It’s Thursday already…
An essay on career angst.
But how can it possibly be? And in June, no less. In 2025. Which still sounds like a positively ridiculous and absolutely made-up year to my ears, despite being practically halfway through it, now. I’m trying to figure out just where all of my time goes. I think it has something to do with the routines I now engage in. As most Jeremy’s Journal readers are painfully aware, in my year as the Acting Representative South African Au Pair to the City of Berlin, my days were wildly different from one to the next. I did have little routines; I woke up at ten to seven every day, dragged my dishevelled person across the foyer and into the bathroom, where I first washed my face, then brushed my teeth and, finally, applied sunscreen. These small rhythms, though, did little to induce a feeling of homogeneity in my day-to-day life. Whether there were craftsmen in the house replacing the living room window at a quarter to eight in the morning, or if snow had fallen overnight and a relatively simple walk home from kindergarten turned into an adventure, I felt as though I were a hiker in the alps—slowly and consciously ascending and then descending each day of the week, only to arrive at the weekend, looking back at the journey I’d travelled, enjoying a well-deserved rest (and maybe a beer). Now, I have left the Alps far behind me and have stepped into an intergalactic vessel that travels faster than light, and only once we exit the wormhole after work on a Friday evening, do I become aware that the points of light visible through my windshield which had slowly stretched like taffy as we zoomed passed them, were, in fact, Tuesday through Thursday, and I have quite miraculously found myself blinking at the weekend without knowing how I’ve gotten here or what destruction drifts in my wake.
This, of course, leaves me with a pile of laundry I haven’t quite finished folding, a closet that is a little less than organised, a mail to my canoeing course that I should have sent weeks ago sitting in my drafts folder. My intention was to do these tasks throughout the week, as I did during my tenure as the ARSAAPCB, but when one experiences no week due to warp drive time dilation, when does one do all of these things? I must remember to be grateful for my starship, of course. I have forgotten just how many nights I lay in bed, distraught at the prospect of dragging a five-year-old to the swimming lesson he hated and then continuing to amuse him for forty-five minutes while his older brother attended the successive class for yet another week. I longed, I wished, I prayed for a boring nine-to-five. Four months later, I’m still trying to decode just what I wished for, and whether I should have wished to inherit an excruciatingly large sum of money instead (though I imagine that comes with its own unique subset of headaches, like tax and the jewellery I’d have to buy my girlfriend).
In my frequent and heady bouts of self-reflection, I have been trying to unpick the particular cause of my dissatisfaction. One theory is that I just have less free (or flexible) time now. Twice a week I’d escort the oldest au pair kid to soccer practice and sit on a nearby bench for the entirety of the ninety-minute training session. I’d read or listen to an audiobook. On occasion, I’d call a friend and I think once I watched most of a movie. I was on the clock the whole time, mind you. This, along with zero commute and a thirty(ish) hour work week left me with a little more personal time. Even when I was working, I could mostly check my phone whenever I liked, or pop in an earphone and listen to music while I packed the dishwasher. My days are far more rigid now (also a facet of work I longed for; there’s no checking out at exactly eight in the evening when you’ve missed the bus because the littlest lamb dawdled on the walk home from the swimming pool); I commute for about an hour every day, mobile phone usage is (understandably) frowned upon at work. The biggest difficulty to face is the limited free time I have in the evenings. After knocking off at six and walking to the station, if I time everything right, I’ll be home around twenty to seven. After dinner and washing the dishes, that puts me at about seven, maybe seven-thirty. Then I’ve got three hours to relax, engage in hobbies, do chores around the house. Most evenings I only manage to do one of those (and it rhymes with schmetflix).
Another theory has to do with the actual work itself. I’m very happy to be in the job I’m in at the moment; it is far superior to any other realistic options I had. I work at a small company, where I am the only person of any marketing or visual communication qualification. As such, I work closely with the bosses, have relative creative freedom and am in the process of earning trust (and therefore independence). I am, however, the first employee of my kind in this company, which is reflected in my paycheck (as is the fact that this is my first serious career venture). My bosses also have no clue about creative work, such as how much time each task requires. They also seemingly have little interest in pushing creative boundaries, which often relegates me to the laptop monkey, instead of the Photographer and Marketing Strategist(yes, this is my real title; cool, right?) All this to say that the work isn’t bad, it just isn’t particularly exciting. I helped a friend out with a commercial photoshoot a few weeks ago: I had total creative freedom, full (and unearned) trust straight off the bat; I worked alongside other creatives and we got to exchange lots of complicated, obnoxious shorthand about lenses and discuss whether the mood created by a certain piece of architecture in the background was quite right. That work was electric.
Somehow, it felt fair to me that the au pair work was boring and occasionally awfully trying because it was just as flexible. At least I had time to myself. The hyper-creative photography was terribly time-consuming, the crew showed up half an hour late and I was only given lunch at five. I’d do it again tomorrow. Somehow, having a whirlwind week, barely finding time to fit in the mundanities of life because my work keeps me so creatively engaged feels justified. And, when the work is boring and repetitive, a larger slice of personal time pie feels right, too. Right now, I’m seemingly somewhere in the middle; doing marginally creative work that takes up most of my time. I have yet to overanalyse why, but I can’t stand it. It makes me want to lock myself away in my room each night and frantically work on my next project of creative genius so that I can deliver myself from this predicament. But then, maybe that’s the idea…
I’m afraid I used all my wit in conjuring this week’s journal, so no quippy one-liner for you this time. If you enjoyed this journal, please subscribe.