Just Rambling

I was called in by my manager yesterday to advise that I can no longer work from 7.30am, but that I have to start at 8am. I explained that my husband has to drop me off early so that he can get back home in time to drop the children off. She said that was fine, I could come in at 7.30, but not “clock-in” until 8am. My first reaction was annoyance – the managers in this department mostly like to start at 10am and then work late, so my leaving at 4pm seems like a lack of commitment to some (or perhaps that is just me assuming). My second reaction was great! I now half an hour of quiet time in the morning to either read or write for this blog which I have been neglecting or for the magazine (www.mumandmuslim.com – just a little plug there!).

So I am enjoying writing up various things, finishing off articles I have started and looking through old bits of reading material I have saved.

The other thing that has happened at work is that I feel like I am playing musical chairs – but you know the bit before the music starts again and everything is suspended for a moment? One of my old managers contacted me and asked me to apply for a vacancy in the organisation. It’s a high profile and very interesting job. She previously encouraged me to apply for the post below and I came second in the process. This job is the next post up and manages the post I failed to get, so I was wary of how likely I was to be successful. She reassured me that senior managers had encouraged her to push me to apply and although it would be a fair process, they wanted me to have a good try. I was shocked, I thought I had been forgotten about and left to fester in my little corner of the office. I suspect part of it might be to do with my colleague and friend H mentioning my name at regular interval to the right people, but my old manager indicated that my name had come up in various contexts as someone who was considered “talented” and who they wanted to keep in the organisation. All very gratifying, but where did they think I was about to run off to in the middle of a recession?

Anyway, at the same time, there are serious concerns about the viability of my department – we have just been reviewed and are awaiting the outcome and I hear from the grapevine (now that I am good at, getting the story from the grapevine first!) that this will be followed immediately by a second review (that sounds stupid, but that’s local government for you). So all of our jobs could be axed and we would go into redeployment for whatever else they see as fit. At the same time the job I am applying for is a one year secondment to the other post and I will only be able to take it up if I am successful only if my manager releases me for a year, which I cannot see her agreeing to. I suspect if I was successful and they liked me enough they would make her, but I am getting very far ahead of myself. The applications have to be in by Monday morning and the interviews are on Tuesday!

I have tried praying istikharah (a prayer for guidance when faced with a choice) and don’t currently feel any the wiser, so I am just going to trust in Allah (SWT) and go with the flow. As my husband is wont to remind me every time I go off on one of my anxiety trips, we do not get one grain more or less than the rizq (sustenance) that we have been allotted by Allah (SWT) and worrying, trying too hard, playing politics or trying to foresee what will happen next will not change that.