When I grow up… June 19, 2007
Posted by Jen in : Journal , 21 commentsKW asked yesterday: What would you actually like to do, if you could, as a day-job (ignoring any writerly inclinations)?
I felt a bit miserable for the rest of the day. I don’t know. What do I want to do? Let’s see… so far, I have been:
- A dental nurse (top line before giving local: “you might feel a bit of a prick”)
- An administrator/foreign exchange bod in a small, private merchant bank. My clients included John Paul Getty Jnr and Arthur Hailey. This was in the yuppie 80s. Think power suits, lavish lunches and champagne galore. I hated it. Abandoned glam lifestyle for job as…
- Director’s assistant at the Jersey Arts Centre. Earned a third of my bank salary but could wear leggings, Doc Martens and homemade dangly earrings to work. I did not look a bit like Jo Brand. I loved this job – boozing and schmoozing most nights with actors, artists, musicians and dancers. Cool bananas.
And then it all went wrong. Sort of. I accidentally became fertilized and got the sack from my dream job because of the non-stop puking. But I quite liked my boy when he arrived. So I had another one. He was nice too. (They still are quite nice, really. They do smell a bit though.)
But. Nice as children are, they have kind of obliterated the rest of what I laughingly call my ‘life’. My choice, of course. But still. Part time jobs suck. The highlights:
- An estate agency where three mad duffers wore their wives’ tights under their trousers. This, they said, was just in case they decided to have an impromptu game of golf during quiet winter patches. Yeah, right.
- An architects’ practice. The small team included a 23-yr-old womanizer; a compulsive liar; a depressive chain-smoker and a chap who was rather short.
- PA to a guy who had been declared bankrupt. He was a charming, feckless, lovable rogue who almost got me arrested as an accessory to fraud.
Can you see where I’m going with this? It’s official. I am clearly cursed in the job department.
Becoming a writer is the only option. I can’t think of anything else. *Sigh*
