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. 

Today I Made a Boo Boo at Work

The title of today’s post is but one more in an ever-increasing line of examples demonstrating that I am not mature enough be to working in a grown-up environment. (Some others include me having my own fist-bump with the UPS man and screaming loudly in the lobby when the doorman gets me into the elevato-LIFT!  Sorry, lift – last minute.) 

Today I did something I feel I have to share to deflate the bubble of awkward swelling in my head. Because at the moment, I feel a bit like you do when you’re on your own and you fall down in the street. There’s nobody with you to help you up and share in your misfortune, so you have to just furtively sneak back on your feet. People walking past can’t laugh at you, because let’s face it, it’s London; they wouldn’t stop if you were David Cameron (in nocturnal reptile form) standing in the middle of Westminster Bridge, shooting fire out of your eyes, screaming ‘desist in your futile pursuits humanfolk, the end is nigh!’, while flickering your black lizard-tongue Anthony Hopkins style over your next prey. So you can either be the weirdo who just stacked it in the road and hopes nobody saw, or the weirdo who is laughing wildly to themselves in public. You hope to at least catch the eye of someone who’s slightly amused, otherwise you just have to keep on walking, hiding your red face until you’re pretty sure everyone around you is a new stranger that didn’t see you trip 10 minutes ago.  Anyway, I digress.

So this morning, I’m leaving a voicemail for some important executive at some big investment firm. This guy doesn’t have an assistant, so it’s not my usual girl-to-girl ‘can our CEO come play with your managing director for an hour or so next month? No, of course he can come here, we would be happy to have him. They get on so well together after all, don’t they?’ Instead, I’m leaving a message directly for this actual man, and I’m probably getting ever so slightly tongue-tied. Anyway, I’m nearly at the end of my message. Leaving my contact details, almost home and dry. Just got to sign off and hang up. And what do I say?

‘bye bye’

Yes, ‘bye-bye’. Not the formal, sophisticated ‘goodbye’, or the quick, simple ‘bye’, both of which would have been fine. And not even the slightly twatty ‘bu-bye’ which, when not suffixed by ‘now’ or ‘darling’ or both of those, is passable. No. I hadn’t decided on a sign off, and while my brain was passing me the one syllable ‘bye’, my mouth had clearly prepared itself for the whole two syllables, and was unstoppable after the first. The result of which was that I put equal emphasis on both ‘bye’s, ending this train-wreck of a voicemail with an expression last used in the plural, voiced by Toyah Willcox and prefixed with the phrase ‘time for tubby-’

‘Uh-oh!’

So there’s my verbal stack in the street. And with it another name is added to this list of powerful New York businessmen who have probably stopped returning my company’s calls on my account. Unfortunately I couldn’t share it with my adult worker type ‘colleagues’ because they wouldn’t laugh. I’m therefore sharing it here.  Let it serve as further substantiation of my immaturity, awkwardness and whimsy which will one day earn me the official government classification ‘unfit for office’.

Although, while we’re on the subject of phrasing...

I have to deal every day with Americans using ridiculous lexical inventions like ‘FYI’, ‘going forward’, ‘diarize’ and ‘vaca’ without a hint of sarcasm in their tone. It’s hard for me to accept this and continue as if nothing absurd or laughable has just happened. Just saying. I feel like I’m in an episode of some naturalistic satirical* comedy like ‘Veep’ or ‘The Office’.  

*Is that an oxymoron? Comments please nerd-types.