Unemployed

You may be aware, from other posts, that I have lost my job.

The county council closed a whole swathe of Middle School, ostensibly to improve pupils' education, but the evidence used was interpreted spuriously, because the real motive was to save money; they've removed a whole layer of management-level wages, admin staff, support staff, and even the teaching staff.

Anyhoo, the upshot is that I was made redundant - career-wise, I fall between two stools, being too expensive to compete with NQTs, yet too inexperienced at KS4/KS5 to compete with more expensive time-served teachers.

So...

I'm out of work.

And, oddly, I'm quite enjoying it.

Last time I was out of work, it was incredibly stressful - zero income, we lost the house and it took a complete career-change to get me back into work. I ended up in a very dark place.

This time, though...

My wife's job is safe, and is enough for a living wage. I have a lump of cash in the bank that will tide us over "in the manner to which we have become accustomed" at least until Christmas, longer if I'm careful.

During the day, kids at school, on my own, home is a very different place. It's quiet, I don't get uninterrupted. I potter around, keeping up to date with the house work, finally starting to beat the garden into submission (although the pond liner has perished and sprung numerous leaks, so I need to replace that soon), and I'm being far more productive on Instructables. I'm confident of beating my personal target of "publish more projects than Christy" well before the end of October (she's currently on 133, I'm on 130, so as long as she doesn't have a publishing flurry...).

Life is good.

I've decided, though, that it can't go on (unemployment, I mean. Life can. I'm quite keen on Life.).

So, I'm looking for work, and I've decided to have another career change and I can afford, for the moment, to be choosy about which jobs I go for.

I'm still going to teach, but I want to switch subjects. I want to switch to Technology ("shop", to our colonial cousins), specifically "Resistant Materials" (although I'm not averse to Textiles or Food Tech...).

I spent a day in a high school RM department before the Summer, and the staff there said I had a "natural touch" for the subject, and a suitable vacancy has just come up.

Fingers crossed.

(That was a bit of a ramble, wasn't it? I think I need to get back to work to talk to real flesh-and-blood humans more...)