Slowing things down

Saturday, 15 November 2008

In other news, Jon recently had his 12 month contract cut 7 months short when the company he is contracted to, which in turn contracts him out to Hydro Consulting, had their project scaled down significantly. Whilst this was a little bit of a shock, after thinking about it for a little while we've decided that it's actually a really good thing for our family.  When I first got my animation job we didn't expect or intend for us both to be working full time for an extended length of time and apart from a small break this year, it has turned out to be the case.  So our new plan is for me to keep working until my contract finishes (June I think)  and Jon will work from home 3 days a week on his own projects and have the kids at home for the other two.  Although I'm certainly not the big income earner,  we can make big savings in childcare alone (we'll reduce our expenditure from $880 a fortnight to around $350)  and of course the change of pace will be greatly appreciated by everyone in our family!  I've got a really good feeling about this decision and I'm really really glad that we don't have big financial commitments in any other areas (such as private schools or property investments) apart from our mortgage of course - which is happily more Tasmanian sized than NSW sized.    Anyway - Jon has 1 more week of work at Hydro then he begins what he is has worryingly begun calling his 'retirement'.   As it turned out, his contracting company asked him back the very day after we informed the creche of our changes but by that time we knew that it wasn't about working and money, it was about lifestyle so it was easy to stick with our plan.

And in other semi-work related news, we both went to the Tasmanian IT Industry awards last night - I was part of Blue Rocket's representation and Jon was my date since he was effectively turfed off the Prologic table when they dumped him.  While we were there I was chatting to another Blue Rocket employee and saying how I'd just started playing royal tennis which I could now add to my list of off-beat sports I had played. He asked what other ones I had done so I mentioned orienteering and ultimate frisbee.  He said - 'well at least it's not rogaining - that's even more obscure' and I said that 'sometimes people had actually heard of rogaining but not orienteering'. He said 'yes I guess' - and that he used to have a good friend who rogainned called Paul Liggins.  ha ha ha . I can't believe he hadn't recognised my Liggins nose earlier!  Sitting on the other side of the table was someone who also knew the Liggins family in fact mum had attended their wedding 10 years earlier. Tassie huh - we love it!