February has mostly been spent working at the gallery. The gallery still hasn’t been doing well unfortunately. The low visitor numbers have meant that management has reduced opening times to soften the blow. I think it is such a shock to everyone because the Van Gogh exhibition did so well. The change in hours has made everything felt a lot more unsettled and uncertain the permanent staff have been spending time on shift looking for different jobs which is a bit alarming. I’ve started to worry about whether my contract will be extended in March like I had hoped. Despite this I was in a better position than the permanent workers as they had already faced redundancy before. Seeing this worry first hand made me more aware of how badly job insecurity affects people.
I also realised how much I don’t wish to go through the whole interview process again. I finally felt like I had come up for air so the thought of doing it all again was disheartening.