Another anniversary today, that of me starting work. 27 years ago today, this little fresh faced young chap with a bad suit and a nice parting skipped off up to London to start work. The rest as they say is history (Well to me anyway). Little did I know that 27 years later I would be sitting here typing stuff on a space age gadget in my house whilst my wife and children busied themselves around me. There was no Internet, no PCs and no digital Television. I think i would have exploded with excitement at the technological advances that would make our lives so much easier (Well thats the theory). Life was totally different back then. I had a walkman on which I listened to music on the train on cassettes. If someone had explained iPods back then I would have seriously just wept with joy. My train journey was unencumbered by the sound of mobile phone conversations, and newspapers were large enough to wallpaper a house with. I worked for the Civil Aviation Authority, and stayed there in different guises for 11 years. I had some fun, I had some awful times as well, and I am not sure it prepared me for much else in life. I should have guessed on the first day that there was going to be a problem. My first job was to count correspondence in folders, and to write down how many letters were in each. When I had finished I proudly presented my boss with the figures, and asked him what to do next. He told me to tear up all the correspondence I had counted, Perhaps I should have realised there and then that much of our working life can be wasted doing futile, uninteresting and unimportant tasks. DId I learn form it? Probably not. I would like to say that I saw the light on day one, and forged a new and interesting career path, but I didn't. I accepted it for what it was, played the system for all it was worth and happily took the money each month. What a waste. It took many years for the new career path to appear, and I suppose it would not have been as rewarding without the years of crap that went before it. I do wonder though.
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