What I'm doing (or not doing) with my life

It seems like Wolverhampton University listened to me after all and gave us all the responses we were after. There are probably some pretty cheerful people out there, set to become the teachers of the future. Sadly, it wasn’t good news for me. It looks like teacher training is not an immediate option. Which begs the question: What in the world am I going to do with my life?
I’m not delighted to admit it but I think they made the right decision. My only real reason to want to teach is that it’s the easiest way I can see to make £20 000+ a year. I figured that while I’m still working out what to do with my life, it’s always better to have a reasonably good salary, then start thinking. Temp jobs where you get paid by the hour, not so good as a thinking platform. Bloody rubbish, as they say in ‘Bad Girls’.

I’m also toying with the idea of having another child, this time a placid, sleepy little soul, if possible, please God. (But don’t you try to trick me, still healthy and well). Probably this is for the wrong reasons too. I just cannot think of anything worth doing that I can afford, and after all, isn’t making little humans our ultimate purpose anyway? Please don’t take me too seriously. My inner arguments against having a baby are just as bad though. Now that I’m a size ten, I basically just can’t face getting fat again.

Of course, I still want to write, but it takes time that I don’t have, and I don’t see it making me a living anytime soon. Also, don’t you have to have a day job to a true writer and not a lazy slob? Here are some career choices I have thought about:

Becoming some kind of philosophy scholar. Probably my true calling, along with writing, but I just don’t think I can afford to spend 3 or 4 years in higher education, not earning and with tuition fees to boot.

Going for a clinical psychology doctorate. I thought this was what I wanted for a really long time, but then I realised that a) I have enough mental issues to keep me entertained for a lifetime, without taking on other people’s and b) mostly I just like the way it sounds, saying to people: “Yes, I am a clinical psychologist” (Picture big head walking around on small legs). The work itself, I’m not so sure about.

Going for post-graduate law. Big bucks in this probably, and if I say so myself, I think I’d be really good as a lawyer. Having said this, I cannot, in good conscience, do it. Hard as it sounds, I don’t think the practice of law is an ethical choice in the modern world, defending an arbitrarily chosen point of view as if this were a true personal conviction. Not an option.

Efficiency expert. Have you set foot in an office lately? I’m tired of seeing time and money being wasted everywhere I go. (And believe me, I go to lots of places). I keep seeing incompetence, outright malingering on the part of employees , micro-managing bosses with serious attitude problems, systems that just don’t work and stay in place year after year because ‘this is how we’ve always done things’. I have never been business-inclined, but I think the world seriously needs efficiency consultants, in lots of places, and fast. Now all I have to do is work out how to become one.

Nuclear physicist. Now, this is a career I could really get into…Er, no, sorry, I’m just kidding. I’m really not that smart. Ask me to draw a three-dimensional shape and my brain swells up very alarmingly.

Well, enough of the career stuff. Let’s talk about the writing, which is supposedly what I’m here for. As part of my Internet story collection (which in truth I have barely started) I’m writing a story about a slightly freaky boy/man who befriends his ex-girlfriend as someone else through an Internet site and gets her to spill all her secrets. (And no, before you ask, this is not something that I have either done or have done to me, though I admit, it would be interesting). When I finish it, I will post it here.

Hope all my imaginary readers are well. Good night.