Mistakes.

Today, most of the people I started university with got their final degree classifications (well done everyone!) and I had a job interview. So the buzzword for the day really has been all about careers and lives and like ... the future and stuff. You know, that massive dark cloud of uncertainty, fear and despair hanging over my entire generation?

It got me thinking about what makes a good career, a good life, and whether there is a formula for success.

Career-wise, whenever successful people and celebrities are interviewed on TV about their careers, they always seem to say that they just fell into it. ‘Lucky bastards’ I used to wail in my head. ‘Don’t be so modest; stop pretending that everything in your life was so unexpected. Give me the key, the EXACT WAY you got your EXACT LIFE.’ These days I tend to think that they were probably telling the truth. Few people do exactly what they wanted to do when they were in school. I also think that it’s a good thing there isn’t a key, because I don’t really want to be Sporty Spice any more. My 9 year old self could have fast-tracked me on to X-Factor by now … ew. 

This last year, things didn’t turn out the way I had planned. All my deliberation and reasoning around my decision to leave New York circled around the idea of thinking about not just what I want now, but what is best in the LONG RUN. Whether or not in 10 years’ time, I would look back and think that I was stupid to leave.

But I’m not sure that this is necessarily the right way to look at things. The more time that passes since I left, the smaller the event seems. As more stuff happens, that decision becomes less and less relevant to my life. I think in general, in the actual ‘long run’, things matter less. Getting over the initial hurdle of rearranging your life is a big deal, but I reckon that individual moments are, as a rule, rather insignificant in our lives. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t scrutinize and think long and hard about big decisions that we make. -Actually, yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. If it’s the best move at the time, worrying about whether it will still be the best move in ten years’ time is silly, because it ten years’ time it will be in the past. I'm so bored of second guessing my 30 year old self. That’s why left New York. And why I got a tattoo.

It’s pretty much a standard assumption that last year I made a ‘mistake’, giving up an exciting and important career opportunity. My decision has been one I’ve never publicly justified, and one I don’t defend a lot even in private. I think I need to, because I don’t regret it and I really don’t want people to think that I do, or to feel sorry for me.

I think mistakes (if you want to call them that. Although I prefer the term 'detours') are great. They make life more interesting, they make you more interesting, and they keep you on your toes. I hope I make many more. Working consistently within the realms of the reasonable, safe and practical can, I suspect, lead to more regret than a few unexpected debts or compromised living situations. I refuse to be submissive to some fictional, world-weary middle aged version of myself. One who everyone seems to be trying to convince me will be disapproving and regretful of all the irresponsible actions I make that stop me getting a respectable career. People have been warning me of her inevitable arrival since I first sat in a GCSE classroom. At what point do I begin to turn into this killjoy future-me? Probably about the same time I start answering to her.

I suppose what I’m saying is, in the wake of this imposing dark cloud, full of unemployment statistics, living wage figures, pay gaps and Ian Duncan Smith, I refuse to go corporate out of fear. 

No I Will Not Grow Up, Mum

The other day, I told my mum that I wanted to run away from New York and go back home, because the city isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and my job is massive pile of corporate EW. She told me to grit my teeth and get used to it; there’s nothing actually badly wrong, it’s not forever and, in all fairness, I’ve had it pretty cushtie up 'til now - I have to grow up and face the real world some time.

This is all, ostensibly, true. I can’t give one factual, unemotional reason as to why I should definitely be at home right now and not in my blazer and pencil skirt in my central midtown job. In fact, saying that I’ve had it cushtie up until now implies that my current situation is a decrease in circumstances, which it most certainly is not. Career-wise, I have gone from speaking to graduates on the phone about library buildings and to eccentric London folk about old coins, to speaking to executives and directors of an array of international companies about … well nothing much. Their chat is shit. And this is where dear mother, at the risk of sounding like a bad teenage record stuck at 1968, I have to disagree with your sage advice. I will not grow up, and as for ‘the real world’, well that’s just a ridiculous concept that icky people like David Cameron and George Osborne use in suspect rhetoric about union strikes and NHS cuts. It’s a semantic device employed by people when they want to make an opposite point of view look absurd. I mean, nothing could undermine the notion of reality more really, than the implication that there’s a second, superior and intangible universe operating within wider society, that only people that hate their jobs are a part of. I’ll continue in my blissful muggle ways if you don’t mind.

When I first arrived in the states, before I found a house, I was staying in hostels. In these places a high number of my dorm-buddies were permanent travellers, who at 23, 26, 28 had not yet ‘settled down’, and had no plans to. I’m not advocating this as a permanent lifestyle, and I doubt they would either, but my point is they were still adults. They still had an amazing amount of experience under their belts, and all taught me loads. And they were very, very happy. Despite the fact that I am and adult, I’m also young, and it’s almost inevitable that I’m going to make mistakes. Although, I think that’s what you’re meant to say after you’ve made a mistake. It’s probably not the same to use it as justification for doing something that you’re pretty sure is going to turn out later to be a mistake. Which seems to be what I do. I’ve let myself skip school, drink too much, smoke, treat boys badly, jump of high things and so much more, purely by saying to myself before-hand ‘well, we all make mistakes!’ in the same off-hand tone someone might say ‘well, it is fair-trade!’ to justify spending £5 on a tub of Ben & Jerry’s. There might have to be a cut-off point one day. This may not be a practicable system for life. 

It’s funny really that I’m feeling so homesick for England and tired of New York, because there’s probably something of an American influence at play in my sudden, sentimental desire to drop everything and run. It’s not very reminiscent of the British stiff upper lip; the culture that I miss so much. Ironically, it’s probably in part the Romantic, openly emotional side of American culture having an effect on me that’s made me frank, sincere and dramatic enough to see upping and leaving the country as a viable option.

And, in all fairness, I can’t say I’ve been putting maximum effort into fitting in. Being Englishly reserved and reasonably unwilling to talk to strangers is a general handicap, but it’s one that I’ve not been particularly active in trying to rectify. A slightly moody, reclusive version of myself is emerging, one that doesn’t have very much interest at all in making friends in this ludicrous city, where no one has a washing machine or t.v. but nearly everyone has a really small dog which they actually carry around in a bag (I know, I thought it was only Paris Hilton too). But if that’s what it’s doing to me, why should I make the effort to stay? I’m a nicer person in England. So yes, it’s all on me. I do not blame you, New York City, but I want to come home. The corporate environment is no place for a girl like me. And if I’m going to do something I later regret, now is the time. Sylvia Plath ditched it all in, and she did alright …

oh, wait …