Can you dig it?

Thursday morning I had to get up even earlier than I had on Wednesday.

I got up early on Wednesday to see a job agency in London about a career in media sales. A well-paid, but ultimately soulless job. A job where I have to try and convince them I don't really just want to be a writer. Why do I have to spend so much time in my life trying to convince people I don't just want to be a writer, when that's the opposite of the truth? To even be accepted for my post-grad I had to convince them that although I just wanted to write, and cared about little else, I wasn't just -- in their words -- "a frustrated novelist". I had to tell them, no I want to be a serious and professional journalist.

Now I have to tell prospective employers about walking the streets of some run down Leicester suburb in the cold and the rain and feeling miserable, about how that's what it was like to be a journalist for me. I tell them, it's after midnight on Christmas eve and you have to call a family whose baby just died and get an interview. It's not me.

But when you're not chasing down leads and digging up scoops or rewriting a dull press release about a flower show, I sort of liked it. I would be very happy sitting at my little desk at the newspaper, writing. Maybe I should have just tried harder?

I got up early, because I had an interview with a publishers about selling classified space and I think maybe the interviewer was crazy, I didn't convince him well enough of my ability to "sell" and I might have protested a little bit too much about not wanting to be a journalist.

He asked me at the end what I was doing next, at the end of the interview, and I said merely I would be going home. I didn't. I didn't feel like going home, so I asked Deb if she wanted lunch. Unfortunately, she eats early and said I should have mentioned it earlier. So then I decided what I would do is dig stuff.

Digging stuff is what I did a lot in places like New York and San Francisco, and to a lesser extent on my travels in Portugal, in France and in Ireland. It involves having no real purpose, no sightseeing, no idea of where you are going -- but just digging it. Looking at things, appreciating them, thinking "I wonder what's down that street?".

I wandered around Soho in a sort of big circle, then without any purpose or idea of where I was going I walked to Victoria, via Leicester Square and Buckingham Palace. I know I said it didn't involve sightseeing, but I found it by accident. And it doesn't look very palatial to me. I toyed with the idea of going to a gay bar, or pub, for a drink, but couldn't be bothered any time I saw one. I also got stopped three times by charity muggers in Leicester Square, all for Amnesty International.

The first one was a cute girl, and it seems this is a deliberate tactic on their part -- it's always cute girls. But her charms didn't work on me -- despite pretending to be flirty and asking me my name and what Jay was short for and saying she preferred Jay and me asking her name, and what Jo was short for. I told her I already supported the cause, which is a lie. But I was wearing a smart black suit, there was no way I could try and convince her I dont have the money and I'm really just a bar tender earning minimum wage and don't even work full time hours. That I'm really just a frustrated novelist, and secretly amused that in my suit everyone in London assumes I have a real job. Like them. Apart from the Scottish alcoholics in Kings Cross drinking special brew outside the station, I don't think they have proper jobs either.

My agency keep calling me now. I'm meant to be filling out an application for another job, it amuses me the application asks of my career aspirations for the next 5 to 7 years, leaves space for a few lines and says I can attach more sheets if I need to. Plural, sheets. Like I am going to write pages and pages about where I see myself in media sales.

Maybe I see myself being fantastic at my job earning a lot of money. Moving out, buying an expensive car and Ikea furniture and lots of shiny electrical goods and rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats...you get the idea. Forgetting my idealist youth. Forgetting wanting to see Asia, or travel the world with a notebook and camera. Being consumed with sales targets and quarterly budgets and year on year growth. I can't tell them any of this. And so the application form remains undone, and they keep leaving pointed messages on my voicemail about it.

They want to discuss feedback from the interview -- they use exactly that phrase, give nothing away about potential second interviews maybe because there isn't one. And I want to tell them I've changed my mind. I've registered with other agencies for editorial work, for the work I insisted so much I dont want. Or maybe I can tell them a rival agency found me a job in sales first. Or maybe I should just fill out the forms and go to these interviews and try and get the sales jobs, because any job is surely better than no job.

In my interview the guy mentioned how they had a long training process so they had just the right people for the job, and not someone who would quit after 6 months to go travelling around Asia. I hoped my look of horror gave nothing away.