My new life

Yes! Right here! Right now!

Wow! Here it is! Day 1 on medium.com! Ground zero of my new writing career! This is soooooooooo exciting!

What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? It’s like being a kid at Christmas with a new toy!

I suppose a good way to start would be by telling you a little bit about how I got here. May as well get that out of the way. While I have zero readers. There are certain things best written about when you have zero readers. So here goes.

It’s very simple really. It all started many many years ago. And I really do mean many many years ago. Over 30 of them. Doesn’t time fly? Well, sometimes it does.

But sometimes it drags. Speaking of which, I was sat in my chair at the office one day in the 1980s. Staring out of the window. That was my job. Window starer outer second class.

I had dreamed once of being either a superhero or an astronaut. I couldn’t really decide which I preferred. But the careers guy put me in that office instead. Staring out of that window.

I’ve noticed you never seem to hear of career guys again, after they’ve found you a window to stare out of. I’m sure they must skip the country with a changed identity. A bit like witness protection, but even worse. Rather than grassing on victims safely because they’re making sure they are put behind bars where they can’t get at you, those career guys put us by a window somewhere to slowly simmer with resentment, plotting revenge. If only we could find the guy.

Anyway, one day I was reading a magazine. Back then the internet had not been invented. I didn’t even have a screen on my desk. Just pens. And pads of paper. I hope all of my zero readers remember pens and paper. Or maybe their grandparents told them about them.

So in the absence of a screen to look at, I liked to read magazines. Magazines were quite simple to use back then. No plugging in. No recharging. No password required.

Sadly, staring out of the window could be a grueling stressful life . So reading magazines helped me cope. Sadly sometimes reading the magazines was also grueling and stressful. So I would stare out of the window to cope. It was a stressful life. Constantly having to decide under pressure whether to read or stare.

Anyway, in this particular magazine I read an article that I disagreed with. This was not particularly unusual in itself. I am a very disagreeable sort of chap, and magazines of the day were full of disagreeable stuff. And what’s the point of reading stuff you know you will agree with anyway? Talk about comfort zone! I liked to read crap. It spiced life up a bit. Nowadays of course we have the internet, and life has never been so spicy.

I usually kept my thoughts to myself. Anything for a quiet life. But on this particular occasion, something inspired me to write out my dissent. And I sent it to the magazine. Which, to my amazement, published it a month or so later! And then, even more amazingly, before I had even picked myself back off the floor at the shock of that, they sent me some money!

Yes, money! If I recall correctly it was £70. £70!!! Nowadays that’s barely enough to go dumpster diving behind Five Guys, but it was a lot of money in those days.

So naturally I immediately resolved to give up my career as a window starer outer second class. Instead, I would become a writer! Yes, me! A writer! I would spend my life banging out my opinions for the whole world and receiving chunky cheques in return! Yes! that was it! Windows, hah!

So that’s where it all started. In the halcyon 1980s days of empires of evil, space shuttle explosions, and Charles and Di.

So how did I get on in my new writing ambitions? Well that’s for next time. Doing a first medium.com article is quite exhausting really. And I’m getting on a bit. Time for my nap.

Zzzzzz….