Monday, December 21, 2015

It doesn't take much

I've been feeling almost overwhelmed, almost panicky (about not yet having a new job, nor having actually spent much time looking for one) and wondering where the hell time is going to. I've been doing lots of translating work so there is some money coming in for January but still, I thought I'd be set by now. Of course, doing all that translating work has meant not having time to look for a new job so it's a bit of a tricky situation to be in. I've been slowly getting a handle on things and am starting to work a bit more efficiently at least.

Over the weekend I had a proofreading job to do. I got it on Thursday afternoon and they needed it by Monday. This job actually came via a friend of mine and she really kind of organised it because she wanted to help me out with my side business. I got part of it done yesterday and finished it off today. I had estimated 3-5 hours and even though it was longer than originally planned it took me just 4. But I just had a phone call from her and it seems that we were talking at cross-purposes a bit. While I was offering proof-reading, she was expecting editing. As in, take a hatchet to our 34 pages of text and make something better out of it. And I, to be perfectly honest, just don't know how to do that. Especially not when it's all about a scientific institution and the various projects it's involved in. As far as I'm concerned the text was fine - it wasn't particularly boring (even for me as a not-at-all-interested-in-this-topic layperson), it wasn't repetitive and I did amend the few things that were just bad English. So now, I'm feeling very disheartened really. I did what I said I'd do but I feel bad that I couldn't just immediately say to her "oh, of course, well I'll jump right on that and send you back a new version pronto". Worse than a miscommunication with a client is the kind of mix-up that leads me to disappointing a friend. I've never had a problem working with or for family or friends but this has definitely affected me. Not specially helped by the fact that there will be an assistant position opening up at her lab and she has already suggested me for it. So I'll probably have an interview in early January. But given what a mess this proofreading job turned out to be, I'm definitely in two minds about whether or not I'd be actually able to work with her/them.

Perhaps I'm just too stressed or tired for it all now. Different kind of stress than I used to have at work but life is nonetheless pretty overwhelming at the moment. I've got a 26-page document to translate, technically before the new year but I know it would be good to get it back to them on Wednesday. I haven't any money to buy presents this year but since I'm flying to Ireland on Wednesday evening and am spending christmas with most of my family (and since no-one ever actually got around to organising a Kris Kindle) I'm feeling a pressure I don't normally have. I had decided to knit everyone something since I do have quite a stash. I actually even went and bought some cheap (but cute) yarn - the type that I normally stay away from that's not wool and instead made up of a mix of various things starting with "poly". So Woolworths got a very small amount of money from me and I decided I'd spend most of last week knitting and everything would be fine. Except then I got some more work in and spent most of last week working (big document I'd spent the week before translating - they decided they wanted to have it in Excel rather than Word and since they agreed to pay for it. Took nearly as long as it took to translate the bloody thing in the first place, although I was doing the whole thing, including the stuff two others had translated). So, yeah, not much knitting done yet.

I may need a holiday.

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