I don't have a job, I'm a loser, shoot me!
A year ago, I got fired for the second time. I had been in the job for eight months, and with the gift of hindsight, I was terrible - the actual worst. I was redrafting my novel for a literary agent and once I realised that if I put my annotated manuscript on my desk between my arms and copied the text I was editing into a blank email, any pretence of doing work was over.
I’m sure there’s a good administrator somewhere inside of me - I only did it ‘professionally’ for five years and further denied my stardom with every expense form and email. Maybe I only do good admin for people I love, which is why I’m currently unemployed.
One year and another firing later, I’m steadily getting by as a full-time writer, mostly thanks to the largesse of my poor, poor mother and more than one dead relative.
I know that I'm a good writer, that I work hard at it, and have surprisingly made money doing it, but should I not get a proper, adult job? Does my lack of one not indicate a failure on my part?
You know, I’ve got loads of ideas and projects, so I’m technically ahead of schedule. Maybe I should embark on a two-year apprenticeship at the Royal Opera House and train to be an archivist.
“But you’re not an archivist, you’re a writer,” my friend Jo said.
“But shouldn’t I get a proper job?”
“Writing is a proper job.”
I should state that Jo has worked with me and, therefore, has a vested interest in containing the plague that is my administrative malaise from spreading to other businesses. And whilst I have a ridiculous confidence that I will get to where I want to go, the days are long, and I worry my friends are judging me.
I’m a resourceful girl, and maybe there will be some rallying call to arms back into full-time employment. I've considered my options, and here are five jobs I know even I couldn’t completely fail at.
Tour Guide at the Royal Opera House
One of my greatest passions is cyberbullying the Royal Opera House from a historically accurate angle. As such, I don’t think I could ever be described as ‘peppy’, but what I lack in charisma, I will make up for in cold hard facts.
I am this generation’s Cyril Beaumont - a reference lost on enough people at the Royal Opera House for that itself to be part of the problem, and you best believe that when I went on a tour there last year and there were three incorrect facts, I was blowing up their inbox. Wouldn’t happen on my watch!
Personality Hire
Anywhere I have gone in my ‘career’, is far more down to my ability to be reasonably personable than administrative aptitude. I can buy you cake and yammer for England, but did I remember to call x about y? Probably not.
Nicolas Fouquet Truther
So we all know that Louis XIV and Jean-Baptiste Colbert conspired to remove Nicolas Fouquet from his position as Superintendent of Finance to better consolidate their power, right? Or did they? I sing one truth on the dome of Vaux-Le-Vicomte, but I could sing from another hymn sheet, for a fee, of course.
President of the Romany Pajdak Fanclub
I don’t make the rules, but Romany Pajdak is the most beautiful woman to ever exist. She is my Polish Princess, the Royal Ballet’s greatest Principal, forced to suffer as a mere Soloist under Creative Director Kevin O’Hare’s cruel, some might say tyrannical, reign.
I am ride or die for Pajdak’s sultry gaze and technical prowess, to the point where I have got my mother begging me not to call her grandchild Romany1, but what she doesn’t understand is that this is all part of a bigger plan to bring a child into the world, plunk it in front of a recording of The Nutcracker as soon as it is capable of conscious thought and forge Romany II into the Principal dancer Romany I never got to be - a grand revenge at a so-so Creative Director, who makes questionable casting choices2.
I wrote Madame Pajdak a letter after I saw her debut as Clara in The Nutcracker, and, likely thinking I was twelve and not twenty-five, advised me to ‘Not give up on your dreams!’ For you, Romany, anything!
Creative Director of the Royal Ballet
I can attack Kevin O’Hare’s choices for a good three hours without prompting but such heavy critique inevitably beg the question, “Well, could you do any better?”
Yes, obviously. This is one of the greatest ballet companies in the world, and they were offering 40% off tickets to The Winter’s Tale with the code LEONTES. Are the Paris Opera Ballet and the Mariinsky doing that?
Why, of all the Frederick Ashton ballets to revive are you doing one that mostly got three stars from critics? Where is Fumi Kaneko as Sylvia? Where is Isabella Gasparini in La Fille Mal Gardée? Where is an updated La Bayadere transposed to Ancient Rome à la Ashton’s The Wise Virgins? Where is Lily Hyde’s breathtaking adaptation of Vertigo: The Ballet?
You know that bit in Lady Bird when Sister Sarah Joan says to a confused Lady Bird, “You clearly love Sacramento”? That’s how I feel about the Royal Ballet. I love it so much, I just want it to be better.
Kevin O’Hare would be wiser to keep me as a friend than an enemy, and he should let me work 24 hours a week to be his trusted advisor, his éminence grise. That is all.
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To all my paying subscribers that enable me to continue this period of delusion, thank you! And thank you to Romany Pajdak, just for being you - Lily xxx
But why shouldn’t I, when Romany Elizaveta goes so hard?
M******-G**** H*****