Fitting in and not fitting in

That's me in the corner

I started this blog in 2008 because at the time I was working in an agency that I didn't like, and it seemed like a good way to let off steam. That's why I wrote it anonymously. It gave me a good feeling, the feeling you get from reclaiming the truthful part of your personality that you have to suppress when you're doing work that you don't like for people that you don't like. When I eventually got made redundant it was a blessed relief.

So, after a stint at Shepherds Bush job centre, nearly two years as freelancer, and some more higher education, I got this full-time job. I don't want to go on and on about it, but I like the place I work.

I know I know: 'You've changed GC. Shilling for the man GC. Just another happy, ordinary stiff huh? Bet you're thinking about moving to Hackney and getting a mortgage on some sort of warehouse conversion so you can ride home on your fixie bike for organic soup at lunch time.''

Well maybe I am right? And maybe I don't have to take that kind of shit from you. You're not the boss of me. No, not you or anyone.

But this, this is why I haven't been blogging.

I always think about the impulse to make things in economic terms.

It's like you have a budget and all of it always gets spent.

You have a degree of choice about what it's spent on, but there are certain things you can do that mean you have to surrender that choice. Also, if you don't choose where you're going to spend it, it ends up getting spent for you.

So, for instance, you're a writer and you decide that writing fiction is too boring and difficult and no one reads any more anyway so you stop doing it. Only then you find you start writing yourself notes, lists of things to do, shopping lists, diary entries and as time goes by you  write more and more of them, and their tone becomes increasingly hectoring and unforgiving. Until eventually you start thinking that maybe you should have another go at writing a book, that perhaps that actually is the least painful option.

If you're not tapping it off, it comes out sideways.

I've written for the Modern Scoutmaster, scathingly, about agencies that have toys in them. I think  I got this wrong.

What a good agency does, or should do, is to make you feel like it's ok to bring all of yourself into work. And what the dodgems, the meadow-grass lined conference call room and the space hoppers signify is that there's room for everything. It's the only way to domesticate a lot of sociopaths, so that they'll stop cutting themselves for fun and start selling mobile phone call plans for you.

So, what I'm saying, is that yeah I haven't been blogging, but that that's good, and that if you were my real friends you'd be pleased for me ok.