Happy 2009...
I'm hoping for a year of new opportunities work- and location-wise, having spent the most part of last year unemployed and trundling through the world, seemingly leaking money out of my backpack; then after that just unemployed, without the backpack. Looking at my CV, which lists a string of random jobs never lasting longer than six months, I think it's time to focus on doing something I might actually want to do long-term -- such as magazine publishing, something travel- or art-related, or professional crocodile wrestling.
An appropriate New Year’s resolution would probably be to blog more than once every two months, and maybe even post some photos… But my camera’s gone into early retirement and demanding of myself to write more is just not going to work. New Year’s resolutions are mind games, really, and my mind is too simple… I do have one solitary resolution though, and only because I’m likely to achieve it. I’ve set myself the goal of paying off all my debts (two considerable overdrafts and a hot little student loan, plus a tidy sum owed to my parents) before my 24th birthday in May. I’m going to do it or die trying -- I’m putting myself through a job that I always imagined I was too good for (oh how the mighty have fallen) -- not quite prostitution, but being a call centre minion. They call me an ‘agent’, but even that glorious title isn't quite going to hold me for more than six months I reckon. Give me four months tops...
I expect to be shouted at a lot, but I have a fair bit of experience of this after working the phones in a luxury 5-star hotel and a top-notch academic publisher. Rich people and academic brainiacs are spectacularly grumpy and evil for some reason. In German giving someone a right royal blocking is called ‘to make someone into a snail’. I’m going to be getting calls from Germans, so I was practising telling them not to make me into a snail, but I’ve now been warned I’m more likely to get rude calls from Brits, who will generally ask to speak to the manager within the first five minutes of the call. That suits me just fine actually, and my manager is going to be a busy man. But we will see –- Germans are famous for their rudeness, so I may soon be a snail wearing a headset.
See you in approx. two months.
