Monday 9 November 2015

Working Woman


Cloud Nine has got a job – again. Yes – two years and several adventures on from the PhD, I have actually found something resembling one of those nine-to-fives that I’ve been hankering after. Something that’s (hopefully, please, please please) quite a bit less horrible than the Grotty Job.

The only trouble is: I can’t sleep. Ever since I laid down my little head on Sunday night, ready to drift off for a good night’s sleep before the First Day On The Job, I have tossed and turned and I can’t sleep. On that night before my first day, I woke up at four. Today I woke up at 2. (That’s a lot of lying awake.) There was nothing for it but to do what any normal person would do, and get up and write on my little blog.  (Maybe, if I just tire myself out a little bit, I’ll get a bit of a nap – between 6 and 7?...)

I must confess that I thought this was finished, you know. The sleepless nights of the crazy last-months-of-PhD, or that awful night before the viva. The brain that won’t shut down. The tossing and turning, the knot in the stomach. (Ironic, really, since the main thing I didn’t like about the Grotty Job was that awful knot-in-the-stomach feeling every time I had to go in. And now I have found myself a Nice Job, and it’s like my body hasn’t understood yet that it is nice. My body has a mind of its own, and it’s preparing the fight-or-flight response. Or is my brain telling me that it considers this job to be grotty, too?...)

This and other wonderful secrets of the working world I am able to consider while siting in my living room in the wee hours of a Tuesday morning.

And now back to bed.