Girlbooker's Tea and Toast

Readers of this blog will know that I have been looking for my ‘forever job’ for a few months now. Although I am currently working, it isn’t full time, so I have been getting into the groove of  a slower pace. Yet I am surprised at how busy life still feels. A few reflections on what that so called slower pace looks like. Life is simpler. Because I don’t have money to splash around, I am conscious of not spending unnecessarily. Apart from a couple of times, this has generally made life a whole lot simpler. I am spending way less time agonising over what to buy, how much to spend and whether I need one or two of something. The default answer is ‘no’ and it saves a lot of mental energy. When I do spend money, I really relish it as something special, even if it’s just a muffin as well as a coffee . I’m also doing quieter things, like staying home and reading, and the extra time to read has been such a beautiful gift. I have read more in the last six months than I have in the pre...

I've just finished a delicious pot of tea while glancing through the window at the day slowing beginning to light up, and since everyone here is still asleep I have an unexpected window of time free to blog! I am still looking of my 'forever job' but I am working  - back in a bookshop and gearing up to do another Christmas in retail. I honestly thought the day I walked out of that shop with the semi-regular flooded carpet in the back room and the co-worker I dubbed 'The Human Snail' would be the last day I ever said "would you like a bag?" to a complete stranger. But no. Here I am again. It's been a lesson in remembering what I love and hate about work. I sort of knew all of it already but it is now crystal clear. I don't like a job that's too easy and/or boring. I don't like inefficiencies that I am powerless to fix. I do like books. In fact, I fucking love them! And that is a summary in less than 100 words of my current working life. ...

A few years ago, I did one of those 5 minute online tests, designed to discover what kind of work I was best at. The results showed my inclination toward creative work was so strong that there was no room for anything else. I wasn’t especially surprised, but it did make going back to my data entry, cutting and pasting, Excel sheet-laden job the next day particularly depressing. Insert oversized sigh here. I didn’t have a solution to the problem right then and there, but I tucked it away to ponder on at a later date. Fast forward a couple of years and I found myself in a job that looked terribly corporate from the outside. After a couple of months I realised that something felt different; I could no longer hear the quiet yet insistent voice inside me plaintively asking to be fulfilled. I was surprised to discover that I actually liked my job! When I examined it more closely, I realised that the large amount of time I spent in problem solving was immensely satisfying, and compl...

Against the backdrop of the cafe’s low intensity weekday bustle, I had one of those wonderful, soul affirming catch ups with an old and dear friend. She’s a teacher, and we talked about how technology is changing so many things for students (and therefore teachers) these days. One of the surprising things we discussed was the importance of boredom. In particular, the necessity of boredom for creativity, and also for social as well as cognitive development.  Now that I’ve used a few big words in a row, I’ll try and explain what I mean like a normal person. Creativity only comes when we are backed into a corner and have nothing else to do except try to entertain ourselves. If you have a smart phone handy then you can easily use that to alleviate your boredom, but that means you don’t learn the skills to entertain yourself in any other way. You don’t invent games, ideas or coping mechanisms. The extension of this is that learning how to cope with boredom is great practise for hig...

Sometimes we need reminders from the world that we are on the right path.  Lately, I've been trying to work out why I am so unadventurous creatively speaking at the moment, when I actually have loads of spare time. I have also been trying to work out how to get a job. I've been job hunting for quite a few weeks now, several more than I ever really expected to be.  I started the 'funemployment' journey with an absolutely gigantic, unwieldy list of life maintenance tasks and proposed actives to check off in order to keep myself from going insane while I looked for a new job. I started quite well but my interest in The List soon waned, and I don't think I have even glanced at it for about a month now. I have to admit, I've started to wallow. Trying to hone your message to potential employers and recruiters is exhausting. What exactly do I want to do with my life?  (Now say that again but in bullet points). How can I package up my achievements...