Having been blogularly somewhat more prolific over the last few weeks the thought occurs that I should use my current thrusting creative urge to actually forge ahead a bit in what is supposed to have been something resembling a career for me. My 17-year-old self seemed steadfastly convinced, for at least 50% of the year anyway, that my future lay in journalism. Whether it was to be music or sport seemed to be the only thing in question. (The other 50% of the year around that time my ambitions were roughly divided between heart surgeon, speech therapist and translator. Quite what this says about me I'm not sure, other than that I'm clearly not a very decisive person as, 12 years later, I am still stuck in administration. My 17-year-old self would not be amused. But I’m older than her so she can keep her mouth shut!).
I'm never quite sure whether or not to feel gut-wrenchingly disappointed that, almost 30 years into my time on this planet, I haven't really started doing what I actually want to do with my life (not that the first 18 or so really count as full time education does tend to get in the way a bit). I have in recent years swung pendulously from one startlingly urgent desire to the next, from one moment deciding that running my own rock pub is absolutely the only course of action available to me and actually researching vacant properties in the area, to genuinely believing in the next instance that I could be the world's best screenwriter and getting a good 90 pages into my first script before deciding it was rubbish and abandoning it. Will I ever grow out of this irritating habit of blindly barnstorming my way from one unrealistic ambition to the next? I really hope so, because if I don't I'm going to end up leading a pretty forgettable existence from the point of view of society as a whole.
It's not like I have a burning desire to discover a cure for the common cold, or to found the next Facebook, or resuscitate hamsters. I'm fully aware that to do something truly great takes a finely tuned combination of any of the following ingredients: natural genius or talent, dumb luck, meticulous training, bravery, or favourable breeding and the connections that come with that. To be famous, or brilliant, is quite another thing to just succeeding at something. And although I'd like to think of myself as perhaps not the most shabby Senior Administrator in all of higher education-dom, I'm painfully aware that I really don't think it's what I was put on this earth to do.
And so it is that I come back, once again, to writing. The spontaneous and genuinely unplanned spouting of my brain matter onto a computer screen that somehow gets me through these almost manic periods of nervous but misdirected creativity. It's something that I can do. I may not be the most gifted writer in the world. But it feels good to empty some of my thoughts into the comforting receptacle of crap that is the internet in the hope that one day, through no fault of my own, someone of consequence might happen upon my ramblings and think to offer me copious sums of money to write about whatever I feel like, whenever the moment takes me. Because that's how it works, right?
But the problem with my writing is the same problem I have with my attitude to careers in general. Wildly fluctuating obsession is not conducive to getting ahead in life, or so it would appear. If I could pick a subject and stick to it, perhaps I might be a bit more driven to pursuing a final goal. But sometimes I write about music. And sometimes about sport. Sometimes even about film. And then sometimes, when I'm plummeting headlong toward an existential crisis, I write about myself. And the crap that goes on in my head. Not wise, really. Does the BBC have a position for 'Journalist without Portfolio', do you think? Obviously they'd have to lend me to Metalhammer, or Film Magazine, or possibly even Woman's Weekly once in a while, but that's okay, isn't it?
So here I am, being honest with my blog. Because goddamnit, if you can't be honest with a bundle of HTML coding that exists on a microchip or some other such nonsense, who can you be honest with? I don't even know if this is going to make it that far. Let’s face it, I'm not being honest at all; it's Monday night, and I'm typing into the draft message box of my Yahoo account whilst drinking red wine. I don't know why. I just felt the urge. So make me do something productive, will you? The furthest I've come in the last year or so to doing something about furthering my career was emailing a guy at a well-known music publication with a link to my blog and an offer of freelance work in my area. He actually responded, which was kind. He said they didn't have any work at the minute, but he suggested I didn't use the first person in my writing. But it's a blog... Okay, I take his point. Sort of.
Anyway, as a sort of catharsis, and a contract with myself and the internet, I will now lay bare for you all of the things that I have wanted to do with my life, over the years. Here is the list, in roughly chronological order (for some reason I can't remember what I wanted to be further back than about the age of 10):
When I grow up, I want to be:
Magazine editor, international swimmer, David Attenborough, novelist, RAF pilot, heart surgeon, primary school teacher, translator, speech therapist, English lecturer, international rower, rock radio DJ, journalist, bass player, A&R person, party planner, bookshop owner, choreographer, pub owner, screenwriter, festival organiser.
Notice the lack of 'postgraduate senior administrator' on that list. Hmm, funny that.
POSTSCRIPT: Seemingly goading me into action following my above rant (which I actually wrote last week), Fate dealt me a proverbial and timely kick up the derriere on Friday, as news of the impending doom of massive budget cuts to higher education struck and left us all fearing for our jobs.
Of course, I feel for the future students and their families, who have to bear the brunt of what is essentially going to be a tuition fee free-for-all (and not the good kind), but looking inward, the timing couldn’t really have been more ironic from a personal point of view and therefore, my new mission ('Balls; acquire a set') has been launched. It’s now or never people. I must launch myself from the precipice of doubt into the abyss of uncertainty and hope that there’s a trampoline at the bottom. Or at the very least, some light padding. Or a sandwich. Wish me luck!
I'm never quite sure whether or not to feel gut-wrenchingly disappointed that, almost 30 years into my time on this planet, I haven't really started doing what I actually want to do with my life (not that the first 18 or so really count as full time education does tend to get in the way a bit). I have in recent years swung pendulously from one startlingly urgent desire to the next, from one moment deciding that running my own rock pub is absolutely the only course of action available to me and actually researching vacant properties in the area, to genuinely believing in the next instance that I could be the world's best screenwriter and getting a good 90 pages into my first script before deciding it was rubbish and abandoning it. Will I ever grow out of this irritating habit of blindly barnstorming my way from one unrealistic ambition to the next? I really hope so, because if I don't I'm going to end up leading a pretty forgettable existence from the point of view of society as a whole.
It's not like I have a burning desire to discover a cure for the common cold, or to found the next Facebook, or resuscitate hamsters. I'm fully aware that to do something truly great takes a finely tuned combination of any of the following ingredients: natural genius or talent, dumb luck, meticulous training, bravery, or favourable breeding and the connections that come with that. To be famous, or brilliant, is quite another thing to just succeeding at something. And although I'd like to think of myself as perhaps not the most shabby Senior Administrator in all of higher education-dom, I'm painfully aware that I really don't think it's what I was put on this earth to do.
And so it is that I come back, once again, to writing. The spontaneous and genuinely unplanned spouting of my brain matter onto a computer screen that somehow gets me through these almost manic periods of nervous but misdirected creativity. It's something that I can do. I may not be the most gifted writer in the world. But it feels good to empty some of my thoughts into the comforting receptacle of crap that is the internet in the hope that one day, through no fault of my own, someone of consequence might happen upon my ramblings and think to offer me copious sums of money to write about whatever I feel like, whenever the moment takes me. Because that's how it works, right?
But the problem with my writing is the same problem I have with my attitude to careers in general. Wildly fluctuating obsession is not conducive to getting ahead in life, or so it would appear. If I could pick a subject and stick to it, perhaps I might be a bit more driven to pursuing a final goal. But sometimes I write about music. And sometimes about sport. Sometimes even about film. And then sometimes, when I'm plummeting headlong toward an existential crisis, I write about myself. And the crap that goes on in my head. Not wise, really. Does the BBC have a position for 'Journalist without Portfolio', do you think? Obviously they'd have to lend me to Metalhammer, or Film Magazine, or possibly even Woman's Weekly once in a while, but that's okay, isn't it?
So here I am, being honest with my blog. Because goddamnit, if you can't be honest with a bundle of HTML coding that exists on a microchip or some other such nonsense, who can you be honest with? I don't even know if this is going to make it that far. Let’s face it, I'm not being honest at all; it's Monday night, and I'm typing into the draft message box of my Yahoo account whilst drinking red wine. I don't know why. I just felt the urge. So make me do something productive, will you? The furthest I've come in the last year or so to doing something about furthering my career was emailing a guy at a well-known music publication with a link to my blog and an offer of freelance work in my area. He actually responded, which was kind. He said they didn't have any work at the minute, but he suggested I didn't use the first person in my writing. But it's a blog... Okay, I take his point. Sort of.
Anyway, as a sort of catharsis, and a contract with myself and the internet, I will now lay bare for you all of the things that I have wanted to do with my life, over the years. Here is the list, in roughly chronological order (for some reason I can't remember what I wanted to be further back than about the age of 10):
When I grow up, I want to be:
Magazine editor, international swimmer, David Attenborough, novelist, RAF pilot, heart surgeon, primary school teacher, translator, speech therapist, English lecturer, international rower, rock radio DJ, journalist, bass player, A&R person, party planner, bookshop owner, choreographer, pub owner, screenwriter, festival organiser.
Notice the lack of 'postgraduate senior administrator' on that list. Hmm, funny that.
POSTSCRIPT: Seemingly goading me into action following my above rant (which I actually wrote last week), Fate dealt me a proverbial and timely kick up the derriere on Friday, as news of the impending doom of massive budget cuts to higher education struck and left us all fearing for our jobs.
Of course, I feel for the future students and their families, who have to bear the brunt of what is essentially going to be a tuition fee free-for-all (and not the good kind), but looking inward, the timing couldn’t really have been more ironic from a personal point of view and therefore, my new mission ('Balls; acquire a set') has been launched. It’s now or never people. I must launch myself from the precipice of doubt into the abyss of uncertainty and hope that there’s a trampoline at the bottom. Or at the very least, some light padding. Or a sandwich. Wish me luck!
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