Getting Things Done

[rhyll]

Missions for last week:
* Finding another job to apply for - tick done! (I found a couple of admin jobs on the wa government jobs site, but I couldn't bring myself to apply for them. Instead I sent in a CV for sessional teaching at Murdoch.)
* Finding out how/whether we can get recycling happening in our flats again - half marks (I sent an email to the council asking what to do).
* Ask my neighbour if she still needs proofreading for her paper - tick done! (She had finished a chapter - which her supervisor took seven months to give her feedback on - and I did the proofreading and encouraged her to talk to GRS about her poor supervision.)
* Work out which journal I want to try to get a thesis chapter published in - half marks (I still feel quite conflicted. If I manage to get published in Social Movement Studies, it will probably be more widely read but not open access. If I publish in Interface, it will be open access, but I will need to fit their theme. I'm leaning towards Interface, but would like to find a similar journal that doesn't have themed issues.)
* Cycle to the beach at least once - half marks. (I've cycled a fair bit, and gone to the beach a fair bit, but mostly I've been cycling to someone's house and then heading beachward with them.)

I also did a couple of things I've been meaning to do for a while:
* Got started on making the next Bluestocking event happen.
* Fixed C's bike.
* Sifted the worms out of one layer of the worm farm and dug the castings into the garden bed.
* Started my budget.

Missions for the coming week:
* Do the batch of marking that came in yesterday.
* Read a chapter of my greek book.
* Find another job to apply for.
* Write some fiction.
* Cycle to the beach.
* Do some more gardening.
* Start working on my teaching award application.


Despite being quite busy with family-time, I've also spent some time reflecting on where I am in life right now. Looking for jobs helped with that. I don't want to work doing something I don't care about. I don't want to work doing something where what I've been doing for the last few years is irrelevant. I want to teach, and research, and write, and do activism. I've made up a budget and the teaching I'm doing now is enough to support me, if I'm not extravagant. Living on a budget is a constraint, but it's far less of a constraint than working in a job that I don't want to do. I'll try it out for the next couple of months and see how I go and whether I end up eating into my savings. I'm going to keep looking for and applying for jobs and I hope that I'll find something, but I'm not going to work just for the money. In the meantime, I'm going to use the time I have free to get more of my thesis published, to fix people's bicycles, to work on the issues I care about, to write fiction, learn greek, practice ukulele and accordion...

I've also decided this in part because I've been reading Prosperity Without Growth, which has been a good reminder that ultimately we need to work towards a system where people make less money (evening out inequalities and moving towards an income that allows for happiness, but not overconsumption) and spend more time on activities that don't put a burden on the planet.