The end of the year is approaching, and with it the end of my contract at my ‘main’ job – i.e. the one I only do on Saturdays. Frankly, I can’t wait for it to be over – teaching small children has never been my goal in life, and a year of it has been lacking in any redeeming features. Well, there was one, perhaps – the pay. This one day in my six-and-a-half-day working week has accounted for over a third of my total income, and I’ll need something to make up the shortfall. What’s worse, this school have my work permit, and I’ll need to transfer it if I want to continue working here. I love my weekday job, but it’s taking up too much of my time and not paying nearly enough. Right now I’m working a lot more than anyone I know but somehow getting paid less.
Last night I called another well-known English school and asked them if they could give me a job. The line was the same as last year – they’d love me to work as a director, but there weren’t any positions going in Beijing until the summer. If I was willing to pack up and move to Shanghai, however…. Well, of course that’s also impossible. So here I am looking for a job again, though I already have three. The situation isn’t urgent – yet – but the general uncertainty is a bit stressful, and it’s a bit worrying that my career doesn’t appear to be progressing as well as I had previously thought. In the past I would have just shrugged about all this, but with a baby on the way it’s all a bit different.
Tomorrow is my first day off since the mid-autumn festival. Time to get my hair cut, finish up a couple of projects, make some soup. Then on Monday the serious job-hunting begins.