I think this entry will talk about me mostly. Always reluctant to do that but I suppose the evidence says otherwise. Let's see if we can win a free trip.
I actually have about 15 more minutes before the rush ends for the day but for some reason, today has been very slow. Maybe 30 or 40 students. A normal day is around 60 and busy days can be over 100, so it has been nice today. There is something called Quest on with the senior level groups, so they do not come in except to print and some of them have never done that before, so I have to show them how.
I work full time now. At a private school. Brisbane Girls Grammar School. As the name implies, it is girls only. There is a Brisbane Grammar School next door and it is only for boys. No idea why they do not have Boys in their name.
This school is one of the elite schools in the country, or at least Queensland. It is always rated in the top five and number one is most academic areas. They have had the highest test scores in the country for about five years. They spend a lot of time trying to maintain that standing. I help administer the test, or I did last year, and they are extremely strict in how they setup for it and how the girls are allowed to take the test. No one is allowed to miss and everyone must do excellent work. I don't know how it is in other schools, but this one takes the tests seriously.
Anyway, I work here now. No longer do contract work. The job I do is simple, not a lot of challenge to it. We do BYOD here, that's bring your own device, and it is my job to make sure they are working and setup to run the school versions of the software. That is mostly Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Cloud. A few other things, but that is the majority of what they use. Everything straight out of the box and not a lot of customization to it. Just install it, point it to the right servers, and let it run. Most of the kids do not know what it does or what they could do with it, they are just students and want to get through classes, they don't care to really go beyond that. It is just a means to an end, not something they are studying or anything. But that is life here.
I also support all the teachers and their laptops and software, but I am the front of house person and don't get a lot of involvement in the back of the house, server maintenance, software setup, network, anything like that. I do a lot of that work but that is not my main function. I get the people who walk in the door for help. If I can't fix it immediately, I send them to one of the others.
I debated a long time before taking this job. I was happy doing the contract work but it was very sporadic and I was not really making any money at it. Just enough to get by but retirement is fast approaching and I do not have enough in my retirement account to cover living much past 80, 75 if I spend like I am now, 70 if I just blow it all in one go and hope for the best. I could have lived with that, I don't expect to live much past 70, so it would not have been a problem. But just in case, I needed to start contributing to it again. Contract work was not really allowing me to do that and the Covid downturn hit my retirement fund hard, so I needed to do something.
I started at this job as a temporary contract for a couple of months. I did not get any of the normal training or introduction to the job as I was temporary. It turns out, the person I was covering for decided to take another job somewhere else when they got back. The stayed on for a couple of weeks but then left. She had been here for about ten years and was really running this department, even though no one asked her to and they mostly ignored all her, but the day to day operation was handled by her. I was to take her place.
They offered me the job and I told them I was not her, I did not know all the things she did on a day to day, month to month, term to term basis. If they expected those things to happen, I was not aware of them and did not know how to get them accomplished. They said it was not a problem. Now, six months later, when things have fallen off the table and things are not getting done, I am taking the blame for it. When they bring it up, I tell them I had no idea it was supposed to be done and I had warned them this would happen after she left. I don't really suppose they blame me but it gets uncomfortable every once in a while, to the point that I really regret taking the job. Yes, they pay me a lot of money to do it, and I am happy with that, but there are times when I do not know what I am supposed to be doing and no one can tell me what I should be doing. They just wait for it not to be done and I play catchup. The job is easy to do, way below what I am used to, but its the little things that cause me anxiety and I have trouble dealing with. But it's a job and it pays well, so I will keep it. That is not the real reason for my concern.
My health is starting to fail. I know I have spoken about it a lot and it is a constant concern of mine, but I am not sure how much longer I can keep it together. A lot of things, but the main one is the heart. I am back to getting angina pains daily. The doctor says I will have to live with it. I don't know why, but he says the parts they fixed last time have blocked and cannot be repaired again. I take 14 tablets a day. I have a bad foot that causes me pain all the time and they cannot find a reason for it. I have diabetes and my eyesight is failing. And those are just the physical symptoms. I can live with those and do what I can to ignore them. I have lost 15 kilos, or I did, put about 4 of them back on in the last month but am working my way back again. I don't do anything special, just have a good breakfast, eat a piece of fruit and some nuts for lunch, and then pig out at night. I am trying not to eat as much at night, don't have the second full serving at dinner but I do eat an ice cream before I go to bed. Love to have my ice cream at night. That's another thing, I get up at 3 in the morning, sometimes 2 or even 1. I seem to think I already said that somewhere in here but this is a day later and I can't seem to recall nor can I see it in this entry. Basically, I go to bed by 8 each night and fall asleep by 8:30. I get up a few times during the night to pee but I guess that means I am getting at most, 6 hours of sleep if I am lucky. That also is taking its toll on me. Working 5 days a week is really taking its toll. I have not done that in about 6 or 7 years and even then, I would only work a few hours a day since I worked from home. But I am getting busy now, so I have to start wrapping this up. The boss just came in and he looked troubled, so I will go through the rest when I get a chance. Might even save it for another day. Depends on whether I can get my morning routine done in time.
Decided to end this entry, will probably start another later today.
Until next time,
Later
Remember
It will all be ok in the end, and if it's not ok, then it's not the end.
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