I’ve not blogged in ages, mainly because I am chronically aware of how my ramblings affect others these days. I am trying to be more mindful of not looking like a complete crank to the general public. I mean, I am a crank, but I don’t need to advertise my neurosis and chronic overthinking quite as publicly as I do.
Writing this blog is probably a terrible move. Most of my writing is born out of some minor meltdown and is purely cathartic. On the whole, it doesn’t matter if it is read or not. I suspect, in the main, it is not. However, very soon I am to find myself unemployed (not my fault.) The prospect of a potential employer reading this and thinking I am nothing short of certifiable worries me greatly. And yet I continue to waffle on.
It is the uncertainty of what is to come that has prompted me to start typing again. My ‘career’ is barely worthy of the title. Since I first graduated with a degree in Journalism in 2004, I have ping ponged from job to job. When I did my second degree in Leadership and Management (I might as well do my cv whilst I am here. I got a first, by the way, and CMI Charted Manager accreditation. Just in case you want to hire me), the Career Management and Development module jazzed up this chaos by calling it the “Happenstance” approach. I call it undiagnosed neurodivergent impulsivity and a constant need for instant gratification. There was no plan. There never was a plan. There still isn’t.
I’ve always worked, quite simply, because I needed money. For partying and ill advised impulse purchases, in my 20s. For all kinds of baby contraptions, half of which were useless, in my 30s (including £350 on a sleep specialist that didn’t work. Vom.) And now, in my 40s, I need to work because I am a sole income with two rather expensive kids, and I’d quite like us to continue doing the fun stuff. You know, like paying the rent, eating, having electricity… that kind of crazy shit.
Everyone keeps asking me what I would like to do, now I am being made redundant. As if I have numerous options: Club 18-30s rep in Ibiza (is that still a thing?) Investment banker in the Cayman Islands (also not sure if that is a thing?) CEO of a firm providing legal aid to donkey sanctuaries so the donkeys can afford to sue horses for defamation (this is definitely not a thing. I am just very tired so I’ve gone really weird, really quickly.) Whilst people mean well, I’m a 42 year old single parent. I want to pay the bills. I don’t have the luxury of starting afresh at the bottom of the ladder in a new career, as much as I would love to. Not least because affordable housing is a real issue in the UK; £1500 a month in rent for your average 3 bed semi in my area of Liverpool. Obscene. And no. I don’t live in one.
I’m not driven by money. If I was, I’d have some, obvs. I did train in a ‘proper’ career but I was terrible and I hated it. In 2004, I had one single, solitary interview for a journalism role that went so badly I cried the entire way home (45 mins.) I vowed never, ever to apply for anything journalistic ever again. And I didn’t. My confidence was so shattered that I never applied for anything related to writing or communication ever again. That was it. Game over.
So now I have ended up here, with 20 years experience of working in a range of finance roles. I now have to find a job and it is probably going to end up being in finance again, because I have absolutely no experience of anything else. And I fucking hated maths at school. I’ll be seeing myself out to retirement (aka my funeral) in an area that could not be further from my childhood, even grown up, dreams. You know, the ones where I write novels of note. Where I can hold a thread together long enough for it to be a coherent storyline, and a storyline people want to read at that. Where I write in a quaint little cottage, overlooking a lake, and sign books in Pritchards bookshop in Crosby village, and people I went to school with think “Jemma Gilbertson was always going to do that. She was always good at that.”
I have a child who will be starting high school in September and my heart goes out to him. There is so much pressure to get to 16 and know where you are going. In five years time, he is expected to have an idea of where his life will go. He won’t even develop a prefrontal cortex until 2039. How is he meant to decide what he wants to do before 2030? What support do we give these kids? How do we show them how to map their lives out so they don’t end up 42, struggling to figure out where they are going in life?
It’s such enormous pressure and I would do things so differently. I’d not have let my lack of confidence dictate what role I went for next. I’d not just look for a job so I could afford to go out on Saturday night or have a baby (I hardly go out and I am DEFINITELY not having any more babies.)
I hope my boys find it all so much easier than I did. I hope they don’t end up in my position: relying on what is fairly extensive experience, but in an industry that doesn’t set their world on fire, in the hope they can match their salary.
I can only guide them as best I can as I try and figure my own shit out. But in the meantime, as a fellow moustachioed Scouser* once said, “Giz a job.”
*yes, I know Bernard Hill wasn’t a Scouser in real life but we do have similar facial hair and it was set in Liverpool.
The Jeminist 