Fifteen frightening months
When things aren’t going anywhere I sit around bored to tears and convince myself that I am capable of so much more. And yet when things do finally start grinding forwards I am filled with terror because I am convinced that I am actually incapable of any of it.
posted by Benjamin Nakizo @ 4:27 pm
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My current dissatisfaction is a rather unfortunate side effect of last weekend. I met up with an old housemate of mine from Essex. An old housemate who had just come back from a week in New York – on business. At university he was one of these irritatingly gifted people who, inexcusably, had a knack of working very, very hard. So it is no surprise that not only does he actually have a career, but also that it is going full steam ahead, and that experiences, and riches, are quickly mounting up for him. It really couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. I will grant myself the half dignity of saying that what I felt wasn’t jealousy, but more a dawning realisation of how very little I have achieved in the last two years.
So last week I decided, since Starbucks was finally losing its novelty and my life seemed depressingly stale, that I needed to at least make a show of lobbing a few hopeful long balls towards goal. I’ve noticed that ‘the grand plan’ has one major flaw. It means achieving, and earning, very little for the next fifteen months. The end result – a place on a pgde teaching course is also far from secure. In order to be sure of its attainment I need to do what I hate – I need to boost my CV – deliberately. There is nothing quite so shallow as seeing a child helping out at a charity simply because it will look good on a CV. Yet it is depressingly obvious that without these blatant appeals to self-interest most of the good things in this world would never happen. As it stands I have zero experience when it comes to teaching or working with children so I have a lot of volunteering to do.
So I shot off some hopeful emails to various organisations and have received some encouraging replies. I have a meeting with one of them this Wednesday and seem set to spend some time with another later on in the year. I’ll say more as and when things get moving. Luckily the two organisations are quite closely linked to my interests and so I do have some genuine desire to assist, thereby making the exercise a little less cynical than it otherwise would be.
Looking at what options are open to me has made me realise that there is a flip side to these fifteen months of career stagnation. And that is that most people would kill for fifteen months away from their jobs and with minimal responsibilities. People daydream of what they could do, of the ambitions they could pursue if only given the chance. Well, I have that chance right now.
And rather than seeing these fifteen months as the doldrums I should attempt to see it as the opportunity that it really is. And to do that I need spend more of my time being terrified.
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