Three jobs

I’ve had three jobs before. It was for a short period almost three years ago, when I was doing the course that let me become a librarian. I was working in a library most evenings; working in another library on Fridays and some Saturdays; and doing sporadic data entry for a sociology researcher. Fun. Well, not really, because I didn’t last long trying to juggle them.

Somehow I’ve done it again, though. From January I’ll be working half the week in my current job; the other half of the week in the new job I was offered last week (woo) and other random hours doing my question-answering job. Last week I passed my induction for the question-answering job. I had to read a lot of documentation, and answer an initial batch of questions. It took up a lot of time, and gave me a headache. But I am glad I’ve started doing it, though, mostly because many of the questions that come through are deeply amusing, or baffling. Why? I think. Why on earth do you want to know that? But I’m not allowed to ask questions back, so I have to answer the best I can. Or just skip it.

For the moment, though, I am trying to savour the fact that until January I only have to commute into London and sit in an office for two days a week. Until today I had numerous mixed feelings about this, mostly panicky ones to do with money. I also felt strangely sad when I left work last Tuesday evening. I missed my job and the people, even though I was going back. These wistful, fond feelings were quickly erased when I went back there on Monday and had to endure the daily grind again. I now have lots of time, though, in which to finish my novel for NaNoWriMo. 20,000 words in six days? No problem.

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I am still being slack with my reading. I have been reading another Diana Wynne Jones book, Charmed Life, for quite a while. I like it a lot (but I’m not sure if any of her books can surpass Fire and Hemlock). I’ve also just started Ann Tyler’s Digging to America, which I am enjoying. It seems to be of the contemporary-American-family-saga type of fiction that I tend to enjoy. I have noticed, though, that Tyler really likes describing what people are wearing. I don’t really mind it. I quite like it. Maybe every writer does it and I’m only picking up on it now for some reason. It just seems to be a prominent feature of the book.