It’s been a busy week. unfortunately I didn’t spend it building compost bins with the boys, but that was more fun and makes a better picture than what I was doing which was trying to find a job.
At the moment we work in a small community based arts group. Organisations working in community theatre don’t have a vast amount of money at the best of times, and we’re very vulnerable to economic downturns: last week one organisation supporting our work sent us a warning to the effect that they won’t be able to help us any more: they’ve been there for us as long as they could and they did manage to send one final cheque which we appreciated: eating is a tough habit to break.
You may recall that I’d signed up with a translation agency in the hope of filling the gap in our finances but since then we had an inexplicable lack of famous German writers wanting me to translate their work, so it’s back to dusting off my CV and sending it off to various potential employers.
What I’m looking for is a job that allows us to stay here and keep going with the work we do, if voluntarily. Even better would be one that does this and gets me some training in the bargain as my theatre training was in the USA and not officially recognised here, meaning I have effectively no qualifications in Germany. It may even be possible as we’re in south Germany which so far is relatively unscathed by the crisis, but obviously it depends on who responds and what sort of work I’m offered and where, and if all goes very not to plan we may end up moving house again.
Mind you, it’s not like we are alone in that right now, and given the eye-watering rent and utilities prices in the Stuttgart region it may be a financial blessing in disguise, but as that would mean moving the family and losing all the relationships we’ve built up here we’ll save that for when we’ve exhausted every other avenue.
Apart from anything else we’ve just finished the compost bin.
When we’ve worked out what’s happening, I’ll let you know.
*According to WordPress, this is the third time I’ve used this title on the blog, should I be worried?.
5 comments
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November 28, 2011 at 5:54 pm
disgruntled
eek – sorry to hear this.
I wonder if you can be a bit more proactive in your translating work – eg. finding a number of badly-translated German websites (or untranslated ones) and offering to improve them for them? You might only need to do two or three before you got some word of mouth going.
November 28, 2011 at 5:56 pm
Nick
Sorry to hear about the complication; capitalist economics are a bugger sometimes. Hope it eventully all works out at least roughly the way you want it.
November 29, 2011 at 3:09 pm
Andy in Germany
@disgruntled: Thanks for your sympathy, and for the suggestion: I reckon you could be onto something there…
@Nick Great to see you about again… Capitalism has its flip side at times: what is frustrating is that I do have skills, and I have experience using those skills to help people, but unfoortunately society as a whole, locally and inernationally doesn’t value it: they’ll say ‘how nice’, drop 50p in the tin and then go off to spend twenty quid watching someone elses’ regurgitated story in the form of a Hollywood movie. I feel a rant coming on…
December 2, 2011 at 10:49 am
Iain Robinson
Andy, sorry to hear about your job worries, yes, capitalism is horrible. We’re artists and I can tell you that society certainly doesn’t value art either, or want to pay for it! I get by on the strategy of having four different jobs going all at once; they are not enough to earn a living by themselves but do add up (usually) to enough to get by on. And so far I have resisted going back to truck driving! I really hope you don’t have to move and that you get something to keep you going soon…best of luck.
December 2, 2011 at 4:43 pm
Andy in Germany
Thanks Ian… I’m a bit further on and some of the possibilities look vaguely promising. Unfortunately I’ll have to wait until after Christmas before any companies get back though.
I was trying to build up your strategy of four jobs as well, but I think it’s incompatible with the housing costs around here. I’m glad I’m not the only one suffering from people’s attitude to art: what I find is that people like what I do, but the expect it for free…