Consulting

I've written a post answering Psych Post Doc's question, however it sounds very depressing, likely because I'm not very happy in my job right now. I will read it again soon and see if I can't cheer it up some.

Side note

While I appreciate the great job my husband does in cleaning his bathroom (aka the guest bathroom), I am perplexed as to why it takes weeks (yes as in many weeks, almost a month) for him to return the cleaning products from inside the bathtub to their proper location under the kitchen sink. This is very problematic when I come home in a bad mood and want to take a bath. My mood then escalates since the stupid cleaning products are still in the bath. Of course I am not mad at the fact that it takes weeks and many reminders about putting this items away, oh no, the problem is not his inability to finish his chore but my PMS is the problem.

/rant

And now another question

Sciencegirl asked (a long time ago! she probably forgot about it)
"How is the transition out of the grad student/postdoc stage treating you? Are you still enjoying living back home?"

The short answers are great and yes. I love being near family and old friends again and living in this town is just awesome. We get to bike all around, we are near the beach, the weather is always pleasant and all the wonderful places to hike around are amazing.

While at times I miss the freedom of being a grad student it is nice to be done with that. I think the hardest transition for me is dealing with managing my time. As a grad student it was acceptable to put something off and then deal with it when I was ready because I was working all the time. Now I'm on a more strict schedule and I find that if I feel in a bad mood or don't want to write (like now), I'm still stuck at work. Since my work load isn't very big right now it's hard to say, not want to work on something so I move over to something else-as there isn't something else. I also have to bill all my hours to get paid and there is no line item for "didn't feel like working so I blogged," i.e. I'm not getting paid for sitting here at my work desk writing this post. Which is fair. I shouldn't get paid to sit here and write this, but I've created this bad habit while writing my dissertation of inefficiency, and I can't figure out how to change this bad habit. It wasn't this hard when I first started my job, there was a lot to keep me busy and when I'm out in the field I have a great time. So here I sit, trying to find the motivation to work on a project I know nothing about, hopefully it will come to me soon so I can actually make some money today. . . .



I've been putting off Psych Post Doc's questions "why don't you tell us about being a consultant? What are the pros and cons (other than the crazy commute)? Are there any things about the job that surprise you? In a good way or a bad way? Do you think you'd want to do this long term?" I will answer this soon.