A dramatic week for Ina.
So this week changed everything again. On Monday I was looking for my next contract, having just finished the last one and thinking I did not particularly want to or have to return to the workplace, by Friday I had completed my training in Westminster and was heading back up to start work on Saturday morning.
As you can imagine, life with pace like this is very stressful at times, but at least it is not dull. I now have to spend the next few months scouring the market for a development on this, but today was my highest earning day ever despite only working half a day. I don’t feel nearly as triumphant about this as you would expect, I just feel a bit vindicated for the other two times I was a reasonably good earner, 1995 and 2007.
In 1995 my career at this time was somewhat scuppered by being told that I was not entitled to have children or any kind of life by my drunken sister, who then proceeded to lie to absolutely everybody about it. My mother eventually understood that she had accepted this as fact out of sheer badness. What I was supposed to do, apparently, was display my unselfishnes by taking care of my parents because my siblings would not do anything for them, which turned out to be true.
Even after this I still managed to have a short period as a stately home/very high end caterer and thus ended my period of travel on a high note, then using the lack of mobility in terms of geography to go back to studying after rediscovering my brain during an accounting course. Despite never feeling particularly successful, I realised some years later that I had made the best out of a very pieced together career and had quite a bit of management skill nobody seemed to want, mainly because people are stupid and transferable skills are out of fashion when there are too many employees for the number of jobs available, when the economy is extremely wasteful and when the priority is a lazy dude who wears a suit and preferably plays golf, always a preferred candidate.
During the study period my parents did not in fact need much in the way of help, I did the garden and the decorating and apart from that paid for quite a bit of the repairs and maintenance, which was of course denied by the family because why would I do that? I did, however end my social life pretty much when I ended my university life as it would have disturbed my father, who by then was sleeping downstairs.
The second period of being a half decent earner was when my father was in hospice care and I was working three jobs, corporate research, government research and banking into the wee hours. The latter contract ended when the banks went to the high court to stop paying banking charges back to customers, the day after this my mother had a stroke. I was relieved that I had been cautious enough to maintain three incomes as our lives did not have to change terribly much, also thanks to my very helpful boyfriends at the time. I have been oddly fortunate in this respect, rough diamonds often come through for you at difficult times, unlike toxic siblings who do not.
The third period is now, apparently, and it is a relief that somebody somewhere appreciates the amount of work it has taken to create me. I will be spending the next few weeks establishing myself in the city from the relative comfort and distance of home.
London always ends up the same for me, I am very enthusiastic for about six hours, by the 50th I am desperate to leave. There are just far too many people. I have known two people who moved there, both of them ended up having to return due to nervous exhaustion. We may not have sufficiently talented politicians to have the same opportunities in Scotland, but we definitely do have a better quality of life and attitude to other people.
On another topic, the cement mixer arrived for Dylan’s face today, so I have mixed the first batch of finishing coatings. I will also be making wigs for him, so that will be tremendous fun.
Mr Cat Allergy is not sneering at me. Woot!
