Working for a change

Lola Towers garden, June 2021

Getting paid for vaccinating is proving to be quite a challenge. At the end of June I got my first payslip which showed without any further detail at all that I'd been paid for 30 hours, which equates to five shifts, two of them on Saturdays. In fact, up to the end of June, I'd worked twelve shifts, two on Saturdays and two on Sundays. So it was back to the Temporary Staffing team, then payroll, and a helpful young man who gave the impression that he understood the situation and said he'd get back to me. He didn't.

Then I turned up for a shift only to find that there wasn't one. I did stay to have a chat with the admin people, who told me that the young people who are now eligible for their jab are no longer coming - all the ones who wanted the vaccine have had their first jab, but it is suspected that since the official guidance is that no further restrictions are needed after 'Freedom Day' (19th July), they don't see why they now need to get vaccinated. So although the clinics are open to booking by the public now, the only demand is for second jabs.

When I followed up the payroll issue (twice - the first time the helpful young man was not available) I was told that everything was fine and that I had been paid for the shifts I had done. When I pointed out that I hadn't, the helpful young man had another look, gave the impression that he understood the situation, and told me that I would be paid for all the remaining shifts at the end of this month. We'll see. The booking system doesn't show many shifts at the times I can work, and two out of three shifts that I book are cancelled. I have been contacted to change the working hours for the next one so, fingers crossed, that will go ahead tomorrow and maybe I'll find out more.

Working for Mr MXF is coming along quite nicely, although I manage to surprise myself by the extent to which I can procrastinate if I'm not actually having to go to a workplace. [Writing blog posts is one example - when I was working I just about managed one a week, and now I'm churning them out every five or six days.] I'm starting to grasp some of the essentials and can describe for you now what it is that I'm trying to do at the moment.

Mr MXF hosts some websites for family members and non-critical businesses, as well as the more important website he runs for his main business (broadcast and media technology consultancy, as far as I can tell). I'm not going near the important stuff yet, but the other websites reside on a very flaky server which constantly needs kicking to keep it going. My first challenge is to work out how to reliably transfer these websites to a different, more reliable host server. And then, to carry out that transfer without breaking anything.

During the last but one US election, when the Russians were, let's say, a little bit twitchy, some of Mr MXF's websites were hit by some sort of bot infection which caused him no end of trouble and needed much time to rectify. Having learned how to move all the websites from one place to another should put me in a good position to be able to recreate a working website without delay if such an eventuality should occur again. I am more confident of the first task than the second at the moment, but as I spend more time on these jobs it gradually gets slightly easier to imagine.

Coasting to retirement

June 2021

Welcome to the first day of Lolatastic Life! My fourth career, after Engineering, Disability IT, and then Dietetics. 

Engineering was a poor choice of degree, although I made many friends who are still some of the best people I know and frequently appear within these virtual pages (including Mr MXF, CERNoise, the Buddhist formerly known as Sas, two of the J's in Family JJL+J). It did give me a start in IT, which I followed up with the job at RNIB, probably the best job I've ever had, before the switch to Dietetics.

I had an old friend from school who had similarly decided later in life to train as a Physiotherapist. When he found out about my plan to become a Dietitian he wrote me a long message that essentially told me not to do it, for the exact reasons that have now led me to move on. "You'll find it too frustrating," he wrote. "Nobody will listen to your ideas, and even if they do you won't be able to change anything." He was right, but that's not the whole story. I seem to have an attention span that will not extend beyond seven years in a job.

So now I have what they call a 'Portfolio Career'. I'm vaccinating (yes, that's started up again), working for Mr MXF, helping out with mum and dad, doing quite a lot with the Buddhist group, still working on the LTRP, and I've just signed up to be considered as a volunteer for the Commonwealth Games in 2022, ideally for the badminton at the NEC or the lawn bowls on my doorstep (but if I'm picked the role could be anywhere). It does feel a little like the definition of career as a verb rather than the noun.

So here we are. I hope you like the new design - I've thrown it together in a bit of a hurry so it may change again. According to my web reporting tools, readership is currently down to single figures, so I don't think anyone is going to be objecting any time soon.

Welcome to Lolatastic Life!