It was quite nice to decide on the plans for my future when it happened. I felt a renewed sense of optimism and a wave of hope washed over me, the sort only comparable to that time a girl accidentally fell into me in a club and I thought, 'You've done it again, Ash. You devil.'
But things happen, don't they? And you find yourself being in a position you hadn't really planned for. You feel a bit lost and like you've put all your eggs in the poorly made basket that is a creative career and suddenly you can't afford to pay rent and all of your friends think you should wash more. All the dreams you had are fighting to stay in charge over the reality that you actually need to earn a living, you can't just sit and type all day when no-one's actually offering you money to do it.
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| More broke writers. Where do they get their marker pens? |
This is an issue. It's been an issue for the last two years as I've hopped naively from one job to another, each time hoping that this would the opportunity I had been waiting for. I could make this one work. However in all that time I've only ever really enjoyed working at one place and that barely paid me enough to power my electric razor. (I grew a beard, it was nowhere near as good as the one I had dreamed of as a child.)
'Can I stay working here forever and just forget about my debt, Mr Bank Manager?'
'No.'
The reality is that I know, and everyone who has ever employed me has likely found out, that I'm only really any good with words. I can learn and adapt to do other things but I'm like a copy magpie and will end up pushing all that other stuff to the back of the pile in order to focus on doing the work I enjoy.
For example: Ash, we need a blog post, 10 tweets, 5 Facebook updates and a press release writing by the end of the day.
Done.
We also need some statistics feeding into Excel and a Powerpoint presentation doing on how we're going to increase engaged users using new algorithms or some shit like that.
Done, but later. With less enthusiasm. I'll probably try and put a joke in there.
For a while I was quite happy to be doing a little bit of what I liked and a lot of what I didn't, but then I realised I was kidding to myself. I wasn't really happy at all. What's the point of going through life and only enjoying 10% of it? That's 90% of misery, of missed opportunities, of jealous glances over at your mates who are where you want to be.
You can stick to what you're given and live in relative comfort. You can make your family think you're doing well and be a nice statistic in your old university's records. You can get shiny wristbands that get you into events.
Or you can scrap all that and do what you want to do instead.
Life's too short not to, and I'm to impatient to wait.
Here's a Nickelback song to force home that message.