Every day without work is a day of judgement. No money made, nothing proved. Who are these writers who read and write for hours a day without feeling guilty? Who pays the mortgage while they sit and refine their sentences? I miss my mother, though most mornings her old sayings still know where to find me: pull yourself together! Take some responsibility! You know our money won’t last you the rest of your life, don’t you? Why are you wasting your time in church?
LinkedIn job spam beeps in my inbox. Marketing executive. Content strategist. Brand storyteller. Customer success. Business development. I tailor my CV. I send it to universities, agencies, charities, shops with no joy. I join the council’s temp-job database. I don’t get the cleaning jobs. I go into a recruitment office and the man says I’m the third guy today to come in saying the same about AI. He says there’s an admin job available with a business in Hellesdon. Nine to five. But it’s really low-level, he says, you’re over-qualified. I could do that, I say, and straight away feel myself squirming out of it.
I’ve avoided working near other people for twenty-five years. The ones who sent me work and paid me were names in inboxes. I never spoke to them and don’t know where they are now. It’s my own fault, I think. I was never proactive. I was behind the curve. I didn’t pivot in time. I didn’t learn new skills, never networked.
You thought it would last. Now they’ve all moved on. It’s a fast-moving world after all, you should have known that from all the business texts you translated and from how quickly the industry was being automated.
On the way to the pool near the office buildings I pass corporate people wearing lanyards and wonder how they do it. What are all these jobs and how did they get them? How do they bear the same place and people day after day? They seem pretty happy when they talk to each other. Are they acting? When I overhear the men in the locker room talking about their careers and families, I admire them. But surely we were made for something more?
Notes from a Room 