Being an Astronaut, that most clichéd of youthful ambition, never appealed to me. I think I said it once, in some school torture session (read: Speaking Out Loud In Assembly) after I’d been asked a surprising, straight question.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
I remember, sort of, being completely stumped. There I was, some young kid who’d been specially chosen for his ability to not always come off like a thick cunt when questioned, unable to answer the one thing that every child should never shut up about. The only future I’d ever known I’d want was University, and I didn’t know why I wanted that either. So I’d plumped for Astronaut, and prayed to a God that I now know doesn’t exist that there would be no more follow up questions. I don’t remember if there was or not. I’d probably fainted by that point.
So, I have no recollection of what I wanted to be when I was younger, apart from the obvious ‘Footballer, General Sports Star, Modestly Realistic Ambition’ scale that every young male goes through before they get to wrestle with puberty. There was something appealing about going into Dentistry, which I can’t explain and subsequently never happened. I bought a Bass Guitar when I was about 15 and played it ’til my fingers bled, dreaming of being a rock star and shagging everything with a pulse. Sadly, my fingers began to bleed almost immediately and I just went back to my other main hobby, wanking.
I know when I was sixteen or so I flirted with the idea of being some sort of journalist, but the realisation that any sort of phone-call cripples my communicative ability kinda put the blocks on that. I could imagine, on my first day working for the local newspaper, being shoved on the phone with some sort of important, influential public figure on the other end and I’d just sit and weep softly into the handset like it was the shoulder of a loved one at a time of bereavement. Hunter S. Thompson, I would not be.
“I’m s-s-s-so sorry” I’d sniff down the phone line, stammering every word like a nervous hick surrounded by fire.
“I j-j-just can’t d-do this…” and I’d slam the receiver down and run out of the office, leaving Mr Peter Andre even more puzzled than he usually is.
“Hello?” he’d be saying repeatedly, for weeks, until either hunger or his publicist pulled him out of his misery. I’d be a complete fucking failure.
Various other aspirational ideas fluttered around my young mind, conjuring up thoughts of sustained careers and lofty goals, but I was lazy and only very minimal amounts of work was put in to any of these. College was fun, but I don’t remember learning anything useful there, and by the time Uni rolled around I realised I probably wouldn’t benefit and couldn’t afford it anyway. So I got an office job. I’m still in an office job. I’m grateful I have it, and all of that, but gosh darn, I hate working in an office. The act of getting up early every day, dragging myself in just to sit at a computer and slowly murder a perfectly good keyboard just isn’t something I want to do for the rest of my life. I can break my own computer equipment, thank you very much, and the end result will usually be a bit more fun.
Recently (well, for the last few years) I’ve desperately enjoyed creative writing, and I’d like to turn that into some sort of career. This might be strongly linked to my ‘Journalist’ plans, only without any of the added ‘suicide’ that every important meeting would cause. Except, there’s a problem with me wanting to turn ‘writing’ into a ‘career’. I have no idea how to even take a single step towards earning money from it and, worse, I don’t know what sort of writer I want to be.
Writing things down, to me, comes fairly easily. I’m not saying the final product is any good, but I can happily spew out a few pages of related words whenever I feel like it and I enjoy doing it enough to carry on even though everything I write just ends up in a massive black hole called The Internet. I like starting off with a tiny little idea or story point, and building off it, throwing ideas at it and seeing what sticks. Then I try to put bits that fall off to use somewhere else. Constructing an elaborate story or ‘article’ from a brief flash of inspiration is one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.
Writing, to me, is fucking awesome.
So, what could I write?
A book? Yes, I could write a book. I have done. Writing it was easy. Couldn’t have been simpler if I’d been copying it from a textbook in front of me. Editing it, however, has been a son of a cunt and it’s taking me ages. And for what? So I can badger several friends into buying it, listen to their “S’alright” reviews as their copies (signed, probably) sit on a shelf, unread, until the poor-quality printing materials crumble into dust. Because it’d have to be self-published, obviously, meaning I’d have to personally write it out on a roll of toilet paper or something. Printer ink is ridiculously over-priced. No ‘real’ company would touch it. It seems that to be a successful, published author, you need to be a successful, published author. I can barely get friends and family interested…I don’t even want to think about how many dicks I’d have to suck to get a meeting with even a small-time publishing company. Speaking to, say, Random House, would leave each and every orifice pissing with blood through overuse. (And even then I wouldn’t get anywhere because I have a horrible habit of writing things like “would leave each and every orifice pissing with blood through overuse”.)
Honestly I don’t know how those weird little books you see in Supermarkets, Airports and Waiting Rooms get printed. If you Google for the publishers name, Google breaks. They don’t exist. Or, if they did, they don’t any more. It’s like they’re spat out of a separate dimension full of authors who write about child abuse or whose entire oeuvre is made up of ‘thrilling’ crime novels that couldn’t hold a waxy candle to a single episode of CSI:Bolton.
I. Just. Don’t. Under. Stand.
So becoming an author seems way beyond my abilities. Maybe a TV writer? Probably not. Seems far too much like hard work, and I don’t have the pre-requisite knowledge or ambition to make any head-way at all in the world of media. Plus I’d be bothered too much. I don’t doubt that I could write something that, with a lot of hard work on the part of others, could be transformed into something watchable, but I wouldn’t even know where to start. It depresses me on a daily basis that there is such sh*te on TV and I’m not being paid to write any of it.
Columnist? This is sort of what I’m doing right now. Do you work for a big paper? Even a little paper? Take A Break? Do you want to publish what I’m writing? No, of course you fucking don’t. I don’t blame you for that. Columnist seems to be a job people fall into after being successful at something else for a little while.
I could write plays. I could write the hell out of a play. Except there are two problems…firstly, I’d dive so far past the line of what is capable of reproducing on a stage that it wouldn’t be a line any more, it’d be a dot, which I’d try to drop a bomb on because I’d forgotten that wouldn’t be possible either. Secondly, I always forget theatre exists. It’s always a little shock when I walk past one and it isn’t closed down or just generally being ignored by everyone. It isn’t for me. The only theatre I’ve ever seen, I spent the entire time ignoring the acting and the story and watching the sets moving about because I was trying to figure out how it was all done. It was Sesame Street:On Tour, and I was about 5 years old.
Radio? Would love a shot at it, but again, how the heckers? Every radio show I’ve ever heard, that attempts to follow a narrative or set story, is terrible. They all sound so smug and the sound effects are shite. But, I imagine it’s much cheaper than TV, and therefore a more realistic goal.
What’s left? Poetry? No thanks. Songs? Brilliant, I can rhyme on time and eat a lime, but I have no musical ability whatsoever and my singing voice is the auditory equivalent of a Goldfish in an industrial vice. Internet sketches? Tried, but I don’t have a camera, and I know people who already do it better than I could. Podcast? Way ahead of you. We get about five listeners per ‘episode’ and three of those is me.
Realistically I know I’m not going to get anywhere with any of my hopes and dreams, but then I guess that’s why they’re hopes and dreams. If there was a chance I’d achieve them, they’d be possibilities and opportunities. It makes me sad that everything you have ever paid to read has been written by someone more successful than I will ever be in a job I know I would love.
