Where am I again?

Those three words: credit, crunch and recession got me thinking, as I imagine they're getting everybody thinking, about money. Camp doesn't pay that well. I could have earned double what I made at Camp by working at home. Admittedly, I probably would have spent more that half of that on miscellaneous rubbish. "Oooh Look!" Says I, looking at all the pretty things on sale in HMV, "I've got twenty quid burning a hole in my pocket!". Of course, in a practical sense we have to still spend money on these kinds of things because it's what keeps an economy strong: healthy spending. Which is what I told myself when I was in uni, spending casually on shit I didn't really need, frittering away my student loan on lining the pockets of Virgin Megastore and Waterstones. (Small aside: I will never feel guilty about buying books. I refuse to. Come hell or high water I will get my literary fix. So there.).

So, at the moment I'm looking for a job, without a car, with a lot of debt and the job market stubbornly refuses to employ me! The bastards! I got a degree, and a diploma, I've done everything the government, society and my family/peers expected/wanted of me. And now, I'm either "over qualified" or a bit of a liability because I "may not stick around" (as if! Like I know what I want to do with my life in a practical and sensible capacity!), more than that though, half the time you need an additional qualification to do anything even remotely interesting.

So, like the proverbial Crazy Diamond I have "signed on" with the jolly-old Job Centre for the time being. This also got me thinking about living in little bubbles. Throughout the summer I paid little to no attention to the gathering storm that was to become the big three words. In fact, I had to go out of my way to hear anything because it was such a busy, all-encompassing experience. To be honest though, I wanted to shut the world out a little bit. While I was there I spoke to my parents... twice? I did keep a blog and stay in contact via email, but I have to admit to relishing the experience of severing all ties. After the Art Foundation finished everything was a bit hectic (I pulled down the exhibition two days before flying out(?)), because I knew I was going away I found myself not committing myself as much to the world around me. Now that I'm back though I'm absolutely engaged and getting about 75% of what I wanted to get done, done.

Which brings me to the conclusion that there are real world pressures and personal pressures. In an ideal world I'd be a published author/comic artist and that would be that. In an ideal world I'd be paid to do exactly what I'm good at, but for the time being I have to make do and do inbetweeny things like build up a portfolio. I had this image in my head the other day of me in a teaching capacity, wondering what I'd say about the subject of ambition. Society and acquired knowledge tells us that ambition isn't a good thing. Even JK Rowling puts ambition in the unlikeable Slytherin category, but in reality she needed a fair old whack of bloody-minded ambition to get a book published while she was living on the bread line. To me, ambition has never been a bad thing, there is, after all a difference between an ambitious person and a selfish person. While ambition is a symptom of selfishness, they aren't mutually dependent. I would say that a healthy amount of ambition is a good thing - it means that you will pursue the things that interest you - as far as I'm concerned, settling for second best isn't ideal for anybody. In many cases I'm quite lazy and I can see myself in a year's time applying for a PGCE because it'd be an easy "second best" option. The past summer has proved to me that I love working with kids, so it wouldn't be the end of the world if I became a teacher, but I'd feel like a bit of a hypocrite.

Ultimately the secondary education system lulls us into a false sense of security. Sheep-like I followed the path to university, where I was told I'd increase my chances of getting a good job afterwards and that everything would be greener on the other side. I'm not trying to belittle my degree, academia or anybody's academic ambitions, but I sometimes get the nagging sensation that I may not have gone to university had I not been steered towards it. This may sound contradictory, but I never had any ambitions of getting a degree, really, I just knew that it would probably help facilitate getting published.