Day 26: The Happiness Project

cv screenshot jpg
And this is just page one of the condensed version

 

As you may have noted over the past few months of posts, I’ve been wrestling with my newfound status of stay at home mother. I thought I’d be better at it. Not the Thwack wrangling itself, no- he’s good fun to be with most of the time-but rather the lack of intellectual stimulation. The absence of travel and exploration. The absence of work and movement and scary weird challenges. Experimental cookery is just not the same.

Which is why our current super-sekret cunning plan- the one leaving us with optimistic spreadsheets for the first time in ages- is so invigorating.

I’ll give you a clue, though. See photo above.

I spent much of yesterday re-jigging my CV, which hadn’t been updated since my triumvirate of bosses at my last real, full-time job suddenly metaphorically boarded up the doors and windows while I was away in Bali for Spring Festival, leaving me officially unemployed three months shy of completing my contract, totally screwing up my residence status and release letter.

They never talked to me again, vanishing from the face of the Google’able earth, leaving me with no proof of what I’d been doing for the previous 9 months (er, setting up a whole new school and creating a whole new curriculum?), nor several months of back pay and flight allowance.

Oh China.

But no hard feelings. Not anymore, anyway.

I’m looking for work again, y’all, and my newly rejigged CV even impresses me. Hell, I’d hire me. I look like I might actually know a thing or two about something. Or at least it looks that way on the PDF.

The work search is not for now, but for sometime around October. Thwacky will be 8 months by then, and hopefully supplementing his dairy diet with plenty of Camembert and avocados and saag paneer. We can hire someone to tickle him and shove chunks of mango into his gaping, gummy, giggling maw.

I’m actually looking forward to going back to teaching. I had thought I was burnt out (and to a degree I was), but mostly I was burnt out not by teaching but by successive waves of dickish employers doing irrational and occasionally heartless things.

I feel a lot better now.

The whole Happiness Project collection of posts can be found here.


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Comments

10 responses to “Day 26: The Happiness Project”

  1. Camden Luxford Avatar
    Camden Luxford

    *does the happy dance of exciting vicarious change*

    1. MaryAnne Avatar
      MaryAnne

      Dancing right back at ya!

  2. Kate Bailward Avatar

    *joins in with Camden’s happy dance*

    This is the happiest you’ve sounded in ages. Yay for plans and change!

    1. MaryAnne Avatar
      MaryAnne

      Sometimes you just have to force them cobwebs out…

  3. Emma Avatar
    Emma

    I think you need a weekend at the seaside before you go. Blow the cobwebs away.

    I might even treat you to an ice-cream.

    1. MaryAnne Avatar
      MaryAnne

      Cobwebs are best expelled with ice cream, indeed!

  4. Heather Avatar

    Happy job searching! 🙂

    1. MaryAnne Avatar
      MaryAnne

      Thank you! It’s surprisingly invigorating.

  5. Sally Avatar

    Yay for changes afoot! And about that burn out thing. I left China (and prior to that Japan) very much terribly burnt out from teaching and not entirely sure I wanted to do it again. But, alas, I have actually, dare I say it, really enjoyed my past 2 years of teaching in the States. The pay is crap, the hours are crappier, but, oh, to actually teach students who have both internal and external motivation to learn English! It’s quite fun. Plus, I’m really enjoying having a mix of cultures and ages and backgrounds in my class and not one big class full of sullen, eighteen-year-olds. So, if you’re planning to teach in the UK, you may actually find yourself enjoying it and not nearly so tempted to ditch it all and go live on a beach in Mexico. (Actually, nevermind, I still totally want to do that.)

    1. MaryAnne Avatar
      MaryAnne

      I totally hear ya. The plan is still in the planning stage but if it works out, it should be quite exciting…

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