I Need a Life Coach (or something)

I need to make decisions about what I’m doing and where I’m going.  Maybe the decision will be to keep on the same way, but I need to consciously decide that.

Most of it’s about work.  I do two jobs.  One is a half-time post for the county council; the other is on a self-employed basis, with 95% of the work done for the same county council.  The net result is that I do more than full time hours, many of them during unsociable times.  I love both jobs for different reasons.  I need both jobs for different reasons.

Self-employed job is lots of money and although I don’t get paid for any planning or preparation time, it’s still pretty good remuneration.  I’m now teaching on four separate programmes, which means that for four days out of the working five each week during term time, I have very little time flexibility.  The upside is that I have complete autonomy within the job and have entire control over the programme content.

The other job has quite a bit of weekend and evening work.  I don’t mind that.  In fact, I actively like it, as being single at my age does mean a lot of sitting at home alone.  This job is working with young people who are motivated and focussed and getting on well at school.  A nice contrast to the other one.  Quite a lot of the work is during school holidays (like the residential we just had, which went brilliantly, by the way) and other times that fit around school.

So… I’m at the stage where I can’t take holidays during term time as I’m committed to my teaching job and I can’t take many holidays during holiday time as I’m committed to my other job.  (Much of which commitment is in my head because I need to do the job as well as I can.)

Simple solution would be to leave one or part of one of the jobs, but I couldn’t possibly choose – and I do know and recognise that I need to do this type of work where I do feel useful and can try to make a difference in little ways.  I know too, this is probably partly a substitute for a family life.

Just sometimes, I would like to take time out and there never seems to be any time for that.  I’m sure that most people would see looking after myself as a priority, but that is really what I’m doing anyway, by having jobs that I enjoy.  It’d be nice to just reduce them both by 10%, but that’s not how real life works!

It’s most likely all my own fault anyway.  I keep taking on new challenges which no one asks me to do, but I like introducing new things. 

Changes are afoot in any case.  Connexions will be under the remit of the county council by April.  Who knows?  My job might change then and I might hate it, in which case the decision would be easy!