Committed

Over the weekend, I’ve made a decision and a bit of a commitment, which came as quite a shock to me once I’d decided on it.

Up ’til now (a whole month!) I’ve been looking at the current job as a six-month contract that’s likely to extend, rather than as a permanent role. My aversion to permanent roles is well-documented (and recently re-witnessed by Herself when this job came up) for a range of reasons, so seeing it as a contract role was more of a sanity thing than anything else.

Anyway, I’ve made the decision – allbeit with the proviso “Assuming that it doesn’t go as horribly fucking wrong as the last one” – that I’m going to be here for the next twelve months, through to the start of 2011. After that, all bets are off – but I’m going to do my best to stick out this role for the whole of 2010.

As you can imagine, it’s all been a bit of a shock to the system , but I do have my reasons for making this decision/commitment.

First of all, I’d quite like to have a year that’s considerably calmer than the last two years have been. In this case, while I’m still going to be doing work for myself (and for the clients of my own company) I’d rather reduce the stress levels a bit by not having to keep on chasing new contracts. Making this choice will basically put contracting “on hold” for 13 months or so. With the way contrating and work has gone this year, I can certainly live with that.

Additionally, it means that (hopefully) Herself will be less stressed out about my work situation. She’s never been a great fan of how contracting works, and this year has done nothing to help her opinion of it. That’s completely fair – my own impression of it has taken a pretty big knock this year, and that’s as someone who prefers it. So it’s no surprise at all to know that Herself will be happier if I’m locked in to this for a year.

Another reason is that – as others have said this year – I need to give “proper jobs” a fair crack of the whip. My experience of them ’til now has been unremittingly negative, but I need to give it another go.

The final reason is kind of related to the first. I want to have the time/energy to get other plans done. I also don’t want the pressure of “my livelihood, paying for the house, paying the bills etc. etc. are all dependent on these plans working”, so it makes more sense to keep my head down for a year, do the things I want to outside of that 40ish hours a week, and know that everything’s paid for, that holiday time is paid for etc., and I don’t need to stress (as much) about it.

So yes, that’s the decision made. Unless all else goes wrong, I’m now in the same place ’til Jan 2011. I’m still torn about whether this is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. We’ll see.