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I have two aims for today. The first is not to complain at all (well, maybe just a little) and the second is to watch The Guild (season 4). Apart from these aims, this is a day like any other. I have two books to read and a class to teach and bibliography to work on.

I ought to do more housework, but I've already washed some dishes and that's quite enough for one day. Besides, my little finger now curls just over half-way and the top half has regained its normal shape and size. I wouldn't want to push it! And also besides, I did washing and linen changing and things yesterday and quite possibly need to spend more of today ignoring messes and pretending to work.

My real news is that I'm hoping that menopause is nigh. I only had one day free of PMT this whole month. It might be exhausting and painful, but I'm so hoping it's a sign that the change is nigh. Menopause may not be a miracle cure, but at least it will mean I have less to deal with. Eventually. I've been dealing with perimenopause for over nine years, so this intensification of symptoms has got to be for the better! And that's my quota of almost-not-complaining for the day.

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I just remembered that I meant to talk about jobs. There aren't any, apparently, in my field. I'm hoping that by 'none' the world actually means 'a few over the next few months of which one will actually take you.' That's the reality I'm facing. Like last time, I finish a PhD just as the bottom falls out of the job market. This is my normal level of good fortune, apparently.

I am hoping that my friends at universities will send information of possible jobs my way. I'm subscribed to four different job lists and will subscribe to more as I find out about them. That's not what this post is about, though.

What far too many of my non-university friends don't seem to realise that if I can find a job, it is 99% likely that I will have to move and that I won't be able to examine the city in advance and say "Hmm, nice place to move to, let me plan this for six months or so," or "This city isn't perfect, let me stay where I am." Ideally I get a job, and in a perfect world it's in one of my favourite cities (of which there are many) but the sort of advance planning that one mostly does with moves just doesn't apply to academia, especially when the market is tight. The big thing in fact, when the market is tight, is getting a job at all.

It doesn't help me at all, therefore, when friends say, "You need to get a job in such-and-such a place, for then you will be able to afford a bigger place to live" and "Don't go to such-and-such a place, for it's expensive." or "I don't like the look of this university." or "This is very far away." That's the talk of the secure and of those with more choices.

I need a job (and I want one very, very much - one thing I have learned over the last two years is that the combination of research, teaching, writing fiction and non-fiction and doing committee work is very much my lifestyle and fits many of my needs) - the universities that have jobs (if there are any) are the ones I will be applying to. My first place of preference is Australia, for Australia has good salaries and the best superannuation and I am a local and have friends in every major city (wherever I go, I will know someone), but I would be very happy to work almost anywhere. The big thing is that the normal limitations one puts on job searches do not apply in academia at the best of times and this is not the best of times.

I guess I'm suggesting to my friends that I'm very happy to have your support and your wish for me to find a good job, but please don't make this process harder than it already is.

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My new class was slow to get underway tonight, for there were traffic issues. I'm afraid I got in early with the scary stuff for one student mentioned the 'writing life' yearningly. I don't know why every class has at least one student who has a wish for a particular lifestyle, says Gillian, who is currently eating dark chocolate and who plans to stay in pyjamas until 10 am and then to go shopping with a friend. (She also needs to go to the library, but that can wait until Saturday, if the worst comes to the worst, for after shopping is bibliography time and unto bibliographies no-one can say 'nay'.)

I meant to read on the way in to uni, but instead I found myself contemplating Steam Engine Time (the fanzine). I'm going to miss it. I wonder what Bruce is going to do with those stray articles that didn't quite fit in before he had to close it? I hope that the half-finished conversations transfer over to Science Fiction Commentary. I have lots of half-thoughts and queries.

SET was only partly about the articles. The editors have a talent for getting conversations going about topics, and SET was one of Bruce's forums for several conversations with friends. Given that the first incarnation of it also included two British editors who likewise have a talent for getting conversations going between people who don't know one another, it makes entire sense that the correspondence was just as important as the articles in many issues.

I just read a review of SET where the reviewer didn't read the letters, for she felt as if she was trespassing on private terrain. This made me realise that we've lost a whole branch of public conversation and that more and more fans will fail to realise that the letters are the trailing end of the discourse, the one that links topics and people and extends our understanding of what we're reading, what we're thinking.

Fandom and fan expression are changing anyhow, but I shall miss this particular manifestation a great deal.

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I completely forgot to tell you that Mum sent that letter. She revised it to make it a standard "You have the wrong address" letter and suggested an address for redirection. She gave the actual graveplot, not just the general address of the cemetery. My mother has style. I rather suspect that the vehicle licensing people will not make that same mistake again.