Career Opportunities

I've noticed that no one seems to use the Internet at the weekend, an indication of how much my habits are at variance with those of other people. The weekend is playtime, and I deduce that for most people this means going out, going anywhere, just getting out of the house.

Well, I got up early this morning to attend a career forum in West London. Perhaps you don't know what a career forum is; I didn't have a clear idea until I went. Basically, a number of businesses are gathered together in one place to recruit new workers. I am currently unemployed, you see, and looking for a job.

I really don't want to go into great detail about this whole event. I suppose that I didn't have high expectations of it, but I was not prepared for quite how lost I felt there. I gave in my ticket at the reception on the third floor of the conference centre, was given a name badge and a copy of the Japanese financial newspaper known as the Nikkei, and the lady spoke to me in Japanese. So far, so good. Speaking in Japanese gives me a good feeling, since I know it's something in which I have better than average skill. So, armed with my Nikkei and my guide to the forum, I entered the room in which all the companies had their booths.

Immediately I felt lost. It was a large, windowless room, of the kind where static electricity easily accumulates. The various booths looked like a corporate version of fairground stalls. In other words they were fairground stalls divested of all colour, warmth and interest. Interest was replaced with, well, with 'interest', in the sense of ambition and the kind of esoteric financial practices that, I'm sad to say, make the world go round.

I inspected the various booths one by one to try and ascertain what I was actually meant to do. It seemed like this differed from booth to booth. One could only be approached by those who had appointments. Another had a number system, so that, if you took a numbered ticket you could be seen for interview when your number came up. I was tempted by this stall, but examining the jobs on offer – the application form was to be filled in while you waited to be called – I did not have the necessary experience. Quite honestly, it is one of the greatest mysteries of the modern world to me how ANYONE EVER GETS THE NECESSARY EXPERIENCE FOR ANY JOB IN THE FIRST PLACE when all jobs seem to require some sort of prior experience.

I wandered around aimlessly for a while, before deciding to try and converse with a girl – I would say 'lady', but somehow that conjures up the image of an older person for me – who was sitting at a 'booth' in the corner, over which was a sign saying, "Career counselling corner". She looked to me like the only approachable person in the whole place. I began walking and she saw me coming. It was one of those odd moments. We both knew I was about to talk to her, but I felt weird maintaining eye contact for the entire distance that I walked, and so had to look away a couple of times, as if I were undecided.

I sat down, rather awkwardly, not knowing what to say next.

"So, this is 'counselling corner'?" I enquired, rather foolishly, noticing myself that I had left off the word 'career', and wondering whether this qualified as a Freudian slip.

She replied in the affirmative, but since she did not immediately take me in hand, as I had hoped, I felt the need to dig further:

"So, what do you do?"

She explained her role, which was really just what the sign suggested, and asked me about my background.

Throughout the whole interview, I had a lump in my throat. I don't know why, but the situation was strangely emotional. I looked around me, and looked back at my interlocutor, and said:

"I don't know if I'm really qualified for anything." I had almost said, "I don't think I belong here," but decided not to get too existentialist.

"Well, I'm sure you're qualified for something," she said, helpfully, and tried to get me to clarify my situation.

I was still finding it hard to maintain eye contact with her, and looking away now and then at the room. I laughed as I spoke, in a Holden-Caulfield, either-I'm-mad-or-the-world's-mad-but-either-way-I'm-having-a-nervous-breakdown-and-I-don't-care sort of way.

"At least you have a sense of humour," she said to me.

Did she mean that this was a qualification, or did she mean it was a consolation? In any case, it was a nice thing to say to someone who was feeling like an idiot.

She listened as I explained that I am unemployed, that I really don't know what I want to do, though I suppose I'd like to use my Japanese, if I can, that I have experience as a teacher, but have been turned down for teaching roles recently, and so on. She also made a number of suggestions, not all of them entirely new to me, and I listened to myself as I gently gave her rather negative responses to these: "Yes, but translating poetry is not really a job." That kind of thing. I tried to change my tone, by simply saying yes to her suggestions. In the end, the conversation seemed to come to the conclusion that, even if I had to take a job I don't like at present, I should keep my eye on my long-term goals, which, we had established, because I was being coy, were to do with literary translation. I had stopped short of announcing that I am A WRITER OF FICTION.

I thanked her for her help, and, since I had noticed she had an accent, asked where she was from. It transpired that she was originally from France, had worked in Japan, and was now working here in the role in which I saw her. She wished me luck, using my name (as shown on my name badge). I thanked her, not using her name, since she didn't have a name badge, and I have an aversion to saying anything that sounds too much like I'm trying to chat someone up.

Then I left her booth and didn't look back.

I wandered around again for a little while. Should I try working for Bosch? They appeared to be some kind of car company, and were recruiting for engineers and the like. I was in no way qualified for any of the roles mentioned. Besides, I hate cars. It's time the world was rid of them.

Should I work for a bank? Well, should I even bother asking? I might as well just sign up with the Mafia.

Besides which, the thing I had almost said to the French lady/girl was inescapably true. I really did not belong here. I could feel it in my blood. Those surrounding me were a different kind of human being whom I would never be able to understand. Perhaps it will be impossible to avoid sounding supercilious, but that is how I felt and feel. They see an ocean of profit margins, deadlines, office politics, development, securing contracts, liaising with clients and they just want to leap in. I, on the other hand, feel a physical instinct not to do so, as if the leap were into a pool literally piled with dreary office equipment instead of water. I find the world of business repugnant. I have no idea why anyone ever wished to build such a world. It is ugly, it is boring and it is destructive. It has no purpose whatsoever, except to feed on itself. Perhaps I would even have more sympathy for such a world if it were not the world whose values are imposed upon all of us, even down to the grey, earth-suffocating concrete over which we must walk for most of our lives. But its values are pushed upon us, and I have no patience with them. As a novelist… Yes, as a novelist I should be able to turn any experience to account, and find the beauty and fascination in any area of human life. As a novelist, yes, I could use a business backdrop. It could even excite me. But I think my approach would be fundamentally different to the approach of most of those within that world – it would be aesthetic, and, possibly, theatrical.

I felt a strange sadness about it all. There was a pain in not belonging, despite the fact that I did not want to belong. It seemed like failure not to gain entrance to the world that all these smartly dressed young men and women were scrabbling to enter. What, really, had I done with my life? What would I ever do? I am, as far as I know, halfway through my life now. I wouldn't say that I am having a mid-life crisis because, well, I probably had that in my twenties. Besides which, I haven't had any of the things you're supposed to have before you have a mid-life crisis. I haven't been married, had children, I haven't got a home of my own, a mortgage or even a car. I don't have the qualifications or the experience for a mid-life crisis. I really am the same child that I always was, but with tired eyes and skin, and grey hairs. How glorious it would be just to be normal, just to belong to something or somewhere or someone. But then, for an instant, I felt a wonderful relief, and a sense that the world needed people like me. I realise that sounds horribly egotistical, but that's not how it felt. It was almost a Taoist thing – the value in uselessness. That is what, to some extent, I represent. Without people like me – failures and layabouts, aesthetes and effetes of one sort or another – the human race would have no space to breathe. Herman Hesse expressed this kind of idea wonderfully in a book called Knulp. I quote from an article in The Hindu:

"In an imaginary conversation with God, Knulp convinces himself that all had been for the best, he was as God had made him and he had lived as God had intended he live. God replied to Knulp 'I could only have used you as you are.' Through Knulp, Hesse shows us that even an ordinary man has the right to self-esteem and humanity and that it must be above material excellence and accomplishment."

(I don't know why the word 'imaginary' has been used, though, since there is no indication in the novel that the conversation is imaginary. Of course, it is imaginary in as much as it is part of the novel, but in this case the word is redundant.)

Well, I did not want to be entirely negative, so I took some information from the Bloomberg stall. I decided I would sit somewhere and try to read what literature I had collected since my arrival. I found a leather sofa in the hall where I had received my badge and sat down, reading an article in the Bloomberg magazine about Chinese billionaires. Could I ever be able to write a story about such a character, I wondered.

I grew weary. There was, I decided, no point in going back into the room with the booths. I decided to leave the building. I would go home and catch up on the sleep I had missed by getting up early.