Have to admit it, I am feeling a bit lost in life. I think I need a certain amount of moving on, if not quite Getting On.
It’s been 14 years now in this room. A perfectly lovely bedsitting room, in a very lovely part of North London. And at least I don’t have to play the whole communal living game, arguing murderously over whose hummus is whose. But after 14 years in the same place, and at the same hand-to-lipbalmed-mouth level, I finally want to try living somewhere with my own bathroom. Call me greedy. So I guess this means Work.
But what do I want to be if I grow up? Whenever I look at the Recruiting section of newspapers, I feel utterly in the wrong universe.
There’s a pull-out supplement in this week’s New Statesman, comprising a round table discussion about the commissioning of public services. For me it may as well be written in Klingon. ‘Cross-sector commissioning for effective service delivery’. ‘Our experience includes the implementation of procurement and contracting models.’ ‘Consulting > Solutions > Outsourcing.’
A sample sentence:
‘If you deliver healthcare to somebody…’
Yep, got that.
‘…and they see it as something over which they have no control or have no engagement with…’
Yes, still understanding that. Just about.
‘…there will be a disconnect between the two ends.’
Pardon? This isn’t even a written piece: it’s a transcription of a discussion. That there are so many people in Real Life who regularly speak like this makes me feel like I really am from a different planet.
But I realise it’s me that’s the weird one. I feel a disconnect between my two ends. My reality consultancy has been well and truly outsourced. I need a procurement of ‘solutions’ in my own life. Barman! Can I procure a double Solutions and tonic?
So I guess it’s pointless applying for conventional jobs. At 36, with zero money and next to zero normal career experience, I’ve not so much hit Rock Bottom as hit Rock Sideways. I’ve joked haughtily before that my CV has one sentence on it: ‘Don’t you know who I am?’
But when it comes to things like ‘experience’, what can you say about the experience of being interviewed as a Blogging Dandy by newspapers in Holland and Sweden? Of being known as Shane MacGowan’s New Romantic Butler (not entirely true, but there’s no Black Sobranie smoke without fire)?
I could try pitching a Dickon-style column to selected publications. But if they want an Everyman-ish take on life, they’ve had it with me. I can’t do the Everyman. Those columnists who play to the gallery: how all men are like this, all women are like that, and how politician X or party Y is being typically foolish / wise (delete as applicable); that really isn’t me.
And those columnists who write in a permanent Everyman shrug, what’s all that about, eh?
It’s true I’ve slightly but irrevocably slipped out of the Real World. I suppose this is both my failing and my strength, and is presumably why several thousand people I don’t know are reading this diary.
So I remain optimistic for what happens next. Even the out-of-place can find their place.
