A New Job!

Well it is almost a month since I had the interview, but I have landed a new job!

You may remember I had an interview with the Victorian Public Service. One of the three person interview panel asked me to apply for another job the same day (I didn’t get that one).
Then about a month ago the chairperson of the panel had her PA ask me to apply for another job for which I was interviewed.

I thought I had done a reasonable interview, but hadn’t heard any more. Then last night one of my referees phoned and told me she had been contacted for a reference.

Naturally I was pretty excited last night and today I was phoned by the chair of the third panel and offered the third job! The delay was caused by an internal applicant appealing their decision.

To say I am relieved and happy to get the new job is somewhat of an understatement. The job is very different to my current one. At the moment I am managing a couple of charity services that support homeless people in Melbourne. My current job is very coal face, very stressful and exhausting. I love community service, but I am ready for a change.

The new job is very different, it is managing a policy team for the Department of Health. The link with my experience is that part of the role is oversight of programs that provide services to homeless and other marginalised people. Effectively my ‘clients’ in the new job will be charities and other NGOs that run services similar to the ones I am running now.

I won’t be starting for at least another three weeks because I have to give notice where I am now. The hardest part will be leaving the truly dedicated team of staff and volunteers that I manage now. It will also be strange moving away from the community sector and into a government job.

I’m not kidding myself, the new job will have a steep learning curve. It is going to have its own stresses. But in comparison to the real dangers we face in this work it will seem a refreshing change.

Now just a few piccies.

The Horseshoe Falls, Mount Field National Park, TasmaniaFungi, Mount Field National ParkFreycinet Peninsula, Tasmania in morning lightWave washed rocks Freycinet Peninsula

On Thirtyish Women, Childbearing and Trying to be Someone You Aren’t.

First of all, I had my job interview today and I think it went really well. So it is a case of wait and see.
Also a bit surprisingly I have already heard about the Public Service job I applied for and they want to interview me next week! And I thought the wheels of government turned slowly.

Now on to the business of my post’s title.

In a comment on my extract of the other night Jennifer (AKA Old Kitty) asked:

“Why can't Penelope and Valentina have children of their own as they approach 30? Awww! Just curious!!!”

I can’t let a question like that pass without a decent answer.

First the simplest answer to Jennifer’s question is “Nothing.”
Of course biologically there is absolutely no reason most 28-30 year old women can’t have children.

But as an author it all comes down to trying to place a character in his or her time and mindset.

As a writer I attempt to at least be a little faithful to the cultural framework of my characters. I try to write something like they might have thought. Yes they might have to be rebels to make them interesting but everyone has baggage.

I am writing in the early twenty-first century and like most of my readers a product of the second half of the 20th century (or so).

Valentina is a product of the 1920s. Things had begun to improve for women by Valentina’s time. For example she had an education that her mother could only ever have dreamt about.

Many, many battles have been fought since then to improve things for women (and other marginalised people).
But of course that is still in the future for Valentina and she sees the world from her own reference point.

Many women of that period considered themselves ‘left on the shelf’ if they weren’t married before they were twenty-five. Before the war she would probably have disagreed with such a notion, but a lot has changed for her since then.

There are a number of factors that add to her belief that she will never have her own children.

Valentina grew up in a world where there were millions of middle aged women who had never found partners because of the casualties in WWI. She has just spent years in a war that killed around 11,000,000 young Russian Soldiers and maimed millions more. She is painfully aware there is a significant gender imbalance in her country.

Also, Valentina thinks she is ugly. In the fighting that killed her friend Raisa she was wounded in the jaw (never posted, you’ll have to read the book when it eventually comes out). There was a hint of her injury in an earlier extract. When she ran into Ronnie at the airport she said, “His hand brushed a wisp of hair from my cheek, and he gently, ever so gently cupped my scarred cheek in his hand.”

To add to her problem she cannot have the man she loves because (as she now knows) in Stalin’s Russia forming a liaison with a foreign national is next to suicidal. So on balance she assumes there is no one for her.

Finally, although she doesn’t know it Valentina is suffering from what we would call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She has experienced two of the fairly common symptoms: Depression and Suicidal ideas. So when she says Natasha saved her she is literarily telling the truth.

It is this mindset that makes her assume there is not much of a future in love for her. She just makes the assumption that Penelope being around her age would have a similar experience. Of course in reality, attracting men has never been Penelope’s problem.

So there you go my rationale for how Valentina tells me she thinks.
Because in the end I am never going to take all the responsibility for what my characters say :-)

Jobs for Al

I mentioned the week before last that I was putting in a job application for a job that closed last Monday. Well I heard from them today, they want me to come in for an interview next Tuesday.

I am simultaneously pleased and nervous. Pleased because it is a job I would like to get and it means I am pitching at about the right level.

But I’m also nervous because I haven’t had a job interview for a few years and I tend to not do too well when I haven’t had an interview in a while. Like anything job interviews are something you tend to be better at with a little practice.

Fortunately, both Deb and I have both interviewed many, many people over the years to fill various jobs so between us we are usually fairly good at working out what kind of questions I’ll be asked.

Did I say I am nervous?

I have also put two more applications together. One is again in a roughly related field in a behind the scenes management role. I’d quite like that one too but not quite as much as the one I’m being interviewed for on Tuesday.
The other was one Deb suggested, it is heading a small policy unit in a Government Department.

To be totally honest I’m not quite sure if I would enjoy it but: I fit the selection criteria; I don’t loose anything by throwing my hat in the ring; and the pay looks to be way better than anything comparable in the community sector.

What do you think? Al the Public servant?

Anyway Tuesday first. If I do well I will land the job I want.

Now a couple of piccies from my archive.

Both of these were taken in the coastal heath at North Head in Sydney a couple of years ago.

I have to confess that I have no idea what the trumpet shaped flowers are. They are tiny, each ‘trumpet’ about an inch long.

I am fairly sure these are a species of Melaleuca.
Which doesn’t help much because Melaleuca is a family with hundreds of species from small shrubs to large trees.

The 'problem' with Aussie wild-flowers is there are literally 1,000s of species. Very pretty, but a non expert like me often has very little idea of what I am looking at.

As a by-the-by, I have occasionally been in the bush with botanists who have said, 'Errr not sure what that one is.'

Tonight some brilliant news!

I last posted about Kathleen Jones because she gave me a copy of her new biography, Katherine Mansfield: The Story Teller.As I have said before Kathleen has one of my favourite blogs, A Writer’s life.

Kathleen has been reading a copy of my book Veiled in shadows. Anyway a couple of weeks ago she sent me some interview questions about my writing. Well she has posted my responses. Check it out.

But it gets better still! Kathleen has also reviewed my book Veiled in Shadows and she has posted her brilliant review on her book blog. To say I am chuffed is a major understatement. Thank you Kathleen!