5.14am on a cold November morning.
Somewhere in a damp, dimly lit flat is the sound of soft, deep breathing. Someone is dreaming, their breath warm amidst the covers, a little, safe cocoon of peace.
5.15am and a soft tinkling precedes the eruption of a white-blue glow. A rectangle is alight in the gloom, and suddenly a simpering, malignant bell pierces the morning. Moments later it is joined in chorus by a hammering analogue stutter, and yet almost before either is ringing, the room is alive with movement, the covers, like dreams, thrust violently aside. There is scrabbling, desperate tapping, and yet the smartphone touch screen still eludes those frantic fingertips. Next, the monster leaps across the room and searches out the missing clock. A hairdryer is kicked and somehow switches on. It's switched off. The alarm is found. It's switched off too.
All this happens in moments and the chaos is followed by a brief stasis - a caffeine tablet fizzing humbly in a glass of stale water.
How did anyone ever get up any other way? This is how I start my day - an undignified, inglorious, almost violent return to the world I departed only a few hours ago.
Still 5.15am...The bathroom light blasts on and there, thrown aside on top of the laundry basket is a magazine. It's one of those women's health magazines, the kind of magazine for women who WIN and for women who GET THINGS DONE and HAVE REGULAR BOWEL MOVEMENTS TOO.
My eyes open just about wide enough to cram in the hard, contact lenses.I scrub the makeup off them with cold water. No wonder my eyesight just gets worse. The lids are never fully open in the week. Then there are the emails. Back to the little blue rectangle in the dark. The light is oddly comforting. I use it as an excuse to sit back on the bed for a moment and knock back my caffeine. It burns my throat. Alas these first world laments.
Then, before I know I'm fully awake, the pavement pounding begins, come rain or shine, but mostly rain, there I am with the grim outward resolve of a wartime mother - all the strength and glory of womanhood unfulfilled and misdirected into the only thing I have to really take care of - myself. God what a burden it is to be so acceptably self-absorbed at this point of life - mortgage free, child-free twenty something female. I search for any other thought as I continue my run…
And perhaps, on some days, as the rain lashes down, I ponder whether I've crossed that line from 'doer' to 'over-doer', because it sure doesn't feel like enough to get up at 5.15 and run before a day at work. It really doesn't feel like enough to be on time for work, or even a mere half an hour early. It doesn't feel enough to work an 8 hour day and still take a lunch break. This is not the world I live in. We must do more than earn our money, we must suffer for it, we must feel guilt, because we must pay for our privileges and the ultimate knowledge that we live a charmed life, when all's said and done.
First World Problems
Yesterday, I went for lunch at the Gherkin, a three course and champagne delight, with my family and my (now-retired) father's generous boss. My boss gave me the afternoon off. On my way there, horrified at my early departure at 11.45am, scuttling along the Charing Cross Road, I was once again beset by the most epic sense of humour fail. I was thinking to myself, how much a resented this lifestyle and the ownership everyone else is the world seems to have over me, and my own paltry exercising of free will. I cannot resist any more than the residual level of guilt that comes with being a modern, middle-class, western woman, and am incessantly saying yes to things I will struggle to carry through.
Like some sort of whirling dervish, my head spins. I've been faint quite a bit lately and passed out on the train a few weeks ago. It feels that time is speeding up, and I'm whirling faster, getting older rapidly and I just…. want… things…. to…. stay….. still.
Just for a moment. Maybe a little more than a weekend. Maybe long enough to do the washing AND put it away?!
On Being a Media Douchebag
Working the media makes for a particularly warped perspective on work-life balance. More specifically, there isn't one, not if you're anyone. You've got to love your job and that's got to be enough, because this is what happens when you take the leap from creatively frustrated child to savvy media douche. The reality is that 5 days a week, I'm going at 100 mph and about as streamlined as a fridge in a bathtub. This means, in physical terms, I don't quite have the knack of opening the company laptop yet. It's a graceful thing, for graceful people, and yet when I get my sticky, cumbersome hands on it, I always end up prizing it open with all the panache of a toddler playing with a smartphone. I galumph through life like a Shetland pony amongst Thoroughbreds. Far above me the puffing, graceful nostrils steam, manes fly and ripple in the wind, whilst I, below, obediently follow, plucky, stocky, with my hair in my eyes. Ever faithful. Ever a Shetland pony.
So who's in charge? The latest Thoroughbred. At least down here I'm less likely to be in the big race, where one most likely risks falling at a steeple and being unceremoniously evacuated from this life, to be replaced by some other, unfortunate quadruped. The Thoroughbreds are fiery, feisty characters, as prone to brilliance as they are prone to great fuckeries of power. I think of the latest Newsnight scandal (which one? It's our fave scandal bed of late) and cannot help but shrug. They put someone new in charge. They fucked it up. It was only going to go one of two ways.
By the way, that's fuck up now or fuck up later.
But, the fact of the matter is, all of this IS accepted if you work in the media. It's not just accepted, it's a badge worn with pride, passion and self-worth. We suffer for doing something we like. We are expendable, we are sociable and we are all, essentially, going to be wrong sooner or later, so just enjoy it and try to keep out of trouble for now. You will fuck up, you're human (don't forget it or you're on your way to the top). At least when you do tumble back down, it's got to be more of a relief, knowing that you've been ejected, because you could NEVER, NEVER stand leaving of your own accord. Could you?
Off to bed now. Alarm's going off at 5.15am.
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