Hooray! I got a full-time job!!

Yes, in spite of the terrible economy, I managed to find a new full-time job!

This particular job comes with a couple of disadvantages, but I am still grateful to have it. The first disadvantage is that it doesn’t pay anything. In fact, it requires me to pay a substantial fee for the privilege of having the job. But that is okay, because I already have a full-time job that pays actual money. My duties for the paying full-time job ended, at least for the most part, on this past Wednesday, when I turned in my summer school grades.

This leads to the second disadvantage of the new unpaid full-time job. It will only last for 5 weeks. Then it will revert to part-time status, as my duties for the money-paying job will resume. At that time, though its status will have changed to part-time, the summer unpaid job (or more accurately, the negative-pay-rate job) will still require full-time work. That work will simply have to fit into a part-time schedule.

But there is no need to worry about that now. For now, I plan to just enjoy the bliss of having a full-time job. Since the job is full-time, that means I must do what other people with full-time jobs already do: work their hobbies, sleep, exercise, and other duties of life into the available time around their full-time jobs. For example, if I were silly enough to try to maintain and train a horse, run sufficient miles to survive the Winslow half marathon, or take swimming lessons with a friend, these hobbies would need to be secondary in priority to the full-time job.  

I realize that to most people, the notion of arranging hobby time around a full-time job seems normal. It is certainly not sufficiently interesting to merit several paragraphs of this inconsequential blog, or the bandwidth to hold them. But for me, this is a new concept and I will have to make some serious adjustments.

The problem is that I have not had a normal full-time job since I was 23, when I decided to leave my very well-paid engineering gig to throw newspapers (among other things). I have had jobs that paid full-time money and occupied more than 40 hours each week. This includes my current paid job, which is described and advertised as a full-time job. Though it comes with plenty of hours and a full-time paycheck, it acts like a part-time job in the sense that I keep odd hours and do much of my work at home. I very much enjoy teaching night classes, but they do not tend to promote a set schedule. I live like a college student, frequently staying up late, working on weekends, and pulling the occasional all-nighter. As long as I work around meetings and my day classes, I can do some non-work things during the day.

So, I am a 42-year-old person still living the life of a college student (Oh, wait, I am a 42-year-old college student—maybe this makes sense after all!). Anyway, for the next 5 weeks, the new negative-pay-rate full-time job needs to take priority. Like my paid job, it has some flexibility and no one is watching over my shoulder. So if I am not careful, the hobbies and relaxing will take over the hours that should be devoted to the job, and this wonderful 5-week opportunity will slip through my fingers.

So, well-wishing friends, when you see me, please help keep me on track by asking me how my new full-time job is going. And whatever you do, if you want what’s best for me, do not attempt to talk me into any more hobbies or recreational events!!