Decisions

Hurrah! Some of the uncertainty that hovered around during my last post has now been resolved.



I finally bit the bullet and made some long awaited decisions regarding 2011. I'm staying in Melbourne and just doing casual work. No specialisation. No exams. No contracts. No job security. Actually I'm hoping the casual work will find me not only in Melbourne, but country Victoria, the Gong and maybe even country NSW too.

Lest I celebrate too soon, there's still lots of things I need to do to make this a workable reality. My current work contract runs out in 4 weeks. In that time I need to solidify some of the nebulous options that hover in the wings. I need to sign up with at least one locum agency. Most importantly I need to line up some definite work for February. Bills to pay baby.

A big wide open horizon can be scary. But amazing possibilities!

Intentions

I've been meaning to post here since November, really I have. December hasn't been easy though. There's been a lot of harking back to "this time lat year", mixed in with a healthy dose of "what am I doing next year?", and even more "and what after that?" It's kind of stressful to realise that even now, on December 27th I still don't have any of these questions answered.

It's not like I necessarily want them all answered, either. One last minute job offer (whilst I was enquiring about casual postions) could have resolved all the instability, for one year at least. But that would have meant an interstate move within the next 4 weeks. Back to where I was. Where part of me wants to be, but another (bigger?) part of me is scared of being. I don't think I am ready for that yet.

What I am ready for, I am just not sure.

Getting my butt kicked

For the last two weeks, I've been away getting my butt kicked in a metaphorical sense. Actually, more of a physical sense really. Or is it? I'm confused.

First up was a week meeting up with two good friends at a glitzy resort in Port Douglas. We swam in the gorgeous swimming pool, drank cocktails and ate copious amounts of Fantastic Delites by the swimming pool.



The few times we left the pool we went and did something fun like hike through the Daintree Forest, or go snorkelling out on the reef.

In that week of pure slothfullness, we did get our butts kicked by the Queensland sun. We were so good applying sunscreen what felt like 24/7, that for our day out on the reef we thought we had it pretty much covered.



What no-one told us was that swimming costumes have a funny habit of "riding up" as you're splashing around in the water snorkelling. All 3 of us had the craziest bum burn you'd ever seen. Made sitting down quite uncomfortable for a few days. No photos of that sorry!!

And then the major butt kicking began. I went to Ayung Sari Indah in Bali for 5 days of bootcamp run by the wonderful Marni Alexander. The meagre amount of exercise I'd been doing beforehand left me totally unprepared, I got my ass whooped several times, and handed to me on a silver platter, and whatever other ass-whopping colloqualisms you can think of.

In between ass-kicking I tried to camoflague myself into the rice fields.



We also trekked up a volcano in darkness to be greeted by a beautiful sunrise at the top.



Another proud moment was an ass-kicking I had no personal involvement in: seeing the aussie dollar outrank the greenback for the first time ever. A truly photo-worthy moment!



What a week! I loved it, ass kicking and all. In fact it's just what my ass needed. Now that I'm back, the hard part: I need to keep on doing it on my own.

If you're really bored you can waste time looking at the entire album of pictures.

Finally.....a "what i wore" post

I still don't know what job I'll be doing next year when my one year contract here expires. I had part one of a job interview today, so I guess I'm one step closer to finding out.

And thanks to the marvellous fact that my new digital camera arrived yesterday, I can post photos of what I wore!!

I didn't go too formal for this interview for a number of reasons. It's an internal job for the company where I'm already working, so theorectially it could have been held on a day I was already at work. The department I'm interviewing for is quite informal; pretty much everyone just wears scrubs to work, so a suit would have looked very out of place. Also I'm currently on annual leave and was going in specifically for this interview on a day off (ok maybe that's not a very good excuse, but I'll take what I can get).

Initially I was going to wear this:



Sorry for the blurry shot. New camera hiccup I hope!

But at the last minute I decided to swap out the black vest for a red top.



I felt put-together in this outfit, and definitely more dressed up from normal - it's officially the fourth time I've worn heels all year, and yes I am counting!! I still felt comfortable though, and felt more "me" with some kind of bright colour. I didn't feel out of place in the environment I was being interviewed in at all.

My interviewer even commented on the red vest and said it looked fun and that I looked "personable". I hope that's a good thing!

Stolen moments

I've been working night shift all weekend. So when I got home at 10am this morning, all I wanted to do was sleep the day away. Which I did quite successfully up until 6pm.

When I woke up, the sky was semi-clear, sunshine was occasionally peeking through the clouds, and for one of the first days all week, it wasn't raining. I decided to get ready quickly, and go for a walk along my usual beach path route before it became dark. I'm now officially on holidays for 3 weeks, so why not get it off to a good start?

By the time I had walked along the path and back, the sun was nearly, but not quite setting. What to do? Continue home and miss the first sunset I've seen in a week? I chose plan B and ducked into a suprisingly near-empty bar along the beach, bought myself a riesling, plonked down at my own beachfront table and watched the sun set with only the music of my iPod to accompany me.



I felt a little self-conscious walking into a bar and ordering a drink by myself. But you know what, the sunset was worth it. Some moments are too precious not to sit still and savour.

Two clubs

Yesterday I joined not one, but two clubs. Now these are metaphorical clubs; they aren't the kind of clubs that demand membership fees, a uniform and a sworn allegiance towards lifelong memberships, but they are clubs that I am proud to be a part of nevertheless.

Club # 1: the sore bum club

On Sunday I took myself off for a long overdue bike ride along the Bay Path to Beaurmaris and back, retracing a route I took earlier in the year.



The day was gloriously clear and perfect riding weather. Lovely and sunny, but not too warm to overheat and get all sweaty. It felt good to be out on the bike again, after a way-too-long break over winter.



Beforehand I was worried that I'd have forgotten how to ride with my fancypants shoes. Instead I should have worried about how my bum would fare. The last 15km or so were not pleasant indeed. Why oh why didn't I wear my padded shorts?

After a day or so, I thought I'd recovered as I was able to sit down without too much discomfort. Then last night, 4 days after the initial ride, I attended my first ever spin class at a local bike shop (cool idea hey!!). Getting up on the bike at the start of the class proved that my bum had not yet recovered. Ouch! My bum needs to toughen up, that's for sure!

Club # 2: the sandal booties club

Yesterday I received a package from Urban Outfitters containing my first summer shoe purchase: sandal booties.



After a fruitless winter-long search for over-the-knee boots I decided to give up and focus on building up my sandals wardrobe. Despite living in sandals for many months of the year, I only own a few different pairs. This is a vast improvement on a few seasons ago when I basically livied in Birkenstocks for 6 months of the year. Thanks to youlookfab my sandal wardrobe has expanded a bit, but still has a long way to go.

Enter the latest addition: a cross between a sandal and a bootie. Talk about the best of both worlds!



It's too cold to wear them out at the moment without my toes getting frostbite and dropping off, but I'm looking forward to the weather warming up soon (please Melbourne?), and these coming out to play.

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One non-metaphorical club I am thinking of joining is some kind of bike riding group. Although I love heading out by myself, it's also great to ride with a group. To find new routes, to get encouraged as you go up hills, to chat as you ride down them, and then to stop for coffee at the end. My bike buddies are one thing I miss about Wollongong a lot!

I've searched on the internet and found a few prospects. My varied schedule makes it a bit tricky, but really it's just me being a big scardycat that's prevented me from actually trying out a ride somewhere. If I don't post that I've done so soon, can someone please keep me accountable and nag me about this?

Where does the time go?

Yet again it's been an inordinate amount of time between posts. My excuse is that for the last 3 months I've been back on the Monday to Friday grind of ward work. With a good helping of weekend cover shifts thrown in as well.

But as of this Friday afternoon I'll be back on shift work. Is it strange that I can't wait? I love having random days off during the week even if it does mean working a lot of weekends. I'm also looking forward to working 40, rather than 70 hours per week.

And who knows, maybe as well as giving me more time for blogging, it will also give me more time for doing something to blog ABOUT!

Depending on what (if any) job I end up getting for next year, I may never have another ward job again. We shall see!

I shouldn't complain too much though. I've just had a lovely weekend off. I was technically on-call all weekend, but didn't have to go in at all. Instead I went and saw the Tim Burton exhibtion, then went out and drank waaaaay too many cocktails, then slept in and caught up with a friend visiting from Sydney at my favourite cafe. So it's not all work and no play.

Today when I got home after 11 hours at work, I was tempted to kick back and bludge around the apartment (yet again). Instead I dragged myself out for a walk along the beach. Wandering along, I ran into 2 seperate people I know and stopped to say hello. While I still don't feel exactly "at home" here, it is nice to see familiar faces and feel like I have some connections here.

Next challenge is to go for a run after work, or maybe actually make it to a yoga class or the pool. I'm working 15 hours tomorrow though, so it certainly won't be then!!