Friday 14th November – Goodbye Money

Just a quick update….it looks very likely after Wednesday’s interview, that I am going to be offered the job I applied for. This is good and deep down I’m pleased. Unfortunately it will involve taking a very very large salary cut. So large that my brow has been almost permanently furrowed for the past 48 hours, trying to think of how we can make it work.

The prospect of having very little money is scary. Especially to a pampered, effete, veal-loving crack addict such as myself. So, I have spent a lot of time over the past couple of days forcing people into conversational corners where they have to reassure me that I am doing the right thing. If anybody is interested in reassuring me, then feel free to do so – ideally, you will paraphrase the following: “It is better to be on a ladder you want to be on….there is no point sitting in a job you don’t want just because you get more money….in a few years time you will be laughing…at least you will be doing something you actually want to do…of course you can base a healthy diet solely around corned beef and Sommerfield own-brand corn flakes etc.”

Really, feel free.

But, in the meantime, I was able to re-assure myself a little bit when searching for my trusty Christmas screensaver (its nice to have something seasonal to look at as you count down the minutes before the end of work). I came across an e-mail I sent to former colleagues around this time last year. Obviously it is meant as a joke, but you might be able to detect a subtle undercurrent of genuine bitterness about the sedentary, undemanding, no-future job I’ve found myself stuck in for the past 18 months or so….

As the winter nights draw in, and you end up spending an ever greater proportion of your daylight hours bathed in the unforgiving, artificial light of your relentlessly humming computer screen, occasionally catching a glimpse of your reflection, and wondering if that haggard, jaded visage can really be your own - you who were once so full of optimism, flushed with the desire to help others and build a better world, now a dead-eyed wage-slave zombie, dutifully punching the clock and watching the minutes of your life tick away on the tiny clock of doom placed in the bottom right hand corner of your screen by Bill Gates, as a constant reminder of your brittle mortality - perhaps the attached picture can distract you for just a moment from the futility of our existence, blind you to the bizarre and repulsive circus of violence which is played out on our TV screens every day, deafen you to the screams of agony and injustice which pour forth from every corner of the globe as we sit here playing Minesweeper for 5 hours out of every 8 in the working day.

Or is that just me?

Anyway, its a picture of Arnold from Diff'rent Strokes wearing a Santa hat.

Merry Christmas.

Jon

And here is that picture:

Wish me luck.