was an academic, and is doing something good for the community. My issues with the whiteness of the place that I mentioned last week aside, it is a good organisation that produces positive outcomes. And now I get to play a part in that. And get paid for it too. That's a pretty good outcome in my book.

I have been thinking too about what not being an academic anymore means too. And you know what: it means F*** All. Just like that, all those years of labouring under the weight of producing all those research outputs, diligently networking my arse off and listening to some old codger drone on about how terrible students are in committee meetings don't actually mean anything to me anymore. I am free from the tyranny of the academic calender (YESS! I can now book holidays when I want, not to fit in around teaching and conference schedules).

But more than that, I am free. I still have the majority of my working life ahead of me. And now I am free to decide what I want to do with it. Given that I am still turning down invites to interviews for jobs I applied for before starting my current one, I am not stressed about being on the job market again. The simple fact of getting one job means that I now know that when the time comes to move on, I will get another one. (note how different this is from the academic threat - that if you don't take ANY job, you will never get another chance?)

For now though, I am going to relax.