I
am writing this blog post in a lovely café in Dublin. It is a Friday afternoon. There is
nowhere else I should be at this moment. How did I get here? Let’s find out…
Symptoms
I’ve been bothered with in the last few years that my doctors potentially
attributed to stress:
Insomnia
Nightmares
Hyperactivity
Inactivity
Reduced
attention span
Bad
temper
Recurring
sore throat
Strep
throat
Chest
infection
Skin
infection
Dermatitis
Dermatitis
Eye
infection
Post-viral
bronchial hypersensitivity
Nasal
drip
Globus
sensation
Beard
alopecia
... and hypochondria
Things
that have made me stressed at various times in the last few years:
Money
worries (twenty years of…)
Feeling
lonely
Feeling
antisocial
Being
too bored
Being
too busy
Being
both at the same time
Feeling
overstretched
Feeling
like an underachiever
Not
knowing what I want to do when I grow up (except be a writer which hasn’t really
worked out…)
These
circumstances were, to put it mildly, unsustainable, so I decided to make a
positive step towards change. If this post starts to read like a self-help book;
good, that’s what I want. I read one
of those things for the first time recently and it was the absolute worst kind
of tosh. I can do better. I think only people who are unsuccessful should write
them anyway, that’s much more fun.
I
was having no luck with the conventional method of looking for a new job (let
alone any enjoyable or rewarding employment). By ‘no luck’ I mean literally no
response at all to dozens of applications over several years, and certainly no
interviews. On the day I went to collect my Masters certificate I did the
sensible thing graduates should so and I spoke to a careers advisor. I was something
of an unknown quantity: in my mid-thirties, working in publishing, minor advertising
experience, DJing and event hosting on the side as a poorly-paid but successful
labour of love, but ultimately craving to make my living as a writer. The advisor
was honest. ‘I don’t know much about this whole world you’re in, really,’ he
admitted, referring to the ‘jack of all trades’ banter I had given him. ‘But it
strikes me that hosting the launch party for an international festival should
probably be on the first page of your CV and not under ‘Other achievements’.
In
the end I came away from the meeting with two important ideas in my head:
1.
I
should have a skills-based CV, not a regular employment CV. (I’d never heard of
a skills-based CV before).
2.
I
should stop looking for a job, and start looking for work.
The
idea of freelancing presented itself, and there followed a series of happy and fortunately-timed
events that brought the possibility closer to reality:
I finished paying for my MA.
I finished paying for my BA (fourteen years
after graduation).
I moved in with my partner after living alone
for six years.
My bank loan was due its annual holiday.
My partner gave up freelancing and took a
full-time position worthy of his talents.
Crucially
though, the fear of whether I could make a go of life as a freelancer was
outweighed by the stress of carrying on as I was. We had already booked to
spend Christmas in Melbourne. Figuring there was no better way to book-end a big
life change than by going to the other side of the world, I gave notice on the
job that I had said yes to in April 2001, and packed my suitcase.
