Thursday 20 March 2008

It's Who You Know

I can't believe I spent my teens and twenties railing against 'the system'. You know, the old school tie/old boy's network/ Oxbridge mafia etc that ensured that jobs you never knew existed were given to people who knew the right people. Now that I'm benefitting from it, I think it's wonderful. So far I have three pretty good freelance projects; two from people I know and one that came out of a piece of work I did last year that went nowhere (it was for a local authority). They came back to me this week and said, 'You did a good job. Want another one?'

Wednesday 5 March 2008

SO SUE ME

OK I lied. I haven't blogged or written daily pages or filled notebooks with plots and characterisations since I last wrote here. I'm not a writer, because I give up too easily. I love it when I do it, I just don't do it enough. And anyway I'm now looking for a job, which will be interesting enough in itself, given that I haven't worked in an office for nearly 10 years. So the blog title becomes timely and I've decided to chronicle my attempts at finding gainful employment here.

So what are the odds of my finding a job? A headhunter I spoke to yesterday said 'Ferociously difficult.' Is that off-putting enough for you? Obviously I don't just want 'Anyjob', though a few months down the line I may regret putting that phrase into print. I'm in my early 50s and had a successful twenty year career in advertising which I gave up when we moved to the middle of nowhere and I chose to bring up my children. My brain remains intact, except when I can find my specs, which are then found on top of my head....Following the literary maxim of writing what you know, I'd like a job in advertising; I've done it once, I can do it again. But what do I know of advertising today? Well, by and large, it sucks as far as I can see. No one working in the industry is having as much fun as we used to and the ads are not better than the TV programmes they interrupt any more. But it's where I'm going to start. So my next work of fiction will be the CV......

Thursday 3 January 2008

New Year, New You

Can I really have had nothing to say for nearly 3 months?

Well, I guess the answer must be yes, though I have been thinking a hell of a lot instead. The prospect of imminent bankruptcy, loss of the beloved home and a future life of penury weighed rather heavily on my mind at the back end of 2007. It also dampened my enthusiasm for writing anything. But I did ponder on my response to this crisis and have surprised myself by how sanguine I am able to be. The Buddhist approach is working; namely I can't change the circumstances but I can change how I respond to them. A year ago I would have scoffed in my own face at such new-age twaddle, but the more I say it to myself the more I believe it. I can either get suicidally depressed at the turn my life has taken or I can go with the flow and change what I can and accept the rest. I'm surprised by how easy this is and feel quite optimistic about 2008 despite no rational reasons for being so.

I'm also going to write more.