Baaaaaa

Oh readers. I am, I fear, in a smidgen of a pickle. Yeah, yeah it's one of THOSE posts.

I dramatise, naturally, but not entirely without cause. You see, I have a performance review at work this week. I'm dreading it, naturally, but I'm dreading it for one particular reason: I know my boss is going to ask me what I'd like to be doing in a couple of years and I have no idea what to say. The truth is that I don't know. I don't know if I want to be in the same field I am now - I don't even know if I want to be at the same paper. Of course I could be non-committal and say I don't know about three years but I'm happy where I am now. Except...

...just at the moment I am NOT happy where I am. The past week has been, frankly, shit. I am bored with what I'm writing about but the problem is that I can't actually imagine what else could possibly write about: there isn't anything else that appeals. At least not in this country. And I know that I have bad weeks and good weeks and I'll probably love it again next week but just right now, feeling like I couldn't give a toss about it, I'm dreading being asked to lie and pretend I don't want to fuck off to London and work for The Guardian writing... well okay I don't know what I'd write but, jesus, something.

This is nothing new, of course. It's exactly the same sort of wistfull gaze I get sometimes when it comes to other people's new relationships - because everyone's doing it, don't you know? I am frightfully happy, of course, that a handful of friends have recently found love. Honestly and quite sincerely happy for them. But at the same time... weeeell once you've been in a relationship for that many years, almost regardless of how lovely it is you've pretty much said goodbye to the days of having your organs clutter together in excitement when they text you or the giddiness of wondering if you should use the l-word or not. There are loads of plusses for established relationships too, of course, but it's hard to see them when you've been so close to them for so long: like some sort of selective short sightedness.

And that's exactly how I get about jobs. I currently have a job I like, that regularly genuinely excites and interests me, but that's not enough, of course. Seven months in it's all a bit familiar and I no longer have the giddy highs and crushing lows of the initial love-in period. Plus, I'm pretty sure the grass is a bit longer and greener over yonder. No, seriously, I'm pretty sure it is. Shall I just pop over there and have a quick squizz, eh? Yeah, yeah, I'll totally just be two minutes...

To conclude: I'm an idiot and my main job, come performance review day, should be to conceal that fact from said boss.