Serepax 2010
I'm not entirely sure what I should do with Serepax now. I seem to be tending towards Serious Issues now that the travelogue has drawn to an end. I can't write about my life in Melbourne because there isn't one. I've fallen into the void between student and worker and my days are filled with job searching and frantic internal searches for something resembling ambition, or at least something that will do the job. Hunger and poverty worked wonders for my motivation in Japan, but living at home out of my parents pocket and flat broke means that hunger isn't sufficient anymore. Last week, I found myself wistfully reading the childcare ads in the paper, wondering whether my future involved paid cuddling of other people's children, but there is a diploma barring my way into that little possible future. The entry level journalism position I was angling for has disappeared and I'm doubting seriously whether I would make a good journalist (not tough enough). See, journalism rightfully privileges hard noses over soft hearts, even at supposedly progressive newspapers; a good friend of mine has recently gotten a plum job on a local paper and she's noticeably more serious these days. She has ambition burning inside her (so she tells me) and this has been reflected in new glasses which make her appear sharper and more decisive than her soft-focus student glasses. As I see it, people get into journalism for one of three reasons:
1: Saving the world. Increasingly rare, this type still holds fast to the maxim that the pen is mightier than the sword. Sadly, we are in the age of the atom bomb and the suicide bomber, both of which whip 'pen' in global scissors-paper-rock. People (friends, hopeful family members) expect that I would be like this if I were a journalist but the disheartening truth of the matter is that I am ideologically listless and I have a bad habit of forever seeing the other point of view ad infinitum.
2: Ambition. Media, politics and business are more closely interlocked than ever, and once you are an insider, you can start bouncing around inside the triumvirate of powers that be; from sniping to being sniped at is not such a leap. Or you can stay and bide your time until you are that face on television or the byline on the paper which draws people to listen to your insights. I'd like to influence people, but I don't brownnose or backstab well enough to get ahead, I think. I prefer politics at a distance.
3: Interested in people/writing. This would be me. I have nice, implausible daydreams these days in which I wow and dazzle hardened editors and important people at my job interview with my earnestness and charm and evident interest in life and people. You don't need another Michelle Grattan, I say in the dream, you need me, a young chap, vaguely idealistic who will bring the faithful back to the fold of broadsheet journalism via rich, colourful, overly emotive suck-job pieces and picture stories and fascinating trend stories and odes to Melbourne (multicultural! livable! sophisticated! rich! propertied!) that lets the dormant cultural cringe of the readers sleep peacefully for another day. Sadly, I don't think this little fantasy will come true.
So, wish me luck. Or better, send me job offers/ideas. You can have my first paycheck, and I could loan you my firstborn. I'm starting to wonder whether I should go back and do Biotechnology at uni. It seems to have a better track record of potentially changing the world than journalism does.
----
Lately, I may have been boring readers who come here for a dose of heartfelt heartpain and overwrought candour. Sadly, that's not about to change. It's all settled down now. Kiyono is staying in Japan, which I think is best, although she has been threatening to come here. I broke it off via email since doing it in person put her in hospital. I feel much clearer, despite still being baffled as to how, exactly, I found myself in that situation. I will never, ever again make the mistake of trying to 'fix' someone else. Good god no. The volunteer work I did as a counselor last year taught me that very often, people don't want to be 'helped' and resent it if you try to change their hard-won unhappiness. Then again, I think the only way I could have genuinely 'helped' her would be if I stuck around for the long haul. And that would have literally killed me.
In more recent news, there may or may not be a old-come-new Romantic Interest in my life. And if there was, as a Serepax reader, she may or may not have made me promise not to write anything about her, ever, even under cover of a heavy-duty pseudonym. Luckily, she already knows my history as a love-rat as recorded here, so she can't say she wasn't warned off, in often gruesome detail.
In any case, it still looks like the writing may be on the wall for this little blog, founded on musing about heartbreak and the seeking out of fresh new heartbreak. I'd love to start writing about pop culture or something more bloggable, but I am completely unable to be hip or cutting edge or scathing because I don't know anything about pop culture and I'd like to preserve my innocence in such matters. I could write about politics, I suppose, but politics can be so dreary. Gah. Again, suggestions would be welcome. I am in a rut. I'm thinking of starting up a nerdy blog in which cutting edge science meets culture, the two shake hands politely and a gentle, unpredictable courtship follows. If I think about it like that, I can pretend that the emotional-porn spirit of Serepax could live on, in nerdier (and hence, perversely, more accessible) form. What do you think?
I'm not entirely sure what I should do with Serepax now. I seem to be tending towards Serious Issues now that the travelogue has drawn to an end. I can't write about my life in Melbourne because there isn't one. I've fallen into the void between student and worker and my days are filled with job searching and frantic internal searches for something resembling ambition, or at least something that will do the job. Hunger and poverty worked wonders for my motivation in Japan, but living at home out of my parents pocket and flat broke means that hunger isn't sufficient anymore. Last week, I found myself wistfully reading the childcare ads in the paper, wondering whether my future involved paid cuddling of other people's children, but there is a diploma barring my way into that little possible future. The entry level journalism position I was angling for has disappeared and I'm doubting seriously whether I would make a good journalist (not tough enough). See, journalism rightfully privileges hard noses over soft hearts, even at supposedly progressive newspapers; a good friend of mine has recently gotten a plum job on a local paper and she's noticeably more serious these days. She has ambition burning inside her (so she tells me) and this has been reflected in new glasses which make her appear sharper and more decisive than her soft-focus student glasses. As I see it, people get into journalism for one of three reasons:
1: Saving the world. Increasingly rare, this type still holds fast to the maxim that the pen is mightier than the sword. Sadly, we are in the age of the atom bomb and the suicide bomber, both of which whip 'pen' in global scissors-paper-rock. People (friends, hopeful family members) expect that I would be like this if I were a journalist but the disheartening truth of the matter is that I am ideologically listless and I have a bad habit of forever seeing the other point of view ad infinitum.
2: Ambition. Media, politics and business are more closely interlocked than ever, and once you are an insider, you can start bouncing around inside the triumvirate of powers that be; from sniping to being sniped at is not such a leap. Or you can stay and bide your time until you are that face on television or the byline on the paper which draws people to listen to your insights. I'd like to influence people, but I don't brownnose or backstab well enough to get ahead, I think. I prefer politics at a distance.
3: Interested in people/writing. This would be me. I have nice, implausible daydreams these days in which I wow and dazzle hardened editors and important people at my job interview with my earnestness and charm and evident interest in life and people. You don't need another Michelle Grattan, I say in the dream, you need me, a young chap, vaguely idealistic who will bring the faithful back to the fold of broadsheet journalism via rich, colourful, overly emotive suck-job pieces and picture stories and fascinating trend stories and odes to Melbourne (multicultural! livable! sophisticated! rich! propertied!) that lets the dormant cultural cringe of the readers sleep peacefully for another day. Sadly, I don't think this little fantasy will come true.
So, wish me luck. Or better, send me job offers/ideas. You can have my first paycheck, and I could loan you my firstborn. I'm starting to wonder whether I should go back and do Biotechnology at uni. It seems to have a better track record of potentially changing the world than journalism does.
----
Lately, I may have been boring readers who come here for a dose of heartfelt heartpain and overwrought candour. Sadly, that's not about to change. It's all settled down now. Kiyono is staying in Japan, which I think is best, although she has been threatening to come here. I broke it off via email since doing it in person put her in hospital. I feel much clearer, despite still being baffled as to how, exactly, I found myself in that situation. I will never, ever again make the mistake of trying to 'fix' someone else. Good god no. The volunteer work I did as a counselor last year taught me that very often, people don't want to be 'helped' and resent it if you try to change their hard-won unhappiness. Then again, I think the only way I could have genuinely 'helped' her would be if I stuck around for the long haul. And that would have literally killed me.
In more recent news, there may or may not be a old-come-new Romantic Interest in my life. And if there was, as a Serepax reader, she may or may not have made me promise not to write anything about her, ever, even under cover of a heavy-duty pseudonym. Luckily, she already knows my history as a love-rat as recorded here, so she can't say she wasn't warned off, in often gruesome detail.
In any case, it still looks like the writing may be on the wall for this little blog, founded on musing about heartbreak and the seeking out of fresh new heartbreak. I'd love to start writing about pop culture or something more bloggable, but I am completely unable to be hip or cutting edge or scathing because I don't know anything about pop culture and I'd like to preserve my innocence in such matters. I could write about politics, I suppose, but politics can be so dreary. Gah. Again, suggestions would be welcome. I am in a rut. I'm thinking of starting up a nerdy blog in which cutting edge science meets culture, the two shake hands politely and a gentle, unpredictable courtship follows. If I think about it like that, I can pretend that the emotional-porn spirit of Serepax could live on, in nerdier (and hence, perversely, more accessible) form. What do you think?
posted by Doug @ 9/15/2005 04:29:00 pm
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