The Importance of Being Productive

Cue: Exasperation. You may have been wondering when it was going to happen. Or maybe not. Maybe no-one is even reading this. Maybe I'll just stop.

I couldn't. Stop, that is. Because I have to do something. You, on the other hand, have probably had to steal a few minutes from something for which you get paid in order to snatch a glance at this. Or maybe you just accidentally clicked on it when all you were trying to do was decipher the blog's title, made difficult by the lack of gaps between words. Or maybe I flatter myself.

Either way, whether you care or not, enjoy or not, value it or not, I will continue to write it. I think it goes back to my OCD days. At the age of five I remember feeling the burning desire to describe every single action completed from my first step through the school door to leaving at half past three. My mum would sit and listen every morning to how, the day before, I had placed (not thrown) my My Little Pony lunch-box into the lunch-box trolley (a seemingly bottomless green pit on wheels which snoozed in the corner of the classroom to be awoken just before 12 and wheeled into the hall in time for lunch. Why we couldn't carry them I don't know.) and then who I had spoken to, what I had coloured in and in what colour and to which questions I had put up my hand. I left nothing out. And she listened patiently. This desire to tell my own story, however mundane, has always been present. Except that now it is one of only a few things that I am doing and I find myself increasingly reliant on it. I derive so much pleasure out of creating this, producing this. And it is saving me from the brink of exasperation. So anxious am I to achieve something, anything, that when observing some French classes in a local secondary school last week in an attempt to set the teaching ball rolling, I caught myself raising a hand in answer to a question from the teacher. A spectacular new low.

I'm not going to blame the crotch-thrusting radio man for this feeling of professional desperation. Well, not for all of it anyway. I won't mention the two rejection letters I have already had from the pipe-dream jobs I applied for. Nor will I lay all of the blame on Avon for their spontaneous offer of employment, which I haven't, as yet, taken up. It would be convenient if I could blame the recession, but then again, I had a job which I willingly left. If I really stretch it, I could sell it as an act of brilliant clairvoyance in having resigned before being made redundant - as opposed to an act of utter lunacy. But none of these sit quite right. No, this feeling of exasperation stems from an inability to do nothing and a great, over-developed ability to panic. Instead of seeing this time as fruitful, full of potential, a time to explore new career avenues, learn about myself and find a better professional solution for myself, I find myself in the middle of a life examination of my own making. I have begun weighing up my age against other textbook life achievements, which I have not achieved. 26? Shit, if it takes another two years to find a job, when will I get a house? And a man? (I've dropped down a notch from the dizzy heights of husband, the still giddy heights of long-term boyfriend to, simply, 'man') and then obviously there are those children, but then I was pretty irate when a baby cried on the train the other day so maybe that's one thing I can cross off.

In an effort to speed up the process of attaining these goals (which, inconveniently, were not goals of mine when I had a job) I have been forced to cast the professional net a little wider. This has led me into the dangerous waters of 'high-paid careers that don't interest me and have, so far, been avoided like noxious gases'. This has taken me on a wild and, quite frankly, frightening adventure through the concrete jungle of law, finance and marketing and has brought me face-to-computer with other, even more nebulous companies who hide their purpose under an impenetrable barrage of buzz-words and financial incentives. It would take an expert code-breaker to figure out what these organisations actually did. And this code-breaker would probably end up severely disappointed because he'd discover that the big, multinational corporation with offices in every major city and with the opportunity to rise to Chief Executive in three years actually just sold cardboard. What a let-down. These companies often feature a 'profile' section on their website because a description of what they do just isn't enough to sell them to bright, young graduates who still have life and optimism left in them. These profiles introduce prospective employees to people like Steve. Steve, I read on one website, studied for a degree in media and communication (vaguely related to me, I muse). He then went into film production (Wow, I think. What is this company? If it takes film producers it MUST be doing something right in the creative department). Here's what happened to Steve, the film producer:

"Steve joined our International Management Trainee Scheme in 2003 after realising a career in film production wasn't really for him. He quickly moved up the ranks from Trainee to Sector Manager in only three months [what this sector did, I never established]. He was then asked to head up our Amsterdam office where he recruited and trained newcomers to the company [still no explanation of what they're training to DO]. There he was part of a team who thought up a new strategy for carrying out the development plan that Bob had implemented last year. He was then asked over to our San Francisco office to do the same thing [WHAT??! I'm now screaming], where is he now Chief Executive."

Arghhhhhh. Get out of my head Steve! I can't think any more! You're clouding my brain with your nonsensical business jargon. Minimise the window! Minimised. Barely four lines of type and I was scared out of my mind. I expanded the window again just to see if I could stomach any more. Steve's jeering smile. Right click Close.

"Find a job you love and you won't work another day in your life." Correct. And you will also be on the dole. Because it seems quite clear to me now that only boring, awful jobs pay well. I wish I'd known this at the age of 18. I would have just hoisted myself onto the career ladder then and there. At least by now I might have been rich. I could even have been retired. It's all about building, apparently. You have to start building things from early on: careers, deposits for houses, relationships. As a professional idealist, I just imagined that these things would fall into place at the time that they were supposed to. Lovely. Only, they don't. The ten pounds I invested in the Halifax aged 16 did not mate with the other ten pounds I stuck in the following Christmas to produce a mountain of gold and silver, which I can now hand over in exchange for the period property with the feature fireplace and the wood floors. No. This, I am told, will take me years now.

It is at this point that a couple of very unhelpful people have interjected with: "Well, you would leave a job at a time like this. It's easier to find a job when you're in a job, you know. You could have been saving for that deposit."

However, despite all of the negativity, I am sticking to my decision to be in this situation. You've got to admire my tenacity. I believe that leaving my job was the right decision. I think that the problem lay in how I dealt with the next bit. If I had been wise, I would have planned myself a round-the-world ticket and taken off to make something of this bit of my life. I would have talked of all the places I wanted to go, made everyone jealous and then written this blog from a Moroccan desert or an Amazonian tribal hut. My travelling experience would have 'enhanced' my CV, made me more 'marketable' on my return. It would have been, put simply, more acceptable. But pulling out of a job you are not convinced about in order to pursue a scrape of a dream or even just a different career path, is seen as just a little bit ludicrous and singles you out as one of society's desperados. I am now one of the people Gordon Brown spends so much of his time talking about. I am beginning to think that if this had been a pregnancy I would have had a better time of it. At least it would have been a plan. There would be no floating around, wondering what was happening next. Nine months - baby - life as mother - life purpose. Bingo. I wonder if people would wait nine months for my literary masterpiece to hatch from underneath me? Would they encourage me every day and let me off for not earning any money because the end result would be reward enough itself? I fear not.

Recession feminism

When The Observer declared three weeks ago that women were the real victims of the credit crunch, I sat up and read on. I went along with the theory that employers could potentially be swayed to fire women over men either because they felt that these women would be able to fall back on the financial support of a husband/partner or because, I quote, "employers will also be more reluctant to hire women of child-bearing age because they don't want to pay for maternity leave." (I quote because I have a problem with the words 'child-bearing age' coming directly from me. Makes me think of rearing pigs. For reasons best known to a psychologist) I was not unconcerned on reading this article and felt that these were points well-made but, on catching a whiff of the feminist about my person, I decided not to think further on the subject and save my lovely underwear from the flames.

Then last week I read the following:

'Peter Stringfellow, the nightclub owner, said that “tableside dancing” was gaining in popularity. “Does it surprise me? Not at all,” he said. “At this precise time during the credit crunch, my business is as good as ever.” He added that his clientele was not the type to be affected by the recession. “It might hurt the young guys, but not our guys,” he said.' [The Times]

Apparently a glance at calls made to 118 118, the directory enquiries service, in the run-up to Christmas revealed that inquiries into pole-dancing and lap-dancing clubs shot up by 599 per cent. In the same week I read that City bankers were booking themselves similar visual treats over breakfast meetings to soothe their fiscal troubles. Firstly, let me just say that THIS IS FINE. Although my one and only unsavoury brush with a Croatian lap-dancing club left me cold, I am accepting of their existence and others' desire to frequent them.

My problem is Peter bleeding Stringfellow. He seems to be having a lovely time raking in the cash while his aging, panting clientele lick their credit crunchy wounds (among other things) in his establishments. Just not on. So women are being laid off because they might try and rear some sprog while Stringfellow lines his pockets satisfying Viagra-fuelled desires. Well that's the sentence you get when you bring these two stories together and I just wonder what Germaine would make of the social equation.

It was in this indignant frame of mind that I launched into Week Ten (rough calculation..) of the job search. It just so happens that Week Ten is also the week of the great Valentine's build-up. And it seems that, try as I might to avoid him, St. Valentine is determined to keep hammering me over the head with his vile, exaggerated marketing techniques. I thought that my usually thoughtful and level-headed monthly magazine would provide some solace. No. It raved about the benefits of 'recession sex'. I am convinced that the economic crisis will soon require its own dictionary. Recession sex. It's a very basic concept hardly worthy of a coined phrase. It's sex during a recession. Although that doesn't really cover it does it? For, used here in an adjectival sense, it suggests that recession sex is an entirely different kettle of passion to average, solvent sex. This is assuming of course, that everybody is solvent in non-downturn time and also that they're not having very good sex. This is, at least, what my article implied. Attempting to turn the concept of sex into a cerebral topic (a knack that this magazine has down to a fine art), it seemed to suggest that sex would be better because we'd value the fact that it was free (I am aware of the exception) and that where before a woman may have opted to spend the evening grazing wine bars with work colleagues she would now be magnetically drawn to her previously neglected boyfriend. Now, without squeezing my brain cells together too much, I can quickly come up with two problems here: Firstly, there is the question of a possible rejection once things pick up in the financial department. And secondly, surely having more sex during a recession will only increase the probability of pregnancy and give the potential for greater financial burden, thus perpetuating this couple's money worries? Just a thought. Of course, the ease with which they suggest that this anxiety-busting sex can be obtained is another matter entirely. For those with not-so-easy access to a "loved one", nevermind a "cosy bolthole [quoted in one Valentines-themed article]" in which to nestle and forget the doom and gloom, I conclude that Valentine's Day during a recession must be THE most depressing time in the life of a financially-strapped singleton. I can hear Mr Stringfellow's distant gloating snigger.

The odds were beginning to stack up against me as an unemployed, single woman; so women were being fired because they were a sort of unreliable component of a company while men were kept on and treated to dancing ladies - and the only way to get through it all was to get some on-tap sex which was impossible if you couldn't locate a tap.

With this fresh bout of indignation, I reviewed my options. Securing myself a relationship I would be satisfied with in a short space of time was out of the question. It took long enough for me to identify a potential candidate or come around to the idea that the person was interested and then there was the agonising game of establishing and maintaining contact, accompanied by sophisticated translation techniques to try to figure out if a date was on the cards. Then it would all be down to chance whether that date materialised. By this stage exhausted, I would probably just give up because I realised that I had been far too indiscriminate at the first stage. Or, having got the impression that interest was waning, I would embark on a few months of frantic pursuit, otherwise known as obsession, thus closing off all other, possibly better, possibilities. I decided that my traditional methods of courtship would only leave me feeling deflated at a time when what I needed was an injection of confidence. And so I decided to channel this burgeoning feminist energy into taking a more proactive approach to the job hunt. Although the potential for rejection was still there, I felt that the process would at least be slightly less emotional. After all, I was dealing with jobs, not men. Or so I thought.

I am already working a few shifts at a local radio station but felt that I should attempt to garner further experience by approaching the local commercial station. I found a number, made a call, sent an email and CV and by the following Wednesday was sitting in the reception area waiting for the station's head to greet me. Handshake, "after you", lift, "after you", take a seat. I sat on my chair. He sort of straddled his. He had a half-smirk spread across his 'I'm the head of the station' face. Focus. DO NOT JUDGE. He might be a lovely person. "OK, I'll cut to the chase. I don't have any shifts to offer you at the moment." "OK," I said, affecting my best media-wise tone of voice which I believe gives off an 'I know what the current climate is like, I'm clued up' impression. But he hadn't finished. "And to be honest, if I had something, I couldn't offer it to you. You just don't have enough experience in broadcasting." What? My smattering of free work at the other radio station was not sufficient? He picked up on the questioning flicker in my eyes. "You have a lot of experience and I can see why you're looking at radio, the state newspapers are in at the moment, but you're looking at six to eight months of unpaid work before I would even consider you. I need to see real commitment." He had swivelled his chair round during this exchange and it was now pointing the right way but he had not given up his straddling pose and so I was now faced with a smirk and a crotch. Bile rising. Was that it? Did he not want to enter into the briefest of conversations to try to establish who I was, what I had done, even the fact that I wasn't a psychopath?! "OK," I said in the most measured tone I could spit out. "So, I really don't want to waste your time any more today. I mean, I could have you in here for a week of work experience but it wouldn't do me any good and it wouldn't benefit you in the grand scheme of things." He was the type of person who said 'in the grand scheme of things' and made it sound like, after having lived for a million years and seen all there was to see, he could safely say that, after having weighed up all the pros and cons, the fact that he was making this decision was actually a favour to me. "I like to be honest," he announced grandly. I believed this. I didn't believe that he WAS honest but I did believe that he liked saying that he was. Silence. I sat, he continued to thrust his crotch out in an effort to command the room. He stared. I fantasised about magically shrinking him and then rolling him between my fingers and flicking him away. Like snot. "Well, thank you for your time," I managed. "No problem. It just wouldn't be worth your while or mine. That's how it is." Stop talking stop talking stop talking, my head yelled. The lift took uncomfortably long to arrive and excruciatingly long for the door to close once it had and I had stepped inside. I knew he didn't want to wait. And he was off as soon as the door twitched to close.

I used the walk back from the train station to glue back together the pieces of my broken confidence. Suffice to say that the finished product had a shiny new feminist gloss to it. Then, i-pod whirring, I made out the sound of wheels slowing and suddenly got the sense that I was being followed along the pavement. "Excuse me?" I turned. An orange face beamed at me from the window of a black BMW. I turned the i-pod off. "Sorry to disturb you," she said. "I'm from Avon. We're trying to recruit women to become representatives [hands me a flyer 'AVON: Hello Tomorrow']. Would you be interested?" Think. Say something. "Sorry?" Think. Why was I being kerb-crawled by an Avon saleswoman? Flashback. Oh god, I do remember. I remembered reading something a month ago about how the downturn had seen a rise in the number of new Avon recruits. And this was me becoming a statistic. She was talking but I wasn't really listening, just fixated on a smearing of lipstick she'd got on one of her front teeth. "...Pass it to your friends and see if they're interested too." "OK". She sped off. I have to admit that I was in equal part flattered that she had felt that I was pleasantly enough presented to represent a line of cosmetics and concerned that Avon seemed to be the only people willing to offer me a job.

Years of education, a few years of voting and I felt about as feminist as Jeremy Clarkson. After all this, I was faced with only two options to assuage the pain in my credit crunched heart: desperately seek a male companion or sell beauty products door to door to make other people look good. I think Germaine just had a palpitation.

Love Bipolar

The following Saturday night, in a desperate bid to outdo the pensioners, I headed into town with a friend to claw back my, now rapidly vanishing, social life. It was a last minute decision fuelled by the unfortunate ingestion of a fluorescent-looking shot delivered to us across the bar in a test tube. And so it was that my friend and I arrived in the centre of town, dressed in jeans and trainers and high on E numbers. Now, when deciding to leave my job and pursue a more exciting and fulfilling path in life, there were a number of things I wasn't prepared for. The thrill of the local library service was just one bonus prize. The second was the cruelly reduced pool of relationship potential. This had been an oversight indeed. You forget just what fertile ground the world of work can be for single people. And not just the bit in between arriving and leaving the place of work; there's the commute, the bar after work, the conferences. The world opens up. Without work, the world shrinks back into its hole to leave you with the bare bones: food, water, shelter..and the comfort of regular access to a social networking site.

I had already had one brush with a desperate situation as a result of this newly contracted life. It was a week or so after arriving back home. After sharing a bottle of vinegary wine with a friend on a Friday night, she suggested we try out a local place called The Hotel California. I knew the one. I'd driven past it many times. Always past it. The building itself reminds me of something out of a horror film, save for 'Hotel California' written in strobe lighting across the top. It sits incongruously on a roundabout next to a McDonalds and a PC World. Personally, I find the retail park more frightening. I'd heard it was a rock music venue and so was intrigued. Inside, it did not disappoint: biker men, goth women, and some risk-taking old people who obviously didn't fancy this year's Rumpelstiltskin production. There was a sort of Battle of The Heavy Metal Bands going on that night. Heavy metal has never been my thing but after half an hour in that place the music became strangely intoxicating and I wanted to fling MY head around and jumble up MY brain cells along with the rest of them. But I didn't. The furthest my friend and I went was tapping our feet in appreciation. It was at this level of musical inebriation that a band by the name of 'Iron-On Maiden' took to the stage. Oh how greasy and long-haired and dirty and...attractive they are.. Suddenly the night took on a very different face. We watched them thrash around the stage, long hair sticking to their faces, for another ten minutes or so. And then it was over. Applause, yelling, beer sploshed on the floor as bikers clapped with little regard for the pints they were holding. I snapped out of the trance. Yeah, the music was OK, but that was about it, surely? I made a mental note to check the heavy metal aisle in HMV next time I was in but thought that that would be the extent of my curiosity for this new genre. Until.. "Oh look there!" Tapping on my shoulder accompanied my friend's mischievous tone of voice. "That's the guy from the band." "What?" I looked and it was indeed the hairy metal man. "Oh yeah.." I replied. "And?" "Well...go and talk to him!" "What?? Are you INSANE? Honestly...OK then." I watched my feet walking confidently towards him. I was not nearly drunk enough to be engaging in this sort of brazen activity. But I was walking. Walking right up to him. Inches from him I stopped and turned to my friend pleadingly but was met only with a shooing of hands and eyebrows raised as if to say 'You cannot turn back'. So I tapped a sweaty black t-shirted shoulder. He didn't turn round. Shit. Unbelievably embarrassed and wanting to swallow my own head to avoid witnessing the scene before me, I tapped again and accompanied it with some words. "Hi, are you the guy who was playing just now?" "Yeah", drawled the Brummy accent. "Great set. It was really good. Really enjoyed it." I couldn't have sounded more bland if I'd tried. Silence. Shit. Then, noticing his arm was hanging in a skull and crossbones print sling, I remarked, "Ah didn't notice you had your arm in a sling up there?" "I didn't. Took it off to play." "Ahh, right, I see!" I exclaimed with the kind of surprise that suggested I considered this some kind of medical miracle. "Yeah," he said, smiling. He was enjoying this. He knew exactly why I was there. "What's your name?" he asked. I told him. "Yours?" "Steve". He put his hand out to shake mine, but, remembering that it was bound up in a skull and crossbones sling, and that he had a drink in the other that he was not willing to part with for the sake of a greeting, he laughed and lifted up the sling-wrapped arm as if to demonstrate his predicament. And that was when I did it. Standing there in TopShop jeans and lovely shoes that were at this point covered in biker beer, I felt like a 50-year-old mother at a rave. My brain just fogged over with embarrassment. I stared at Steve, the long-haired lead singer of the Iron-Maiden tribute band and I made a fist. I made a fist and I lightly punched the pirate chic sling. In the way that I imagine Puff Daddy greets his...homies? I stared at my outstretched hand and up to the face that belonged to the sling to be met with Steve's awkward grimace. So he's definitely not very 'ghetto' then, I mused. And, evidently, neither am I. Exit, emergency exit, NOW! I screamed internally. Eyes roving for my friend, I spotted her. "Have a good night then," I said, while already on my way over to the other side of the room.

So, by the time I arrived in Liverpool with my friend on that January night, dressed down but high on sugary shots, I had forgotten all of the social elegance I had developed while at work; the low-key after-work drinks in the nice wine bar and the flirtations that had to be subtle enough not to crack the cool, mysterious facade I was close to perfecting. Admittedly, cool and mysterious hadn't got me that far but at least it had kept pride intact. On this night, however, there were no such delicate rules. No more false impressions in an effort to secure future relationship bliss. I just wasn't cut out for it. A boy would only complicate the already complicated process of finding a job. Emboldened by this new and rather aggressively feminist attitude towards the opposite sex, we headed for our favourite drinks-promotion-and-cheesy-music sweat-pit, affectionately named The Raz. This underground lair is so dark that you only catch a glimpse of your fellow revellers when a disco light flashes in their eye. It was just what we needed; to flail our limbs around shamelessly and not to have to see ourselves doing it. By the time Katy Perry had begun warbling something about having 'love bipolar', we were already making crazed, excited faces and jumping around everywhere that there was floor space - to the horror of the emo students who were awaiting something far cooler. An hour later, the only thing more important than dancing was not missing a single line of Britney Spears's 'Womaniser'. I'm sure Steve wouldn't mind if I by-passed the heavy metal aisle and spent my tenner on Britney's new album instead.

Who's Rumpelstiltskin anyway?

In between the bursts of inspired conversation about the meaning of life and the bright career potential the future holds, during which friends helpfully interject with "Oh you are SO much better off out of that place. It wasn't right for you. It was a joke" there's a grey area that I was not prepared for. In normal life, when a person has a job and a flat and an independent, solvent life, this time is called social life. This is not to say that, back in the northern mothership I am friendless. I am not. Many of my friends are still here. However, before now, I had made only fleeting trips back, arriving in a whirlwind of post-Oxford/-Spain/-London/-Edinburgh febrile excitement, bringing with me my anecdotes of life over the border/down south, my new London haircut or my new Spain boots. Coffee, night out, coffee, then I would get the train back to wherever was home at that time. Formulaic fun. Now that I have been here for over a month I have realised that these people have lives outside of cafes and clubs. And not only do they have lives, but they have begun to acquire permanent jobs and, more frightening still, mortgages. No number of southern haircuts or pairs of foreign footwear can compete with that. I lost my house deposit long ago to Richard Branson's over-priced Pendalino service. A friend told me last year that he thought I was a bit bisexual; half of me was in Edinburgh and half of me was in London. Although not at all the meaning of the word, I enjoyed the application of it to my situation. 2009 is fast becoming the year of trisexuality, since I now find myself forced to stir the Wirral/Liverpool into my twisted nomadic soup of a life.

So I find myself back at home, struggling to fashion a studio flat out of my old bedroom and sharing most of every day with my father, a man whose situation appears to be the polar opposite of my own, since he is retired and therefore at the end of his career while I attempt to kick the big fat bottom of my fledgling career out of its armchair. Although seemingly opposite situations, there are depressing similarities between us. My father does crosswords to delay the onset of Alzheimer's and I do them to give myself the best chance of not developing a premature version brought on by idleness. We are also obsessed with BBC News 24 (a feeble attempt to invite drama into our lives) and food on toast (preferably something with Omega-3, like pilchards - for the lagging brain cells).

When the sense of having my life melded with that of a 63-year-old becomes too overwhelming, I go out exploring. I have become a tourist in my own town. Ok, not town, rather suburban maze. Through these wanderings, I have discovered a gem in my local library. I've been spending quite a lot of time there this past week since I have found a few job vacancies that I hope will drag me out of living the life of an OAP and so have been feverishly filling out application forms. The library allows me to fill out these applications in peace as well as peruse the papers (among which often lies a well-fingered copy of The Mature Times. No joke.) without parting with a penny and generally keep abreast of what's going on in my local community. It has, after all, been a while since I really connected with this area and its people. Let's find out what's going on here, what makes them tick, I thought. The library is typically 1960s by design. And by fragrance. It has a flat roof on which is perched a Christmas tree in the month of December and quite a way into January each year. And it has very cold loos. It is a library, yoga and pilates club, doctor's surgery, internet point and, of late, a cafe. Well, that's an exaggeration, but there is now a coffee machine behind the till so the librarians now ask if you would like a latte or a cappuccino as well as telling you how much you owe on that overdue local history book. As I stood in front of the 'Events' board on my latest visit, I was given an insight into the rich and varied social life of those who frequent their local community centre. 'Wood Carving For All Levels', 'Learn Scottish Country Dancing', 'Chinese Yoga Classes', or if you were feeling really energetic, you could offer up your dramatic skills to the local production of RUMPELSTILTSKIN - THE MUSICAL. I was horrified. How did these people spend so much of their non-working time learning, creating, entertaining? I was exhausted just reading about it. And it made me feel about as active as a sod of earth. Fearing that if I hung around too long at that message board, I'd be targeted by the director of the musical and recruited as Wicked Sister Number Ten, I made a hurried exit. Not before making a note of the times and venues of a couple of the activities for my pensioner housemate.