An odd sort of week, with a bout of food poisoning on one hand and my journalism diploma arriving on the other. I had to take Thursday and Friday off sick and had a high temperature and aching all over. There was something strange about being wrapped up at night in a sleeping bag, three duvets on top, electric blanket on, wearing thermals - and shivering cold. It's taken a while for my appetite to come back but fingers crossed I'm OK from here.
Journalism diploma should hopefully reduce the hassles I've had in the past with finding work - it better after all the hassle of getting it. There was an amusing series of emails a few weeks back regarding the big class of '04 reunion for some Massey anniversary - the replies gradually trickling in of 'sorry, can't make it' from various corners of the country and globe. I think in the end about two people showed up. One of the big selling points of the course is how 90% of graduates were in paid professional employment not long afterwards - I'm in the 10%. I felt like most of the class were on a different planet from me (one of the few I've stayed in touch with now has a page on my website).
I have reservations about journalism as a profession (poorly paid, highly stressful, elitist, competitive, deskjob) though there are also advantages (writing that actually gets published, meeting interesting people, potential to explore interesting subjects). And it still seems preferable to taking the academic route - better to write clear sentences on a range of subjects than unnecessarily convoluted jargon-filled discourse and end up knowing more and more about less and less.
What I want from a job, apart from a liveable wage (I have no great ambition to get rich), variety, chance to be creative, and ideally some exercise as well, is some sense of doing something useful and ethically satisfying. I think I'm happiest planting trees - I've planted nearly thirty on the property here so far this year (three feijoa, two olive, one mandarin, one lemon, one fig, the rest native species) plus flaxes, ferns, mosses etc. It's great to have a bit of land available - and in an age of global warming, trees are something we need a lot more of, as they remove C02 from the atmosphere. They'll also hopefully offset some of the damage caused by taking international airplane flights. I must look for opportunities to plant trees on a bigger scale...
One week to go til the gig in Brisbane. Australia's been great for me in overcoming the sense of claustrophobia I had, and it's only the first stepping stone. This will be my third trip there in 18 months, with another planned for early next year to earn money to travel further.
There's a lot of preparation work still to do: rehearsing the set, making CDs and t-shirts to sell, making a DVD of backing video projections, packing etc. As well as finishing off term 2 coursework and getting ready for the end of term concert (Thursday night, Nelson School of Music if there's anyone in Nelson reading this - I'm the one playing guitar and tenor sax for The Clang). And of course the video camera chose this week to break down. I've never been to Brisbane before in my life, not sure what to expect. We arrive Saturday morning and are playing first on Saturday night. Maybe that's the way things should be...
PS Current listening: Howlin Wolf, Dixieland jazz compilation, Bach, Chopin, Dead Kennedys, Nick Cave's Abattoir Blues - looking for Charlie Patton next.
Posted by fiffdimension at June 25, 2006 04:37 PM | TrackBack