I’ve just been made redundant.
That was a surprise. In fact it’s a shock to think forward to Monday when, for the first time ever, I have no plan, no agenda. It feels like there’s a chasm ahead.
It’s interesting to feel that, because my head is hyperactive with thoughts of what I might do next. I’m itching for some time free of other people’s demands to think properly through plans of making my own employment, which I’ve hoped to do since I was at school. Thoughts and feelings don’t always concur.
I was always quite impressed with the American way of managing careers that I observed when living over in California at the turn of the century. In that time and place it seemed as though nobody was tied down. People would give up one career with abandon and re-launch themselves into something completely different, apparently just for the fun of it and with no fear of losing the plot. They were determined not to drive their careers into dead ends: ruts were for climbing out of, even if it meant going back to school and getting another degree.
(Actually, the idea of getting degrees from “school”, rather than a university, didn’t really help my esteem of degrees over in the US of A, but I’ll put that down to being an outsider who just didn’t understand …)
Over here in England, we’re much more conservative about our careers. Give up a perfectly good job? Do something completely different in which one has no training or experience? How reckless! No, young man, the thing to do is keep your head down, prove your worth by the fact that you’ve stuck to your (accidentally chosen) career through thick and thin.
So, anyway, I’m considering being a little bit American at the moment. I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.