What Shall We Do Now?

When the going gets tough-ish, the tough-ish... start a blog?

Image by James Saunders

It’s January. I’ve just finished six months at journalism school, and I’ve got a promising job lined up at a major national title. I’m raring to go.

Life is good; no, better, life is great. Everything has gone exactly as planned. Arsenal are even winning the Premier League.

Look at all these corporate losers, elbow-deep in mind-numbing graduate schemes, their silly little spreadsheets burning columns into their photoreceptors as they sleepwalk into fifty years of soulless tedium.

Look at those freelance creatives, cobbling together pitch ideas as they teeter over the abyss of nonexistent career security.

I’m having the time of my life, and I get to sneer down on them with righteous indignation.

Oh, no, wait. Hang on a sec. It’s August. The job applications dried up months ago. I’m working at a café-bar (which is admittedly rather nice, but we can ignore that), and not to rag on the hospitality industry - which has proved fulfilling and profitable to friends and family alike, and in whose clutches I have gleefully earned my keep - but I don’t see myself here forever.

Audit exams, PR lunches, marketing strategies and, uh, the concept of the weekend grow more and more appealing with each passing moment. I’m looking up at corporate life with simmering envy. I’ve even started listening to The Smiths.

Oh, and hearty congratulations to the Emirate of Abu Dhabi Manchester City FC on their well-earned treble.

I did write something for an actual paper, which was nice. About what, you ask? Well, the answer is literally dogshit. Disclaimer: I think this is genuinely really funny and my unreserved thanks go out to the Camden New Journal for having me on work experience.

So, what now? How can I, armed with (SHAMELESS SELF-PROMO ALERT) nought but a gold-standard NCTJ diploma and diminishing ambition levels, squeeze my way into a journalistic career?

A blog, duh. Perfect. Cool. Great idea. With what wondrous wit and/or wisdom shall I fill said blog? Hmm. Less clear. Shite. Fuck, even.

In coming up with ideas for things to write about it turns out that my strongest (and thus most effectively writeable) opinions are about food and football. A sign of too many formative years being spent slouched watching the latter while shovelling the former into my mouth, I’d say.

Chronic online-ness plays its part, too. I find it incubates the kind of opinionated fervour needed to churn out ‘content’. No, seriously - If I’m subjected to one more TikTok with a Jorja Smith x Gypsy Woman mashup plastered over the top, featuring a grating voice inviting the viewer to watch them dine at a kitsch, overpriced, inauthentic Italian restaurant in a tired part of London, I think I might literally gouge my eyes out. If I’m to spend this long behind a screen, I might as well make it productive.

So: football, food, and the sort of observations about niche internet microtrends only someone with a double-digit daily screen time could make. Brilliant.

Look, I’m fortunate and privileged to lead a pretty stress-free life at the moment. It’s not exactly the kind of suffering required to produce great art (the accompanying Magritte homage bears no relation to anything written here, let’s be honest). So, unless my situation worsens, you’re stuck with this meagre writing quality. Sorry!

So, until further notice, that’s What We Shall Be Doing Now (like the title, get it?). You can find me here - typing out my thoughts in the vain hope someone might find them vaguely entertaining, accompanied by drawings penned in the vain hope someone might find them almost amusing.

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