A Brief Attempt at Normal

‘I was looking for a job and then I found a job, and heaven knows I’m miserable now’

I was looking for a job because my current role as a freelance, self-employed, Disabled Students’ Allowance Assessor is going to change in 2024. A new model for managing the assessments is being implemented by the government and it will mean my rate of pay, which has not seen an increase in a decade, will be significantly cut. I’ll need a living wage and the new regime is unlikely to offer one.
So, I got a job. A real one, where you have an induction, and meetings, and make things happen. I was employed by a local charity that I know and love. They had a new sub-contract to deliver a piece of work funded by statutory services. This job was going to be all about working to improve access to mental health support for those people who often ‘fall through the net’. I’d be making contacts with individuals and organisations across the High Peak and Derbyshire Dales.

I lasted two months.

Mainly, the reason for leaving so quickly was due to the difference between what the contractors wanted versus what is actually required. In a part-time role covering two different areas, I felt unable to meet the demands. My boss agreed; it was the role, not me. The charity is in no rush to recruit to the vacancy until some fundamental issues have been resolved.

But needing to leave was also very definitely me, not the role. I’ve been working freelance for 15 years and I have wholeheartedly enjoyed being my own boss, organising my own schedules, planning work around raising Dan and building in time for friends and family and dog-walking and reading and telly and so on. I haven’t missed the power struggles for lunchbox storage space in communal fridges, or the interruption of a phone that surely someone else should be answering, or office gossip (ok, maybe a bit).

As an Assessor, my face-to-face interaction with people in an office was limited to saying a brief hello and goodbye to the friendly faces in disability support offices in some universities. And that was lovely, and perfect for me. And I really do love the interaction with the students that I assess, and I especially love that mostly I only ever see them once, so we have a wonderful, intense, positive conversation and that’s that.

Covid changed that. My happy balance of gentle interaction with real people ended entirely and has not resumed. I have an occasional Teams meeting with a few other assessors for one of the assessment centres I work with, but all my assessments are conducted from home, by video. I don’t have any incidental conversation with anyone who might be some sort of peer. My working world has shrunk to the room we’ve turned into my home office.

And then I got a job with inductions and meetings and visits to local organisations. I had to leave the house.

I did more icebreakers in eight weeks than I’ve done in fifteen years. And I was on high alert in every interaction. I was just waiting for someone to ask me about family, worried about what I’d say. I talked about this in an earlier blog, The End of Therapy – Part Two. The lose-lose of anyone asking me if I had children and how neither ‘yes’, ‘no’, nor ‘sort of’ were any kind of answer I wanted to give.

‘If anyone asks you, you can say you’ve got me?’ offered Lea, when I told her my anxieties just before starting the job. ‘You’re like a stepmum.’ That did for me. Tears sprang, as another pocket of love burst open inside me. Beautiful, kind, Lea.

Thankfully I only faced the direct question once. I didn’t answer, just shook my head and blushed and mumbled about not having a family really. The person I was speaking to, wrapped in their own story, barely registered my reaction. It took me a few minutes to fully tune back into what they were talking about; my heart rate soared, my brain shut down. I’m assuming, given my companion never reacted, that I looked intensely interested and not like I was having a heart attack.

But really, although the fear of having to reveal my precious secret about Dan made me a bit hypervigilant, I just found the job itself really bloody hard work. The sheer volume of interactions with so many different people was utterly fucking exhausting. I have been out of the game for so long that I felt like I’d stepped into another world. The constant chatter is so hard. I’m sure that had the job been right, the other stuff would have come back to me in time, the endless meetings and chatter would have become normalised again, and I would probably find a new happy balance. But I’ve been out of that job for one week and haven’t missed it for a second. The silence has been wonderful.

So, I tried having a normal job and doing normal things and it turns out I’m not all that brilliant at it. Luckily, I don’t need another job just yet. The assessments are here for a few more months. There are far more interesting things coming up anyway, ones that I can’t wait to devote time to, that will bring me satisfaction and allow me to share my precious secret about Dan in a way that actually makes me smile.