Lady of Leisure
Shortly before I finished my BA in German, a friend asked me what I wanted to do when I was finished. "Be a housewife," was my reply.
Twenty years later, I've finally achieved that ambition :)
I decided last October, after 17 years, that secretarial work/order handling/office management is *not* what I want to spend the rest of my life doing - trouble is, I'm not really sure what I *do* want to do. So after a lot of thinking, and talking with my dearly beloved, I decided simply to give up work entirely for six months to a year, at least, and decide what it is I do want to do. And while I'm thinking, I am going to indulge a lifelong wish, and get a dog! The dog bit is mostly O's fault ;-) We were out for dinner, and the restaurant owner had the most beautiful dog - an Australian Shepherd, as we found out later. For the first time since I've known him, O said "it would be nice to have a dog like that" - I always thought before that he wasn't particularly interested in dogs. So, combined with my unhappiness at work, and the desire to get a dog, I decided to chuck my job.
Work had been very frustrating - the company I used to work for was bought by their biggest rival in August, a concern three times the size and much more rigidly organised, with a very centralised administration. We knew from previous mergers of that company that local organisations were whittled down to a minimum, and everything else moved to headquarters in Gent. So I was hopeful that the same would happen again, and that I'd be made redundant with a reasonable redundancy package :-) - that's when the "sabbatical" idea was first born, really. I can't tell you how incredibly disappointed I was the day my boss told me that he'd managed to rescue the German organisation, and that the Freiburg office would stay as a training centre, with administration. "Bugger" was probably the politest word that crossed my lips... ;-) So that's when I made my decision - I just couldn't bear the thought of staying on.
So now I'm a housewife! The dog is on its way - we found a breeder (who turned out, by sheer coincidence, to be the breeder of the very Australian Shepherd we first fell in love with), and are hoping that we will get a puppy from the litter born two weeks ago. If we do, then we should be able to collect him/her at the end of March.
And when I'm not hanging on the internet in Aussie forums, or reading books about dog training, I've been spring cleaning, bit by bit, and sewing and reading and watching TV and generally just getting used to the weird sensation of not going to work :-) I've been back to visit my ex-colleagues a couple of times, and from what they've said about the merger chaos, I'm very glad not to be there any more.
Twenty years later, I've finally achieved that ambition :)
I decided last October, after 17 years, that secretarial work/order handling/office management is *not* what I want to spend the rest of my life doing - trouble is, I'm not really sure what I *do* want to do. So after a lot of thinking, and talking with my dearly beloved, I decided simply to give up work entirely for six months to a year, at least, and decide what it is I do want to do. And while I'm thinking, I am going to indulge a lifelong wish, and get a dog! The dog bit is mostly O's fault ;-) We were out for dinner, and the restaurant owner had the most beautiful dog - an Australian Shepherd, as we found out later. For the first time since I've known him, O said "it would be nice to have a dog like that" - I always thought before that he wasn't particularly interested in dogs. So, combined with my unhappiness at work, and the desire to get a dog, I decided to chuck my job.
Work had been very frustrating - the company I used to work for was bought by their biggest rival in August, a concern three times the size and much more rigidly organised, with a very centralised administration. We knew from previous mergers of that company that local organisations were whittled down to a minimum, and everything else moved to headquarters in Gent. So I was hopeful that the same would happen again, and that I'd be made redundant with a reasonable redundancy package :-) - that's when the "sabbatical" idea was first born, really. I can't tell you how incredibly disappointed I was the day my boss told me that he'd managed to rescue the German organisation, and that the Freiburg office would stay as a training centre, with administration. "Bugger" was probably the politest word that crossed my lips... ;-) So that's when I made my decision - I just couldn't bear the thought of staying on.
So now I'm a housewife! The dog is on its way - we found a breeder (who turned out, by sheer coincidence, to be the breeder of the very Australian Shepherd we first fell in love with), and are hoping that we will get a puppy from the litter born two weeks ago. If we do, then we should be able to collect him/her at the end of March.
And when I'm not hanging on the internet in Aussie forums, or reading books about dog training, I've been spring cleaning, bit by bit, and sewing and reading and watching TV and generally just getting used to the weird sensation of not going to work :-) I've been back to visit my ex-colleagues a couple of times, and from what they've said about the merger chaos, I'm very glad not to be there any more.
posted by Meredith at
12:55 PM
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