Sell Out

For example, I managed several successful catches last night, mainly because the person I was catching was a lot taller and stronger than the other people I've tried with, so he was in a much better position, within easy reach. He was also, correspondingly, a lot heavier than those sylph-like girls; I must be significantly taller now than I was yesterday.

Or there's the question of whether my disappointment that Denise is not teaching tonight is mitigated or amplified by the fact that I am doing so in her stead. It has been a good few weeks since I last taught, and in my current mental state I'm not convinced I'll even get through the warm-up without fucking up completely.

Or, as seasoned readers may have noticed, there's the tiny change to the way the front page works: it now displays the last 7 posts, no matter how old, rather than the last seven days'. The reason for this will be obvious to anyone who happened to see the site yesterday morning. The implacable march of time may, at some level, act as an incentive to regular posting, but I'm damned if I'm going to come back from (say) holiday (not that any such is in the offing) to find that WalkyTalky is just an empty green box.

But I'm not going to post about any of those things. Oh no. Instead, I'm going to angst on about the latest development in the interminable kitchen sink melodrama of my working life.

Specifically, I have been offered a job that I don't want, under circumstances that make it both impossible to refuse and catastrophic to accept. This is, of course, the project at Ian's firm that I mentioned last post.

The exact details need not concern us here. The meeting yesterday convinced me above all that I really, really don't want to do it. It will be soul-destroyingly boring, and at the same time horribly difficult; it will be doing stuff that I find reprehensible, it will put exactly the sort of experience on my CV to set me up for a lifetime of further misery, and it will most likely destroy my relationship.

On the other hand, these are desperate times. It's increasingly clear that the kind of work I want just doesn't exist, or in the rare cases it does I stand no chance of getting it. I need a job, and this is -- by any reasonable account, or at least any that excludes me from the calculation -- a "good" one. I'll probably learn a lot, perhaps even some things I might peripherally want to learn.

It's all very well having high-falutin' objections to financial services work, but this is the real world: as has been all too evident these last few months, that's the only sector that actually has plenty of work swilling around for people like me. The only reason I haven't sold my soul to the devil already is that I've been able to hide behind the fact of having no experience in securities and investments: I wouldn't get past the front door. In this unique case that excuse counts for nothing.

Ian is not unambivalent about the whole thing either, but when you come down to it he wants me to do it, and if I refuse it will seem like I'm just a workshy sponger. Which of course I am.

Already I hate him for putting me in this position, and myself for being in it. Why are we even having this fucking conversation? Now it's too late to back out of it, no way to emerge unscathed.

I promised to give them an answer today. I still have no idea what I'll say; just now "yes" seems slightly more likely, but it changes minute to minute.

I'll let you know :(
Posted by matt at May 25, 2004 02:08 PM