Back in business
It has been a month full of vacation. Or at least half full… After the IAU General Assembly in Rio me and my husband spent one more week in Brazil and then we had another week of vacation in Finland. I returned home yesterday and now I am sitting at the Munich airport waiting for my flight to Paris. I am on my way to Chile - as usual.
It seems that this year I take much more vacation than I have done the previous years. Usually scientists, especially the ones like me who don’t have a permanent job yet, tend to work hard and not take that much vacation. Partly the vacation boom we have had is due to wanting to show our children the places we like, for example the Canary Islands where we all were in April, and partly because we finally have enough money to travel.
There is a side effect of this vacation boom that has started to worry me more and more lately. As I mentioned I don’t have a permanent job. I am a fellow, postdoc who is hired to do whatever she wants to do - scientifically speaking. 
At ESO it is a three year position, and there is no way of prolonging it. So, in one year from now I should find a new job. And then it should be a permanent one. I have already had 7 years of postdoc positions, next year that will be eight years. I am simply too old to continue. And of course I would also like to settle down somewhere. So, to convince people to hire me I should work hard and publish many papers - something that is not happening at the rate I would like it to happen. To make things more difficult, there are not that many jobs available either…
Anyway, I will try not to worry too much about this now. Next two weeks I have to concentrate on working as a night astronomer at Kueyen unit telescope of ESO Very Large Telescope. A job I really enjoy a lot, but which doesn’t allow me to work much on my own science and publish the papers I need for finding the next job. So, now I will concentrate on my observatory duties and only after my trip to Chile I will start worrying about my publication record and job hunting.
