How long is it to “I’ve got my foot on the ladder”?
When you start considering other career options just so you can inch closer to the city you love, to do the job you love, you have to wonder if it’s going a bit wrong; if you’re lacking in direction. But then again, if you consider the average number of jobs people go through (suggested at over 10 in a lifetime), this doesn’t seem like such a big deal. And given journalism as my chosen profession…
So far in my short life I can count cinema worker, project support administrator, contracts and CRM administrator, call centre worker, cutlery seller, part time consultant and telesales person as my sources of income. And now, journalist. Well, no one has paid for my mind yet, or my words as its representative so I guess I’m only a pretend journalist. Not saying that they were all career options for me but sometimes having so many reincarnations makes it pretty hard to represent your best skills on a CV.
Looking ahead the future seems a little bleak. No, that’s not really true. It’s more like bleary. Somewhere in the distant, the token to my type lies shining in the eternal sunshine and the yellow brick road is obscured.
There are two things that come to mind about the last nine months of my rebirth, my learning journey. The first of these is no one (that I’ve met), who has a full-time position at a national publication is under the age of 26, and even then they might still be taking shifts at multiple publications. This makes me want to slap my forehead in despair. Mostly with concern about what I’m going to do between now and the three years it’s going to take me to reach 26, when I already feel like my mental age is somewhere in the mid 30s.
The second is “write what you know”. This second terrifies me. Just what do I know? Aside from being a self-assured know it all, I’m not sure I know anything. Justified true belief points only to my mind, the feelings and thoughts inside; nothing else. Should I be devouring an encyclopedia rather than literary classics? Because reading the work of real journalists, I am constantly awed by the tit bits that they throw in on the side. Sometimes I do wonder how long they had to wait to instil their bit of wisdom into something completely unrelated just to show their wit.
But really, deciphering what you really know is pretty hard; and I see a real probability of knowing a little of everything and a whole lot about nothing. Turning my attention to food journalism, what I had pinpointed as my passion under my last strategy review, I can’t help but feel under qualified. Despite being an avid and competent cook, it’s nothing compared to stints as a professional chef which seems to be true of most food journalists. Then again, there are those, like Lennie Nash, who are heading in the opposite direction. I may have over generalised in my desperate push to replace my sandwiches with steaks. So which way to go?
Right now though, it just seems like an awful long way from anywhere.
