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‘Sail away with me honey, put my heart in your hands’ David Gray – Sail Away

I spent the 6 hours I was in the office yesterday, looking for another job. A meeting with Pete and the rest of the content team at 9:30 revealed that I have nothing to do, hence the permission to surf the net until the staff meeting and then go home. I will be leaving at 2ish every day this week, except for today and tomorrow as I am already at home. There is literally nothing for me to do, so I don’t have to turn up. It’s nice in an unsettling way.

So I searched and searched, registered and filled in online CVs. And in all my searching and registering I learnt one thing. There is nothing in the publishing sector in Newcastle. Literally sweet fa. Which is disheartening. Oh if I lived in London there were hundreds of jobs I could not only apply for, but also do & do well. But I live up here, in a publishing void.

Which is what clearly worries Duncan. He thinks that his unwillingness to leave Newcastle and move to London is holding me back from being happy. And it doesn’t seem to matter how much I tell him that I don’t want to be in London & doing that commute every day from our expensive little flat in a dodgy area to the centre of a pollution-filled & terrorist-targeted city, he won’t believe me. He thinks I’m unhappy and he blames himself. Which is quite frankly just crazy. I would rather be unemployed in Newcastle with him than back in London on my own, which sounds pathetically romantic in some way, but still.

It’s not the thought of leaving my job that bothers me. How could it? I’ve been after leaving for a while now, the drive alone is enough to reduce a grown woman to tears once in a while. But it’s not that that makes me feel slightly melancholy. It’s the potential loss of the dream.

When I was in school all I wanted to be when I grew up was a clothes designer. Nothing horrendously famous, just a designer. I held onto this dream for years, drawing when I could and entering the Lloyds Bank Fashion Challenge every year. But then I did my A-level Art and my art teacher took every ounce of confidence out of me with respect to my work. He told me I was useless at art and didn’t have the temperament to be a designer (I’m not sure quite what this temperament is, but still, I didn’t have it). I was 17 and he destroyed my dream by failing me. So I looked for the next dream and when one night, whilst drinking in my favourite pub, someone asked me what I would do when I finished university, I announced I would be a journalist. It hadn’t occured to me at that point, but it seemed like a damn good idea. I loved reading, writing, researching, so a journalist seemed a good idea. I did my degree and headed on out. I never expected to land my dream job (which is good, as I didn’t) but I hoped that through sheer determination I could prove myself. I couldn’t afford to stay at college and take a formal qualification, but some companies have been known to pay for you to do that. That was what I was aiming for. And then TMD came along. And they offer a 16 week course. I could never afford to do it (£3,200+VAT) but if you work for them, you don’t have to pay. That was the break I was looking for. That was why I sticking out the boring job, for the chance to do what I wanted to do. But now, assuming there will be no miracle intervention, it looks like I can’t even do that. Instead I will apply for marketing/press roles or admin roles if I start to get desperate. And the dream of being a journo seems to slip through my fingers, just when I was thinking that it could be possible after all. And that’s what I’m having a hard time dealing with.

Until there is a next time…

xx