flyingblogspot.com (tales from urban dilettantia)

After much furious thought, this morning, I declined the offer of a year in Moscow The decision wasn’t the product of any single large factor, but rather of the aggregate of a number of medium-sized things. Here are some of the things:

1. HR fail: Our HR division is understaffed, under-resourced and, in my opinion, unlikely to ever be a great source of drama-free support. Organsing a teleconference was an ordeal. Clarifying the terms of the secondment and costs to be paid back was a pain. Pro-forma contracts were not available for to be viewed before I gave a verbal decision. These things, and the stories of every other person who has been seconded by Large Accounting Firm, gave me little confidence in the process. Also, in contrast to firms in the Oil & Gas sector, Large Accounting Firm treats secondments as a personal favour to the secondee and does not pay a living allowance.

2. Opportunity: I work for people who keep telling me this is a Great Opportunity. And it is. Thing is, I’m at a point in my life where taking this opportunity means giving up other opportunities here. Launching secret map project software. Making a film. Breaking into the local art scene. My life is not my job at Large Accounting Firm, and the more I look at what I’m building here, the more I realise that.

3. Travel: I have UK citizenship. I can work in the EU any time I want. On my terms, at a time I choose.

4. My support network: It’s been a tough couple of years. A really tough couple of years. And out of it, I’ve grown an amazing network of people I love around me. And, as one of my workmates said yesterday, ‘in your place, I’d want my friends and family around me’.

5. Career: Even if my life were all about my job at Large Accounting Firm, my interests run very much towards energy policy & sustainability. Russia lags Australia significantly in this area, and a year there would be a year removed from what I really want to be doing.

6. Proving Things: I have decided that I can be the sort of person who Has Adventures and Does Interesting Things without saying ‘yes’ indiscriminately to every single thing that scares me. I know I could do the year in Moscow if I wanted to; I don’t need to say yes and go do it just to prove I’m big, resilient and brave. I am big, resilient and brave anyway!

7. I have decided I am too old for ‘because Mum doesn’t want me to’ to be a good reason for doing something.

There are all kinds of smaller reasons too, but I these are some of the weightier ones. I am building a life I love; renovating a house and garden I adore and throwing everything I have at growing my tiny, ridiculous, parochial, sunshiney, isolated little city into somewhere better to be. And I am going to spend 2011 doing more of just that.

As anyone who follows me on Twitter has no doubt already realised, I’ve just had a particularly interesting conversation with one of my bosses.

Large Accounting Firm’s Moscow office has been trying to get a Perth secondment for a young woman in their team, and to convince us to take her, they’ve offered to cover the costs for taking one of our team to Moscow for twelve months for a reciprocal secondment.

There aren’t any additional details at the moment – it’s all very uncertain and I’ve just been asked to consider whether I’m interested over the next couple of days and to let my boss know. My main concerns are the amount of support I’ll get from Large Accounting Firm (generally they seem to pay for a couple of weeks’ hotel accommodation while you sort out living arrangements, and you’re expected to take care of yourself to a large degree), and whether I’ll be completely useless to the Moscow team given that I can’t even read the Cyrillic alphabet.

Can anyone put me in touch with a professional Aussie (or other English-speaking) woman who has lived and worked in Moscow? I’d really like to talk to someone who has been through a similar experience.

It’s looking like it has all the potential for adventure. Eep.

This post is like a Leftovers-Night dinner.  You’ll see.

Right now I’m doing some work that involves re-running a model through twenty or so different scenarios, and each run takes around a minute, so I have Notepad up and am using the runtime to write. It feels like a luxury to have some time to start thinking about having a page to fill with words.

I’ve been trying to manage the number of hours I’ve been spending in the office, but even when I’ve been able do that, the intensity of the last month has been something to behold. There’s not much I’m able to say about it in a public forum, but it involves a lot more responsibility and a whole bunch of time-critical work. I’m hopeful October will see a promotion, as I feel there’s a significant mismatch between the level I’m on and the work I’m doing.

Over the past month, the last module of my professional qualification has started up, so I’m studying and involved in a bunch of other things too. I know it’s something I come back to time after time here, but the struggle to manage commitments seems to be something of an ongoing theme in my life. I made a mind-map while I was having lunch yesterday, and even though many things spawned sub-commitments and began to ooze from the edges of the A4 page, it feels better to have the majority of it laid out.

Out of everything I’m doing at the moment, passing the last module of my Grad Dip CA is far and away the most significant one when it comes to my long term well-being. In part, this is because repeating will be a very expensive exercise, but more because the timing of finishing the course directly relates to when I’ll be free to leave Large Accounting Firm without having to repay my sizable study debt. ‘Freedom, horrible freedom!’ as they say. (‘I’m the Queen!’ ‘No you’re not!’)

What else? Oh yes, the week just gone has been a shocker when it’s come to mental health – by far the worst in recent times. While horrible, the upside of this has been that I’ve managed to get through it without messing up anything significant, which is quite exciting – my ability to manage depressive episodes has really lifted in the past couple of years, and this is a topic I’d like to write more on at a later date.

Other than that…well. I’ve seen The Mountain Goats, Jeff Martin and Henry Rollins recently. Rollins was doing his Frequent Flyer spoken word tour, and I don’t think I have anything near the articulacy to express how moving and inspiring I found it. The man is a spectacularly interesting human being, and I find much of his discussion around depression, adventure, happiness and human experience to be almost painfully resonant. (I’m selfishly frustrated that he’s famous, because if he weren’t it would be easier to say ‘hey mate, come have a drink with me and we’ll talk about life the universe and everthing’.)

Musicwise, I’ve been obsessing over a few things, mostly relating to recent gigs. Jeff Martin’s Live in Dublin album is excellent, and I would strongly suggest getting it from iTunes if you haven’t already. portabledave has also put me onto The Tallest Man On Earth aka Kristian Mattson, a profoundly Dylan-esque folk muso from Denmark whose new album, The Wild Hunt, I’ve had on repeat. And then there’s the latest Mountain Goats album, The Life of the World to Come, which has this song about the thylacine, the dodo and the golden toad which just about moves me to tears every time, because (like most Australians?) I’m well aware of the heartbreaking footage they’re referring to in the first verse:

And finally, a few links that I’ve stumbled across and appreciated in recent weeks:

This year, none of my half-drafted text posts have yet come to anything, but I’ll have you know that they’re sitting there in the dusty attic of a hard drive, waiting to be unleashed.

In the meantime, I’ve posted some more birdwatching photos to Flickr, including the Welcome Swallows pictured above.  Wings are exciting; I’m having fun times (and sometimes frustrating times) learning to photograph wings.

My excuse for not having written anything of substance – one of my excuses, anyway – is that I’m buried not only under unpleasant work (Large Accounting Firm has jumped the shark, it really has) but under an avalanche of side projects.

Some of the side projects include doing a triathlon, getting my diving certification, building a barrel garden, harvesting the local laneway/vergeside fruit, looking for a new job, soaking up as much of the summer cricket as possible, and two secret things.  One secret thing is is about tentacles, the other is about maps.

Somehow I think spending time at the beach needs to be on the projects list, but isn’t. It strikes me that this is a terrible oversight.

It appears to be Random Links-I-Like Round-up Wednesday here at The Flying Blogspot, as I have some random linkage for you. Also, it happens that today is a Wednesday.  (Happy Hump Day, hipikat!)