The word job can be read in several ways. It can mean job as in a part-time job, a Saturday job, the odd paper-boy shift, a career or a dream. I'm still job-hungry. Currently I work 45 hours a week as a waitress during the evening and weekends, and 40 hours a week during the day for Time Out as an Intern. I have been accepted onto a course to study Magazine Journalism come September, but right now, I don't feel as though I have a job yet. I have a means to pay my way, and a selection of choices that will help me attain my dream job. I'm in limbo, waiting.
At work number two last night I was cleaning a table when I noticed a former editor of my student newspaper sitting with a friend. "I'm a news producer for Sky", he told me. We exchanged handshakes and comments about the state of our lives, and agreed to organise a Palatinate alumni get-together again at some point. I was enormously impressed with what he had a achieved, and I couldn't help but stop and look at myself, cutlery tray in hand, aching feet and a smelly dishcloth in my waitressing pouch, its wetness slowly seeping through my apron to leave a damp spot.
I went into the back of the restaurant and slowly put some lipstick stained glasses into the machine. I had chosen to be here and I was angry that I had to be. I had a deep, flashing moment of frustration with myself for not taking my place at City immediately out of university. I could have been done by June. I would be a journalist, not an intern-come-cutlery polisher. But this is the path I chose, and the mistakes I made somewhere along the line have contributed to my current exhaustion. Last night, stacking the glasses into the dishwasher, I realised that I had lost the core of what I was even doing there, why I was there in the first place. It was to keep my dream of becoming a journalist alive, I reminded myself. This is what we all have to do. But it had become a robotic existence.
At home, my book lay unfinished, one chapter to go until the end. Three articles that I had offered to write for Time Out were unwritten, with no foreseeable time in which to write them. I don't even have time to eat a meal. A box of as high-calorie food as I can find-polenta, tofu or mushrooms-eaten quickly on the 15 minute bus journey home at 1am. And the endless days in the stuffy Time Out office where I struggle to keep my eyes open and focus on the screen. The feedback from editors, silly mistakes from not proof-reading because my eyes just won't stay open. And when they all received the Time Out card for staff members, a card that entitles you to 50% off dining out and none of the interns did, my first thought was not of exploitation, but instead realised that this would increase customers at the restaurant where I worked.
In perpetuum.
But something shook me out of this self-pitying mess. Something that made me open up my laptop and restart this blog. Compared to other people, my life is easy.
And the following posts, will be their stories.
