Comments on: Do you really want to be

By: ejh

ejh — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 09:26:08 +0000

I’m always nostalgic for the DSS: working there was my first proper job. And I was young then.

By: mileytheblog

mileytheblog — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 22:23:44 +0000

Strike the “change the world” nonsense. I probably thought that being a financier was the kind of somewhat glamorous job that was actually obtainable.

By: mileytheblog

mileytheblog — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 22:19:53 +0000

Well, I’ve wanted to be a financier of some kind since about age 15 or so. I was obsessed with investment banking for a bit (because, facilely, of the prestige), but thought better of it and have ceased wanting to do it, but yet I find that the moment I stopped wanting to be an investment banker I started looking at other stuff in finance.

So is it weird and creepy in some way? Maybe. But in many ways it’s not about money or (except for the investment banking phase) prestige or position at all; I liked finance because financiers could much easily change the shape of the economic world than businessmen.

By: chjh

chjh — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 20:10:14 +0000

“I was on the dole for a good six months before I got my first programming job.” Course, that was back in the days when they *let* you be on the dole for six months. Who’d have thought that one of the things we would be nostalgic for was the fucking DSS?

By: skidmarx

skidmarx — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 11:10:24 +0000

# Was she told when she was young that pain
Would lead to pleasure?
Did she understand it when they said
That a man must break his back to earn
His day of leisure?
Will she still believe it when he’s dead? #

By: bensix

bensix — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 11:17:54 +0000

Really? I know at least five people who think they’re going to be actors and more would-be novelists than you’d find at a New York cocktail party. (Though the latter, to be fair, has a lot to do with taking a creative writing course…) I’d guess people are more unreasonably aspirational than ever because everything seems so accessible.

Me, I’d like to write polemics against labour. If only Bob Black hadn’t got there first.

By: ejh

ejh — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 08:57:09 +0000

I believe that the one time I had a book published, back in 1997, it was published the same day as one by David Conn.

I went on to become one of the most respected football writers in the country: Conn completely disappeared from sight, though I’m told he now blogs about chess.

By: Phil

Phil — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 21:55:58 +0000

Don't get me started. In gloomier moods I'm convinced that if only... if only I was good at bullshitting people at parties (or going to parties), if only I wasn't so bloody idle, if only I concentrated on one thing and stuck to it, if only I lived in bloody sodding London... that could have been me: I could have been a politically tolerable Francis Wheen, a less wanky Geoff Dyer, a less superficial Mark Lawson and/or a less versatile Mat Coward. (One of the nice things about Success... and how to avoid it is that it makes it clear that being Mat Coward is bloody hard work. But then, see above re 'idle'.) My first published short story appeared in the New Statesman the week after one by Kate Pullinger - where's *she* now eh? And so on. One of the reasons I like Adam Curtis is that there is no universe in which I could have been him, any more than I could have been Alex Turner or Michael Gambon.

By: ejh

ejh — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 21:33:32 +0000

I was reading Matt Scott in the Guardian earlier today when I suddenly realised – that should have been me doing that. (Nothing at all against him, he does it very well indeed. But it’s exactly what I should have been doing.)

By: john b

john b — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 15:04:37 +0000

I’m with Charlie here. I was part-trolling (not in a horrible way I hope, but in an request-for-comments kind-of way) based on how weird I find the career-focus of Youth Today, and on whether my take on life at that age was normal among B&T readers. I hate the concept that we’ve instilled in the current generation of kids that they need to be PRODUCTIVE and ECONOMICALLY VALUABLE, rather than earning enough to eat and then the rest is down to where you want to be.

We don’t need to “compete with Singapore” (as I heard some god-forsaken arsehole comment on the UK education system t’other day). What kind of loony, other than (say) a call-centre owner who wanted a docile workforce and was readily capable of spreading his message to politicians, think-tanks and hacks, would think that’s a thing we should be doing, in terms of “will British kids grow up to be happy”?