Simple living in the country - back to basics

Cheery_Daff

Ha, I'll be pleased if I get it down to £9! 😂😂

Long day today. Worked til 6, then spent 3.5 hours on my job form, going through endless files & emails collecting evidence of things I've led, chaired, developed etc, quotes from other people, satisfaction scores etc.

Just got to do that for another two sections, then edit about 8000 words of waffle out (literally - the limit is 4000, and I'm already up to 3700 from mostly one section 😂😂😂) But editing words out is the easy bit (especially as Mr Cheery spent 20 years as an editor... 🤭) - the harder bits are this gathering of info/evidence for everything, and then crafting a coherent story. 

Going to be a long few days... 🙄 and I'm going to be working all weekend - will likely do this tomorrow and Friday so I can get a draft sent off for people to comment on,then do actual work (urgent stuff only) over the weekend if I have to. 
Yawn.

Anyway - it's worth it. Come September I'll be at the top of my pay grade, so if I get this I'll leapfrog into the next one, which means I'll keep going up each year rather than sitting in the same place. In real terms it'll be a pay rise of £122 a month (possibly a bit more) which is starting to claw back a significant chunk of what I lost from going down to 4 days.

In other news, we turned the mattress, changed the sheets, and cleared off the windowsill. Still not tamed the dust dragons under the bed, but I'm still hoping for a better night's sleep (probably help if I got off the phone...) 🙄😂

South_coast

Cheery_Daff said:

....I'm still hoping for a better night's sleep (probably help if I got off the phone...) 🙄😂

....and were in bed ready for sleep by 11.00pm, like we agreed!

I've never had a job where there was the possibility of being able to apply for a promotion (either had to wait for someone else to leave and hope the stars aligned, or go somewhere else), so I've always thought I liked the sound of being more in charge of your own destiny - your form is making me question that!

(although the idea of a pay scale still sounds pretty sweet - you can see where you are and where you're going and it's transparent, rather than the shady dark art of salaries I am used to!)

Cheery_Daff

Yes, it's a good arrangement - not technically moving to a different job, just higher up in your own job if you like - much of my work will stay the same in reality, just less of some things and more of others. Pay scale is a nationally agreed one, publicly available (although different universities put the bands in slightly different places). One advantage of being pretty heavily unionised sector i think.

 Everyone progresses up an increment every year until you get to the top of your band. I think there are 7 or 8 increments in each band, so while there will be some difference in pay between people doing the same job, there won't be that much, and it will mostly depend how long you've been doing it. 

But yes, this form is ridiculous (although better than it used to be) - if I was applying for a job elsewhere I don't think I'd have to do half as much! Can't have references from within your own university either which obviously you'd usually be able to 🙄

And yes, I should have been asleep by then! 😁 I didn't stop work til almost 10 though and needed a bit of winding down time before leaping straight into bed.

Slept better last night I think - didn't wake when Mr Cheery came to bed, and then he got up and slept on the sofa later so at least when I woke at 5am I could toss and turn freely for a bit and put on a sleep story which sent me back to sleep again. Still don't feel fully rested, but feel better than I did yesterday morning!

Baileys_Babe

And you could breathe as heavily as you liked.

My sleep has been lacking recently but last night was slightly better, I am hoping we both continue to see an improvement.

EssexHebridean

Glad you feel as though you got a bit of better sleep. For what it's worth I think the whole "get off your phone and avoid screen X hours before sleep" while it might work for some people by no means is an across the board solution. I've never noticed ANY difference in sleep quantity/quality from avoiding screens although I do make sure that when I get into bed I have put them aside. Something I have found has improved things for me is not routinely reading when I go to bed. I get into bed, then ask myself if I feel as though I might drop off quite fast - if yes, then I just snuggle down and if it's a no I'll read for a bit. I was finding that sometimes I was missing a "window" to drop off - and the idea that your sleep moves in 90 minute cycles proves to be quite true for me a lot of the time, so this was sometimes significant. I honestly think so much of it is just finding the individual stuff that works for you though - which can only be by trial and error. 

Your form sounds terrifying - but then again the whole idea of a career with a ladder to climb sounds terrifying to me so I'm not really a good judge of these things! You do sound a LOT less adrift on it than when you applied last time though - that much is very obvious! 

Cheery_Daff

Thanks both 😊

I don't think it's looking at the phone per se that stops me nodding off - it's more that I get caught up in things and find myself almost forcing myself to stay awake 🙄 when I put it down (I do have *some* discipline, honestly) I usually go out like a light. Makes sense what you say about missing a window.

I am certainly less adrift than I was, yes. I think realising I only had one increment left before hitting the top of my grade helped - I don't feel like I'm trying to jump ahead too much, so it feels like more of a natural progression. And of course last time was 2.5 years ago and I've been making a conscious effort to meet all the criteria so if I still felt like I did back then I'd be quite disappointed 😂😂

It's certainly an interesting exercise. I'm currently very grateful to past me for being organised with email filing 😂 Currently traipsing back through the email folders for each role/activity and it's giving me exact dates of when I started things, what I organised, numbers of people who attended events etc. Never thought of it as a useful archive like that but it's certainly proving to be an efficient way of dredging up a load of info!

joedenise

Funnily enough I slept much better last night!  No idea why but I slept soundly from about 11pm to 6.30am which is definitely extremely unusual and can't remember the last time I did that!  I think the 90 minute "blocks" sounds about right because I usually sleep from 11pm - 3am or sometimes 4.30am.  But definitely feel much better today for having had a better night's sleep.

I'm glad I didn't have a form like that to gain a promotion!  We had increments as well in each grade but when I moved up to the next grade I didn't even need an interview because I was applying for my own job which had been upgraded because I was doing a lot of the higher grade anyway.  I also drafted the job advert and knew that there was only one other person who had the right "know how" to do the job and knew she was happy with her current job and not interested in a sideways move!

There was only one person who phoned and asked if she could apply but was told no as she was a temp not permanent member of staff and the post was only open to permanent staff!

Still I'm glad I'm out of the rat race now!

Cheery_Daff

Yes, I'll be glad when I'm out altogether too joedenise! Getting paid more then going down to part time was always my plan - I just caved and dropped to four days earlier 😂 I could retire more quickly if I stayed full time... but nope! 

So. I spent all day on job form yesterday, and there are some work things that need doing before Monday. Going to try to get those done this morning and back to the form. I was thinking I'd do the form first, and get it sent off to people to comment - but I'm just nowhere near that yet sadly, that'll take me the whole weekend. And I'll be less resentful doing job form at the weekend than I will be if I'm doing actual work!

Sun is shining, and it's dawned on me that I'm going to run out of time for the house insurance if I don't get in touch with them today - they open at 9 so I'll do that before I start work properly. Just need to add one thing, and change payment method (although no doubt they'll !!!!!! me off by making me go through every single question they already know the answer to) . Hoping I can do it by live chat rather than the phone...

Car insurance renews on the 18th - going to leave that as it is, but again I'll need to change the payment card. Will see if I can do that online too. 

Oh, and the power cut cheque has cleared in the bank, hooray! Will do a bit of bank shuffling over the weekend. 

This is a month of missing water bills of course - but ours is only £14.63 anyway so it doesn't make a dramatic difference. Council tax is spread over 12 months so no missing month there to play with sadly!

Suffolk_lass

Blimey, that's good for water. I thought we were pretty good at £25x12. Apparently we use 30% less than your average couple

Cheery_Daff

Suffolk_lass said:

Blimey, that's good for water. I thought we were pretty good at £25x12. Apparently we use 30% less than your average couple

We're not on the mains sewage system, that's why 😂😂 It's not metered, that's just the monthly standard charge. I think the sewage is usually the more expensive bit!