Midweek update

It's a grey and rainy afternoon in East London, and the office is almost empty with people out on their lunch breaks. The only sounds are the faint music from the radio playing on someone's laptop over the other side of the office, and the occasional key-tones of someone making phone calls on speaker phone.

Things are going pretty well, considering. Gainful, paid employment is still yet to be achieved -- however, what my little meeting last week with the MD did seem to achieve is an extension to my contract for "initially" another month (I think it's important they used that word) and that they setting me up with my own place to sit, presumably with computer and telephone, that will be all mine for as long as I stick around. All I want now is a little sign on the desk with my name on it. Or maybe an office. And a secretary...

So why is it today I feel a strange, drawing, sadness? I'm not so fussed about the weather that I care if it's rainy after a few days of heatwave -- sure, I can't go sit on the grass and read a book, but I could still go for a walk. Maybe it's a change in air pressure has affected my mood.

San's back safely from Argentina, and we've made vague plans to meet up and see a film on Friday night. At least San is still around when all the girls in my life I try to date have fizzled out and lost interest. We may be just friends, but it's reassuring in a way that there is enough about me to want to stay close to. Of course, if I want to meet more people an obvious idea would be to get out more -- but sometimes the idea seems almost too difficult, or it does when you have to really force yourself to be outgoing.

It's sort of strange, who I am in work is not who I am in the rest of the world. Sometimes I feel like I can be blurring the lines between who I am. Between the shy boy that eats his lunch on his own every day with a book, and the confident upbeat person who talks to journalists on the phone about fashion or sport and who asks the MD for a job. But I'm not there yet, if I ever will be.

I've taken more risks and bold moves in my life than most of my friends, I stepped out of my comfort zone of my minimum wage job to go work unpaid in London to get where I want to be. I try to encourage my friends to try it for themselves, but until I actually get a 'proper job' out of it, it might be too soon to recommend it. I also take holidays on my own, and meet girls I know almost nothing about for drinks. And yet, I still feel scarred. I still feel confronted by sharp objects. And I still sit in front of the computer at 11.30 at night writing in my blog about my teenaged angst, several years too late.