The Beginning

It was a funny time to leave a job - in the middle of a recession. Well, technically, we weren't yet in a recession or at least that's what I kept reading. The media would have a week of lambasting our economic situation, the job losses, praising the silver lining which came in the form of an increase in lipstick sales, and then a week later I'd read in the media small print (my description of the luxury paragraphs at the bottom of the article reserved for weekend perusal) that we weren't yet in the grip of a recession. Not really. In theory. Something else that I hadn't quite got my head around had to happen before that could happen. After that the buzz word would be deflation. I think. Nonetheless, it couldn't be disputed that things were bad. The health of the country's finances, the general security of just about anything appeared to be teetering on the edge of a depression which had a sickly whiff of the 1930s, 70s and 90s.

Meanwhile, I was suffering from my own form of depression. I spent my days, or rather, nights, chewing up ordinary news stories and, quite literally, sexing them up. Or, to apply the correct jargon, applying the formula of 'Search Engine Optimisation' to each one. This translates as making sure each article pops up immediately when searched for in a search engine. Put more simply: Boobs Tits Sex Sex and More Sex. So I left. I was a serious journalist. I could conquer...something. Eventually. But not where I was. No Pulitzer Prize-winning word-smithery was ever going to roll off my fingers while I churned out Boobs and Bums. The news of my departure was not shocking to most of my colleagues. I mulled this over: "This is reassuring," I told myself. "Made right decision. Must get out. Must demand more for myself (I think this is taken from an episode of Brothers and Sisters but I can't be sure)." Once I had left the building for the last time clutching my leaving gift of one box of M&S chocolates, I did feel a little fuzz of victory in my stomach. Turning to flash a final glance at my former place of work at 3am on my last night (morning) of work, I sighed in a romantically valedictory fashion. In fact, I think my sentiment would be best summarised by the following Joyce line:

(Take a moment to breathe in the pretentiousness of that last sentence)

"Mother [...] prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it. Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race."

- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

I wasn't addressing my mother in any way but you get the gist. I felt hopeful. Until I got into the taxi, which was parked up for the last time to take me home. The taxi driver, let's call him Billy, was refreshingly realistic about my situation. His words were: "It's a difficult time at the moment. You wait till you see how difficult it is to find a job after Christmas. All those bankers who thought they were OK.." And he was off. And I was off. It doesn't take me much to start worrying. Given a thread of discouragement, I'll grab it between my teeth and run with it, blindly and madly, tugging at that thread as I run towards the great big flashing sign that reads "PANIC HERE". And when I get there I'll stop, turn around, and see the thread lying forlornly on the ground, where once it made a beautifully neat ball, and I'll stare. I stared at the road, twisting round by now up towards Highgate. This man would see through any trite self-defence. So I was honest. "Yeah, I know it's going to be difficult, but I just couldn't do it any more" "Yeah, I know what you mean," he said, so quickly that I was reassured instantly. He continued: "I knew this fella who used to screw in lightbulbs for a living. Easy job, good manney [accent]. Then one day he just woke up and said, I've had enough of this. Now he says to me that he'd love to have a job like that now." Oh, right, I'm thinking. Not sure what to make of that story.

Oh, I thought. But..but..what about Joyce? What about literature? What about the classics and their tales of adventure and triumph in the face of adversity and.. That's when the stark hilarity of my situation hit me - who on earth in their right mind would voluntarily give up a job in the middle of a financial meltdown? The boldness of my move slammed into me in much the same way as I had slammed into a tree in Year 8 while running to escape a snowball. This metaphorical smack in the face left me with a numbness and twinge of embarrassment uncomfortably reminiscent of the very physical smack of the running-into-the-tree incident. So I decided to write about it - 'it' being life as a voluntarily self-unemployed person in their (now late) twenties who had the daft idea of going in search of a dream in the middle of a credit crunch, when everyone knows that there is no worse time to undertake such a task. Oh, and in case I forget to state it elsewhere, 'the dream' is to become an important writer and broadcaster. Yes, it is.

I was reluctant to start the blog at first because I thought that it would be, not only another self-indulgent use of web space, but also rather embarrassing. I told my friend about my idea of writing about 'voluntary unemployment at a time of financial meltdown' and her response was to laugh, saying that it sounded hilarious and that I should do it. Hilarious? That's my life we're talking about. So here I go. I suppose it's a sort of live, investigative piece on how a young girl is going to navigate her way through the media quagmire to make the transition from print to broadcast at a time when just about everyone is cutting jobs. A challenge? Why, of course. It will be that, but it will also be a peek at everything in between. This vagueness is deliberate because I don't know what the next few months have in store for me. But I'm going to have fun writing about it.