Boredom
My girlfriend and I would both really like to be writers. We have however, unproven talent and share a curiously strong self-preservation instinct that has meant that we have developed pretty successful mainstream careers (although both are involved to lesser or greater extents with ‘writing’ – her: PR & Communications. Me: Sales & Marketing).
We recently had a particular exchange which made me think about all of the job histories of popular authors I’ve read whom have taught, fought, worked as cabbies, bar tenders etc. I’ve never felt the need to suffer for art – and as thus to have some extent fallen between two stools socially.
I find a lot of the corporate world to be too straight for me to easily identify with, whilst ‘alternative/creative’ types (whom generally I find to be totally fucking conventional in every way other than dress sense) seem to look down on me because I ‘work for the man’.
A major appeal when I met my girlfriend (despite her obvious beauty and intelligence) is that she is independent, incredibly creative and free-willed, but pragmatic enough to have a proper job and earn decent money. N.B: Alternative kids – being materialistic doesn’t make you shallow spiritually – it just means that you have better stuff.
We were venting our frustrations recently regarding some of the boring things that we’ve been forced to achieve by our careers (she was at the time writing the guidelines to which parameters by which wheel nuts on buses will be judged faulty). I came back with this little tale of woe, which amused her somewhat:
“ I once went to a South Wales Engineering expo at the Cardiff International Arena to try and prospect for a waste management company that I worked for.
My day basically consisted of going round stalls and having about seven virtually identical blokes with beards, all called Alan, tell me about how their little precision engineering companies magnesium anodizing was one micron more even than their peers.
They were fairly uninterested that after a small change in production process that for either 10k cap ex or a rental and commission for disposal that we could provide them with a piece of machinery to puck their magnesium swarf so that we could re-sell it for around 500 quid a tonne.
They just wanted to talk about ball bearings.
I seriously contemplated suicide at about 3pm”
I ask the question, might one day I be the first ever published author to come a background in waste management?
