The random jobs of an aspiring writer
Writing anything and everything. In desperation.
In 2015, the Cambridge exams were revised, meaning the exam formats for students wanting to categorically prove they were good enough (or not) for all levels of English, from pre-intermediate to proficiency, had to readjust to a new structure, to a fresh, daunting paper. I remember the boss in the English academy coming into the teacher’s meeting and informing all of us. I just shrugged. I barely knew the existing format, so I swore off ever learning it, and made a mental note to get to the grips with the new stuff. However, I ended up slowly discovering its mechanics as I pored over tutorials before classes with exam-preparing students. Keeping one step ahead, like an Irish Frank Abagnale, winging the teaching thing. Catch me out, if you can.
Things change. English exams, and languages in general, are no exception. Students who earned their official designations in the ‘80s and ‘90s probably did so by writing essays about teletext and shoulder pads. The ones I know who fall into this category have never updated their results, but they still speak as they should, according to their level, with their peculiar and personal patter, their favourite phrases, their ossified mistakes, the things no skilled surgeon, hypnotist or psychologist could ever expunge from their vocabulary. But despite this, new words do pass their lips. TikTok. Fake News. Doomscrolling. Karen.
Dog collars for the soul
There is a Spanish word that I do enjoy, that is linked to the idea of a movie, a story. Empelicularse means to get excited about something that probably won’t happen. I am no Spanish etymologist, but to me, it makes me think of someone making films in their head. Beautiful, inspiring, unrealistic films. Great filler for between the ears, never something breaking out into the real world.
(You may be thinking that the jump from revised exams to Spanish phrases might have been a big one, but it’s no more a leap than when jaded ESL teachers throw a random warm-up activity at the start of class.)
That was me, projecting my own fantasy onto the world. I really wanted to be a professional writer, and I was ready to write about SEO-friendly topics on a bizarre carousel of blogs to do it. Best chorizo in Madrid? I got you covered. Top 5 bars? I wrote about them from worst to best! How many writers were like me, mad to escape teaching, eager to find some meaning in their professional lives? How many were like me and ended up writing about dog collars?
I was ok with random, up to a point. Back in university, I did everything from playing patient for student doctors to volunteering in a charity shop with old women and a rotating cast of continentals. Random was good. It taught me that meaning could be found everywhere, that doing what you thought you wanted to do was often a letdown, that old women were genuine craic, and that it was all food for the imagination. It gave life to Matt Groening’s advice for writers: consume everything.
Not so bad education
The charity shop wasn’t a bad education. And where else would you come across a Spanish girl that had so little English, she kept shouting ‘bullfighter!’ in my face every time she saw me? I never really planned for specific things to happen; I stumbled into them more times than not. But there was a hunger there that willed, Jungian-style, better and more substantial writing opportunities into my orbit. I was primed to take advantage of them when they appeared.
Yet, before things came together, I was so busy trying to thread these isolated, unfulfilling experiences into some kind of adornment for my CV, for my soul, that it all felt vaguely unsettling.
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Photo from KoolShooters, Pexels.com.
