I love my Job Because…

I love my job because I work from home, but it is not work in the strictest sense of the idea of the culturally accepted notion of work. I am a PhD student. My work entails adding to the greater pool of knowledge. I still get up every day shower, dress, and prepare to leave for work. By 9-am I make my way into a special studio my partner/carer built for me and take my seat on a comfortable high-back chair, that reclines as I need. Then put my feet up on a matching footstool for added comfort and workability.

In my studio, I turn on my computer and watch as three monitors come to life. My partner brings me a coffee and sits it on a lovely, square, blue stone dessert plate he bought just for me. It’s large enough to contain my shaky hands and my inevitable weekly spillage when I spin in my chair and knock the coffee over.

To my right, where my “In Box” and “Out Box” should be, is a cat bed with my beautiful eighteen-year-old cat sleeping on it. Delequin enjoys watching movies, listening to conversations, beginning many of those conversations herself, and taking part in the Zoom meetings with my supervisors. Occasionally, she reveals her displeasure by walking past the webcam, showing her ass to the world.

After my partner cleans up my coffee mess and brings me another, I water my Japanese Peace Lily, Jasily, and wipe down her leaves. All these things I am able to do from my very special chair.

Every hour, I get up and walk around to make sure I do not cause myself any extra problems by remaining in my seat all day, which is easy to do when writing and zooming. Just past the end of Delequin’s bed is a treadmill, and all around the studio are floating bench tops. They are my work area, but also my guides. When I am outside, I walk with a cane. Inside, however, the house has been set up, so I can put my cane away. Inside, I can walk without relying on it to keep me upright. When I wobble while I walk, I bounce off the furniture and not the floor.

My work entails research and I read a lot of academic papers, chase down the origins of a certain trope or statement made by people like Plato or Freud. My PhD is in creative writing, but, it is also about learning how to function in a corporate world, or an educational institution, like a University. I also get to talk to people from all around the world. I am learning how to present at conferences. Some will be worldwide, and I am learning how to take complex arguments, and how to refine them down to one or two sentence translations. This is so someone, like my fourteen-year-old, granddaughter can understand them.

When I take ten minutes every couple of hours to walk on the treadmill, I listen to academic papers, or watch hard to find 20th century lectures on the subject and themes I am researching. The only time I am not actively doing my job is when I go outside. That is where my creativity for stories and novels pushes the academia to the back of my mind, and my imagination flourishes.

Part of my job is exegetical, academic, with the bulk of my job being creative. The two must fit like a glove.

I live in Tasmania, Australia, on a two-hundred-acre block of bushland. We do not allow hunters on our land, so the wildlife is safe and free here. There is a flock of peacocks that live outside the front of the house, and roost in the trees around the house at night. For several years, we have a had a snake in our roof. I sit in my chair and listen to the ceiling creak and groan under its weight while it hunts down, and feeds on rats, mice and baby birds. That was until last year.

A large European Raven had nested in the roof. She is beautiful. When I throw seed for Peacocks, she sits next to me on a low-hanging branch and waits until I walk away before hopping down to enjoy a feed too.

Last year, my partner and I heard baby birds as they hatched in the roof, and we knew it was only a matter of time before the slaughter would begin. It is horrific to hear, but more horrific I suspect for the chicks. Two days later, I had opened the snake proof gate to our house, when I heard a strange noise, so I stopped and listened. It was like flat tyres running over corrugations on a gravel road after a Winter storm. I was looking around, then saw it.

The Peacock’s attack snakes, and they keep the snakes away from the house, but Syd, the snake, he had found a way around them. He was slithering along the wood framing of the verandah, just over the front door, and just below the corrugated tin roof. That was the odd noise, his back slithering between the two. I was not quite sure what to do, so I stood for a moment and watched as Syd moved, and came to a stop on a crossbeam.

He coiled slightly, then looked down at me. I could not call for my partner because it would have put him in danger, so decided to bite the bullet.

With Syd watching my every move, and being far enough from the door, I made a dash for it... as fast as my cane could carry and unless he decided to fly down at me, I thought I reach the safety of the inside without incident. When I reached the door, I found it locked and like some horror movie starlet, I dug around in my pockets for the keys. I did not drop them, but did have to find the right one, all while monitoring Syd. Eventually I found it and let myself in.

When I got inside, I was shaking and bounced off lounges and cupboards until I was safely in my chair. My partner, not knowing what happened, thought I was having a heart attack. Eventually I found the words to tell him all about Syd. He made us coffee, and we sat and listened to the roof waiting for the inevitable, and the slaughter began with an annual certainty.

Baby birds were screaming, and the cull lasted about two to three minutes, stopping when we heard a sudden thump on the ceiling. The baby’s had stopped screaming.

Mumma’s home, I thought.

I cannot say for sure what happened, but after that thump, we never heard Syd again that Spring/Summer. It is Spring again now, and one pile of hatchlings have already gone, but we have not heard, nor seen, Syd.

It is my belief that the Raven picked him up that cold wet day last year and carried him out of the roof and fed him to the Peacocks.

The work I do is right up my alley, and I do it all from a studio that has a large scenic window that looks out over my very own private park. It is much like the Mount Field National Park, in the north-west Tasmania. I watch Deer walk through the bush with my morning coffee and talk to the Possum’s each night after work.

We have a five-acre lake just outside our backdoor and all kinds of bird and wildlife come down in the twilight, and at dawn, to drink.

To say I love my job would be an understatement. The women I work with are intelligent and personable. The University I attend, The Central Queensland University, is extremely accommodating, with not only pleasant and helpful staff and mentors, but they provide councillors who understand the stresses a PhD candidate can sometimes experience. I have an accessibility member who has addressed all my needs. She has been with me since I began. She worked as intermediary for me with the University to ensure I had an excellent and productive work/study experience.

The university purchased the Dragon Naturally Speaking program for me, something I had dreamed of using but knew I could never afford it. It came with the power mic III, and provides me with freedom from using a keyboard... to which I slam my way through three to four a year. My work colleagues ensured my work/study experience was the best it could be, and they have been extremely successful, and I am forever thankful.

I love my job.