Back On Track

Work may well be a four letter word, but right now it’s one I’m happy to be using again.  I’ve been working from home for the last two months (minus some holiday time) and the much needed time off has worked wonders for me.

But now that the book publishing project is finished bar promotion, the time is right to get back to my bread and butter IT work and the state of the market has taken me quite by surprise.  The contract market for my particular skill set has been down the pan for quite a while, but when I finished my last contract at the end of February things were looking a little rosier.

But I’ve been looking pretty much non stop for both contract and even permanent roles for the last three weeks and have been shocked at what I’ve found.  Essentially a wasteland, and what jobs there are tend to be paying veritable peanuts.

So imagine my surprise when a contract came up in Lymington of all places, five miles down the road and only ten minutes by car.  I had to double-take when I saw the details come into my RSS reader last week.  That had to be a wind up, right?
Fortunately, wrong.  Six months work, practically on my doorstep for an engineering firm.

Cutting to the chase, I interviewed twice for the contract this week, was offered it and I accepted this morning.  Starting a week on Monday, I can actually enjoy a proper holiday now before getting stuck in to six months of graft as well as looking after my other customers.

Switching from home working at my own pace and on my own clock back to a regimented 8:30-5:30 is going to be a very strange experience, and one that I expect will take a bit of getting used to again.
I haven’t worked a “full day” in the same place in years, so that alone will be an interesting challenge.  But I have never had a job that is so close to home, not since my very first job in 1994.  I’ve gotten so used to getting up at ridiculous times of the morning and driving for an hour or more to get to my job that it is going to be a very weird feeling knowing that I can wake up as late as 7:30 and be in the office an hour later.

In the meantime I will be doing as little as possible.  If its more strenuous that holding a controller in my hand, I’m not even going to attempt it.

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