part-time

I go to bed just after ten and read for a while. As soon as the lids start to wobble I turn out the light and sleep. The first piss is at one on the dot, the second at five o eight. I lie there a few more minutes, know no further sleep happening, and get up. Breakfast is done by six ten, my briefcase packed the night before. I go to work early.

I choose the 6:57 as a fine vehicle for travel today. It’s a Monday and I don’t work Monday. I spend four hours working from my desk at home on Friday, and I don’t work Friday. My work days, as a point sixer, are Tuesday to Thursday. Last week I’m at a three-day national meeting in Sydney with my colleagues, the MM project officers from every state and territory.

Tomorrow and Wednesday I’ll go to Frankston to watch my colleague Viv deliver MM level 2 training. I’ll catch a train from Frankston to Southern Cross and on to Ballarat for the third and final training session for mentors up there.

On Thursday I’m breaking out, my first solo gig, an intro to MM for bigwigs from the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development in the eastern metropolitan region at Deakin University in Geelong. From Geelong I drive to Castlemaine for a second training session for mentors.

So why all the extra time, working Monday and Friday? Catching up and keeping up is the answer. Three of us service this state, Victoria, but two of us are learners and the other, Viv, has carried the program for five months since her fellow project officer left in December. So I travel and travel, learning, in order to be productive as soon as I can be.

All that travel—Adelaide, Newcastle, Darwin, Sydney (twice) and deep into the Wimmera—means almost no time at my desk, no time to read, to bone up on the content, to prepare materials, to search the net for back-up research, to learn to use the reporting software. So I work. Work on my days off, days I’m not paid for.

I’m not about to poke myself in the eye. When I first work part-time in 1999, colleagues insist I don’t fall for the trap of working full-time and being paid part-time. Somewhere in the back of my head is a scoreboard of extra days worked. I miss two days with a cold but have three up my sleeve. No problem.

I’m new in the job, nine weeks. I’m alternately excited and overwhelmed. I want to be productive as soon as I can be. So I work. It’s a million miles from where I thought 2012 might go for me.    

Rock on.