Strange things

Well, this is strange.

I had another job interview yesterday for the Children's Librarian position at Thuringowa. It seemed to go really well - well enough for me to wonder what I would do if I was offered the position and had to choose between this job and the ASC job.

You see, becoming a children's librarian has always been really high on my list of things to do. I love children's literature, I love reading to kids and I enjoy the kind of interaction you have with children and teenagers in a library setting (as opposed to a classroom setting)

But the job in Canberra would offer me the chance to do a lot of professional development, spearhead an information literacy component and help develop a Web 2.0 element for a national organisation. Exciting stuff - and they aren't expecting me to have gobs of experience.

The job in Thuringowa had a higher starting salary, would mean I could stay and help look after my family and not have the added costs of moving to one of the most hideously expensive places to live in the country. The job in Canberra would offer me the chance to break some old habits and build some new contacts - an adventure, in other words.

So, if I was offered the job in Thuringowa I would be faced with choosing between two different paths - both of which I really wanted to take, with two different ranges of opportunities and problems. In one job I could earn more, in the other I could learn more...

Fortunately, Thuringowa just phoned me to tell me I didn't get the job. I've never been so relieved to loose a job I really wanted. There's nothing like the threat of having to make a hard decision to make you truly appreciate having no choice at all.

SB

Applying for jobs is fun!

Okay, applying for jobs is no fun at all.

Unless people act really keen and make you feel very wanted.

When I was applying for work late last year/early this year, there were no nibbles. I sent away many a job application, and got very few interviews. The job I did end up landing (which I have quite enjoyed), I more or less got because no "quality applicants" applied for.

So, I felt good about being offered a job, but felt not-so-good about knowing I was the best of a bad bunch (actually, I don't think there was much of a bunch).

I have a theory that the lack of interest shown had nothing to do with the fact that I was a "bad" applicant, but that everyone was looking for something more. I had been working as a library technician for a year and a professional librarian for a couple of weeks on a locum position. Everyone wanted someone with more experience. No one wanted to be the library stuck with the inexperienced librarian.

Which does, of course, raise the question: how does one gain experience if no one wants to hire you when you are not experienced? Answer: by applying for the jobs no one else would want (the short term, part-time contracts) and being the best of a bad bunch.

Now that I have a year's experience under my belt, I'm much more desirable. I've had prompt contact back from every job I've applied for these past few weeks. Four job interviews so far and counting. I've even got an unofficial job offer (waiting on the official one).

So, I'm feeling much more loved than I was this time last year. Why, give me two years in an ongoing professional position and I'll be downright gorgeous.

What's in a name?

That's an old question, that is. And very much abused.

However, when you start looking into the strange and wonderful world of creative output, names become... interesting.

Take my name. Ever since I first got my Tax File Number I've known that I wasn't the only Sharon Bryan in the country. I figured there were probably more of us out there as well.

For instance, there's a real estate broker in Georgia and a lawyer in California.

I was kind of hoping I'd get to use my own name if I ever decided to publish anything. I've been writing poetry ever since I was a kid (big highlight: winning the Best Ballad award in the Dorothea Mackellar Competition in 1996), and I write short stories and plays (biggest highlight: having a play performed for a two week run by a local theatre group), and I've always harboured dreams of publishing something someday.

However, some other Sharon Bryan has gone and published three books of her own poems. Now, if I want to publish any of my poetry, I'll have to come up with a different name. Or at least a different way of presenting my name. "Sharon Bryan" is out, but I might get away with "S.R. Bryan" or "Sharon R. Bryan". I'll have to Google those.

Not that it really matters all that much. I've always felt strangely drawn to pseudonyms. In fact, the plays I've written have been under a pseudonym. I like to be able to hide, when necessary. Not that I think I need to hide, just that I like the game.

I'll probably end up publishing things under half a dozen pseudonyms, for the fun of it. Still, it would have been nice to have my name available for such things.

Feeling Old

I had a weird moment the other day.

I've been in one of my "I think I'd really like a tattoo" moods (yes, I know how stupid that is). Usually, when I get into one of those moods I remind myself how tattoos are put on and taken off, and that's enough to talk myself out of it, but this time round I've been thinking "maybe the pain won't be quite so bad, and I can always keep it instead of having it removed"...

So I've defaulted to my Plan B, where I tell myself I can get the tattoo, but only if I still want the same design in the same place in a year's time. Usually, the fact that I a) get easily bored with ideas and b) usually can't remember them in a years' time anyway pretty much guarantees that I'll have forgotten all about it. If I haven't and I still want it, well no one could accuse me of doing this lightly or on a whim now, could they?

This is where the weird moment came in. I found myself saying to myself: "If you still want it a year from now you can get it for your 29th birthday". Then it suddenly occurred to me - I'm turning 29 in about a year!

29! I mean, seriously! I was sort of okay with being 27 and still having nothing to my name (apart from the letter trail - for which the quest will continue), but I was sort of hoping to have some sort of life to speak of well before I turned 29. You know, a place of my own, a job I could keep for more than a few months, that sort of thing. What are the odds I'll get any of that within a year?

Slim to none, I'd say.

Feeling old. Feeling slightly pathetic. *Sigh*.

Clutter

"I've enough of useless clutter
Kept in boxes, long forgotten,
Filling space that needs no filling
In the corners of my world!"

So I set my hand to purging
Set aside some time for culling -
Loosing things that need no keeping
From the corners of my world.

Like books on bookshelves - never read
Or never to be read again.
Lib'ries are for keeping these things,
Not the corners of my world.

Or magazines I've kept for years
For articles I once enjoyed -
Do I really need to keep them
In the corners of my world?

And then there are the gifts from friends
I had forgotten that I had.
Do I keep them for the givers,
Tucked in corners of my world?

Things I barely want and don't need
Save for mem'ries I'd forgotten,
Things I wouldn't miss if lost from
Little corners of my world.

In my past I courted clutter
Saved things for the mem'ries in them
All my past seems held in items
Kept in corners of my world.

Now I'm dreaming of a future
Free from boxes filled with clutter -
Open space and room for breathing
In the corners of my world.

Many things I thought I'd cherish
Now belong to other lifetimes
And it's time the me(s) I once was
Left the corners of my world.

So I purge and I de-clutter
Striving to be strong and steadfast
Sweeping old dreams and past futures
From the corners of my world.

Things I'd kept for lives I won't lead
Work I'd laid in place for nothing
Things I'd kept with hope and promise
Stowed in corners of my world.

And when they're gone, will I miss them?
Will I remember them at all?
Or were they just passing time there,
In the corners of my world?

And the things I choose to keep now
(Far, far too much, if truth be told) -
How long will they get to stay there,
In the corners of my world?

S.B.

Food for oil?

Someone pointed out something to me today that hadn't occurred to me before, but should really be rather obvious, when you think about it:

Making food the new oil is a bad idea.

Okay, say someone comes up with a wonderful plan for making fuel out of corn syrup. Huzzah, we have a renewable resource, right? Well, not so much. You see, while you can grow more corn in a year that you can "make" crude oil in a century, you've got a slight problem in that there's still a hell of a lot more oil in the world than corn syrup... and we use more oil than corn syrup could possibly supply.

So, what happens? Corn syrup becomes a valuable commodity. We intensively farm it to the detriment of other crops (including, ironically, corn) - but for biofuel purposes, not food. The price of corn increases until it becomes too expensive for the average house-hold to have on the table once or twice a week. Corn - long a staple part of many a diet - becomes something out of the reach of most people. At least, if you wanted to eat it.

All those wonderful, traditional foods using corn flour and the like become prohibitively expensive, and the average packet of corn chips becomes either a) a luxury item or b) something that doesn't actually include any corn.

Oh, and we probably decimate the world's corn supplies, leaving us with only a few strains of corn that have been genetically engineered to produce a higher yield of corn syrup (and probably a kind of corn syrup that makes a better fuel for cars, and would be bad for human consumption, as likely as not). Hence the comment above about intensively farming corn being to the detriment of corn crops.

Now, extrapolate that so that they also make biofuels out of sugar and grain. Would you rather run your machinery plant or eat bread? Sounds ridiculous and far fetched? Look around you. If there is one thing our species does not do well, it's ration.

If the grain and sugar is needed to keep the wheels of industry turning, no one is going to think twice about whether we have enough left over to make bread affordable for the average family.

Face it, biofuels are not the smartest idea we could come up with. Unfortunately, we seem to think it is, so we'll probably stuff quite a number of things up right royally before we come up with something else.

Would someone out there like to come up with a Plan B, please? Preferably before sugar becomes so expensive that they stop giving it to you free when you buy a cup of coffee...

He sails the fields on wooly sheep!

I just wanted to give a plug for one of my favourite comic strips at the moment:

Little Dee, by Christopher Baldwin.

It has a sort of inspired, charming lunacy about it that really speaks to me. It's kind of like Bear in the Big Blue House, only with psychopaths and lost children.

I mean, the guy wrote a Sea Shanty about a riding on sheep. And then comes up with this strip as a way to segue to the next story-line:


You have to admire that level of oddity.


.