The Joy of Working from home

..or not, as the case may be. I should be getting on with doing a) my diploma studies, b) the paper I may (or may not) be presenting at the English UK conference in November, c) writng up my CV and scouting out other job opportunities (of which more later), and d) painting the bedrooms. However, it is easier said than done, especially when it comes to studying in a house containing a bored nine-year-old and an increasingly curious ten-month old. It means hiding in the bedroom and trying to study there in order to get a bit of peace, the planned shed-cum-study idea having been knocked on the head. God, what wouldn't I give for a proper desk and work space! However, there is always the domestic stuff to do, the cleaning and taking an interest in the children and so forth and so on, that obtrude into the space of time I need to do the other things. Or at least, that's how it seems.
One thing that has become very obvious over the summer, and that has also been gnawing at my mind to the extent that I think about little else, is the fact that I am not earning enough to support us. Even when Nur returns to work, virtually all her wages will be swallowed up in nursery fees, meaning that my salary has to cover almost everything, and that there will be a significant shortfall. This leaves me in a quandary: do I find a new job, in which case, why do the Dip? Or do I stay at TVU, do my dip, and find other part time work, in which case, will I ever be able to find time to complete my studies, and have a life? The paltriness of what I'm earning, which is in real terms roughly what I was getting as DOS at Dilko back in 1999, was cast into a stark highlight when I was chatting with a couple of relatives over a barbecue the other day. I discovered that their son, my 37-year-old cousin, had been earning over £50K for managing a shop and had been offered £8K more a year by a rival company. I literally felt gutted. It's not through jealousy of my cousin, far from it: I know how hard he works. Rather, it was the fact that I had sweated my life out in teaching, I had done my studying and working, and here I am doing a demanding and highly complex job, and I earn less than half this. There's something truly and terribly wrong with the world.