That's a scary thought

You know how I was talking about my job here and some of the crap that happened while I was away? Well I had a little chat with my boss and they've already filled the position that I was in and he said that the person that they hired is over qualified for the job and probably won't stay long which got me thinking.

If people in my industry are applying for jobs for which they are over qualified doesn't that mean that there aren't many jobs out there. And perhaps rather than complaining about my job all the time I need to realize that at least I have a job. It also puts into rather sharp focus the importance of going to get my Master's degree before it's too late and I do actually have to compete for jobs with the over qualified.

Sometimes you just need the right motivation

So I have many times mentioned the passing thought that perhaps I should apply for grad school. Well yesterday I made the decision to get really serious about it. I know I've said that before but I'm pretty sure it will stick this time.

See work has once again screwed me over with their HR policies and so I'm being demoted because I got sick. But the thing is I deserved that promotion. I put a lot of work into it and now it's all gone by the way side.

And so my renewed commitment to higher education.

I swear computers were invented to make me cry

So I finally got my laptop back which is super exciting. yay! But it took me 4 hours and a phone call to Shaw in order to get internet. But now we have internet set up and that's awesome. Which means I can probably start doing more regular posting again.

Numbers Never Lie

As you are already very likely aware I'm not always confident about the career path that I've chosen. I often consider further education, changing jobs or perhaps just becoming a homeless person. However my aversion to change often prevents me from considering such options but when I'm in a bit of a funk, like now, I like to see what's out there.

One of the things I like to do is take personality related career quizzes to determine if I'm where I should be. About 4 years ago I took one that had to be sent away for grading, it was very long and really scary, but it told me that I was probably taking the correct course of training for the professions best suited to me. I just did a color based career quiz and it said that the place I should be is somewhere very much like the place I'm in now.

It's just a little frustrating because I'm so unhappy being where I am now. Anyway if you'd like to check out the quiz it's here .

Well at least someone agrees with me

The last couple of days I have been a bit of a Debbie Downer about my work situation. But you know at least I'm not the only one who sees it. It may not be a ringing endorsement of my persistent bitching but, knowing that I'm not alone in my outrage makes me feel just a little bit better about being outraged. 

Anyway I'm sure you're all sick of hearing me complain so instead I'll just offer this picture of Larry Fitzgerald who likely would have been the Superbowl MVP if Arizona would have won instead of just looking hot in a suit. 

On the Budget

It was budget day today. Usually this sort of thing happens in April but since we had that election thing and then that economic update thing and what I've starting referring to as "The Coalition Debacle of 2008" the government felt that it was in the best interest of Parliament to take a little break and come back with this. Yup, that's 343 pages of what I like to call "How We Plan to Waste Your Money". There are 4 pages of Table of Contents.

I don't usually even looking at the budget because no one cares about the details, what I want to know is how you're going to spend the 1/3 of my income that you steal from me annually. In case you couldn't tell I'm incredibly bitter about frivolous government spending. Don't get me wrong the government does need to spend money on some things but there are things that the government need not and should not touch. 

First and foremost I wonder why the government has taken and "unprecedented consultative effort" to create this budget. Some one want to tell me what all of the past budget consultation meetings have been about? How is it that they managed to get more input in a shorter amount of time to release their budget 3 month early? 

The thing that gets me the most is the $85 Billion dollar deficit. Any one remember why we're dealing with this whole global economic crisis? Likely because people have been taking on HUGE amounts of debt for years by living beyond their means. And here comes our government to save us, by doing the exact same thing! 

But here are some things I DO like about the budget: 

-income tax cuts. Increasing the basic exemption and the upper levels of the two lowest brackets. Good move government. Leave me more money to make decisions with. 

- business tax cuts. If they're paying less taxes they can afford to keep more people. 

- $1.5 billion for job training. 

I'm sure if I wanted to read the whole thing I could find some other good stuff but right now I think I've said enough. 

Taking a break

Barring some sort of change in my general mood over the next little while I will be taking a blogging break. I may drop in from time to time if I have something particularly interesting to share but for right now I'm saying that this is probably going to be my last post until the new year.

Given the current political situation which is well frankly retarded and the fact that I'm not seeing a whole lot of positives in my life in general I thought it would be a good idea to save you all from the bitching and complaining I'm going to be doing leading up to the new year.

See you in a month.

Nothing Like A Week Off To Give You A Little Perspective

I take it back.

Why I may not vote

I'm all about election stuff. I love elections. I realize that they cost a ton to administer but at the same time I feel that it's the one time when all of the politicians have to actually prove that they're doing something worthwhile in Ottawa. I am also deeply opinionated about many issues which allows me to lean strongly towards one party or another based on their policies.

However, I may not be voting in the upcoming election. Despite having voted in 2 federal elections in 2 different ridings I'm not on the voters list. I called my local returning officer's office on Thursday and they told me that they could mail me a form to fill out. I received a call today telling me that I would have to come down to the office (which is completely out of my way) in order to fill out the forms. Seriously for all the discussion about why voter turnout is so low no one has thought that perhaps this might be the reason? Not only do I have to go to register to vote but then I have to actually go out and vote.

Maybe I should just be grateful that I live in a democracy that allows me the right to vote at all, but at the same time I can't remember it being this difficult to vote in the previous two elections. This election also marks the first time that I'm actually have to seriously evaluate who I intend to vote for, for the first time I'm divided on the issues.

Incidentally I now live in one of those "swing ridings" where the incumbent may not win back their seat. Which probably makes it all the more important to vote given that I could make an actual difference in the outcome. For the record my old riding was won by 111 votes in the last election.

Not only am I a bad hockey fan I'm also a terrible person

I apparently have become and embittered old hag. At least 4 times in the last day I have used some combination of the following phrase to preface saying something truly terrible about good people:

"Okay this is going to sound horrible but..."
"don't get me wrong..."
"I'm going to be a horrible friend for saying this..."

How does someone at my age become so grouchy? I've really got to smarten up or I'm going to die bitter and alone. Well I'm already 2/3, I just hope that the dying doesn't happen for a while. Oh right I also said "well I can't be your friend anymore", but that was totally in jest and was understood as such.

No but seriously I think it's just exhaustion and frustration at the whole work situation. Tomorrow I will be doing 3 jobs because no one else knows how to do them. Which quite frankly is kind of sad given that I'm leaving my department in just over 2 weeks and that I've only been there for 8 months. It also makes you wonder what all of the permanent staff have been doing all these years. Granted it's holiday season but still. Additionally I'm not really seeing any hope for vertical movement from my current post but I'm not quite ready to jump to the next car on the career train just yet. So probably there will be much more complaining to come. I'll apologize in advance.

People with no common sense

With a title like that you really have to be expecting another one of my rants coming on. If you're not then you probably just wandered upon this site at random and so to you I apologize. To anyone who actually followed some sort of link to get here come on you should know me well enough by now.

Okay so the last couple of days I've been really bother by really stupid people and the really stupid things that they've been doing. Let us start with my neighbours who are either running grow-ops out of their apartments or haven't realized that A) they have air conditioners and b) it's hotter outside than it is in their apartments. I've come home from work for the past 2 days around 4:30 to find both my upstairs and downstairs neighbour's windows open, which of course heats up MY apartment. Guys seriously it's 26 degrees outside there is nothing you can be doing in your apartment aside from cooking a 12 course meal this is going to make it hotter in there than outside. No fucking common sense.

Situation number 2 has to do with a certain future brain surgeon that I work with. Or at least she would be if she knew what the words appendages and electrolytes meant. Thank god she's a summer student, hopefully that means she'll learn something in the next couple of years. No but really are people that stupid? She can't really be pretending can she? Man I don't even want to think about what that means for the education system in this province that this girl has a high school diploma.

The waiting game

I'm the kind of girl who likes to do things on her own. Always have been. All through high school (and junior high and elementary for that matter) I was the kind of person who wanted to do group work on their own. Partly because I was kind of a loner (oh surprise, surprise) and partly because I thought I could do a better job if I did everything myself than if anyone helped me. Truth be told this actually worked out really well for me in school because well quite frankly I wanted to work harder than most of the other people I went to school with, I had more desire to do well in school. Another reason this worked so well was that the only consequence of my work was my grade.

Now that I'm in the real world that changes. I can no longer be responsible for everything and really my results don't matter. This means that it is necessary to work as part of a team and I think I've adapted well to that. What I haven't adapted well to is the waiting. For example I'm currently waiting for 3 different people to send me 3 different things so that can complete my work. My biggest fear is that they're all going to come at the same time and that I'm going to be absolutely swamped by the volume of work to be completed. I guess that's why they say patience is a virtue.

Dreams are like men you can always have another one tommorow night

I need to start off by saying that I heard that line in a T.V. show the other day and I've been waiting to use it ever since. Now on to the meat of my post.

As you all know by now I'm not particularly happy with my career situation. It's not so much that my job sucks, because it really doesn't. It's more that I don't have a firm grasp on what is that I would like to be doing for the rest of my life. I was asked once when discussing my current job unhappiness what my dream job would look like. To be honest I have no clue.

Obviously I'm not a huge fan of manual labour so that's out. Which leaves me with office jobs. I liked working in the doctor's office as a receptionist... most of the time. But I don't think that I can justify taking that much of a pay cut. For the most part I like my current job, except when certain nosey co-workers seem to think that I don't have enough to do so everyone else should give me just a little bit of their work to do. And yeah, when it's slow I have no problem helping out, the problem comes when I do something once to help someone out and it becomes part of my regular job. Sorry I'm back to complaining again.

Okay so really what this was supposed to be about what career change. But without a clear vision of what I'm after is there really any point? I'm just afraid to end up like OB1, who has been at the same job for 12 years and hates it but can't or won't go anywhere else because then he'd have to start at the bottom.

At this point I've kind of ditched the grad school plans. But I just don't know what I'm going to do.

Holy Crap, What Did I Do To My Back?

All afternoon I have had a terrible pain the right side of my lower back. I just haven't figured out what I did to it. I would have said it was from the heavy lifting I did on the weekend but I was perfectly fine yesterday. Anyway as you know I'm all about the complaining so here's some more.

Really it hurts to do anything. It hurts to walk and it hurts to sit. If I can make it through another half hour I'll check lying down. I'd try it now but I'm at work and I'm afraid that I won't be able to get up off the floor, in which case I'd have to spend the night here. Ain't gonna happen.

More complaining about work

It's not the first time and I'm sure it won't be the last time I use my blog as an outlet for all of my career related frustrations. Today however I feel justified in questioning the division of the workload. While I don't generally question it out loud to co-workers it certainly comes up in outside of work relationships. Okay that statement isn't exactly true, I do mention it to co-workers just not ones that actually work in my department.

Some told me last week that I shouldn't question what I'm given to do and that I should just take it and stay late to get everything done if need be. All because you're trying to start your career and you don't want people to think you can't do the job. The fact of the matter is that I'm the kind of person who believes that you're only assigned as much as people think you're able to do. And that if you're not able to do it then someone needs to know.

I'm one of those lucky people who has most of their work delivered to their desk, either by e-mail or fax. Today our fax delivery person asked me about all of the stuff I was getting these days. The big thing was that all of this work had been assigned to other people at some point but now is falling on me. In fact she even said to me "so what does Sally* do now?" If other people are noticing then all of my complaining can't be completely unjustified right?


*name changed to protect my freaking job. Not that I'm so anonymous as it is.