Not Working

So why, I ask myself, do we live this frugal life, eco-considerations aside? Well, I would love interesting, creative work and am looking all the time, asking friends and contacts, keeping an eye out locally, thinking of possible business ventures. It's not happening at the moment, but to stave off depression as best I can, I have to believe that something will come my way. I have come to realise that, apart from the first few honeymoon months, I have not enjoyed most of the jobs I have had so far. This is sobering. Some jobs were just plain dull, but were in interesting places or with nice people, which was distracting. Some started off well, but re-organisations, bloody minded people and other obstacles eventually got in the way. Some had good aspects to them which I enjoyed, but overall ... The best job, on paper at least, was as a university lecturer. I enjoyed the contact with students, the facilities, the status, the salary, the opportunities to be creative. Heavens, I even enjoyed (most of) the meetings, although "curriculum development" was a bit of a screen for tea and buns or a drink. However, the subject became dull and I wasn't inspired to engage in research, which is pretty crucial. I couldn't think of a way to bring it round to something I was interested in, and a new unsympatico head of department killed it for me. It would have been a great niche otherwise. I chose to leave to change direction, had a fabulous time studying and was successful for a while, but then the work dried up. The disappointment consumed me for years and, even now, I can't afford to think of it for too long. Since then, I've had some mainly short-term research contracts which were OK, a spell at another university as a researcher which I did enjoy, done some indexing, some writing, bits and bobs, but the gaps in between have stretched out into Tumbleweed City. My interests are all creative - photography, art, craft, writing (music is on an appreciation level only) - but as I'm not established professionally in any of these it's unlikely I will find paid work there.

Santa or Mr Savile - what I would like is a series of reasonably well-paid (I'm not greedy) short-term research/proof-reading/indexing jobs, if you could fix that, please.