Quitting My Job - A Prologue (1/4) By Joe Hakim

(1/4), (2/4), (3/4), (4/4).

The idea comes to me in a dream. I know listening to other people's dreams is more boring than listening to their problems, but bear with me. I grab an hour's kip before work, and I enter that half-asleep/half-awake state where dreams are vivid and loaded with symbols. I'm in my flat and I have a pet lion. I'm watching it run around, and I'm upset because I know that I have to get rid of it, because it's cruel to keep it locked up in a confined space, so some people are on their way over to take it away, back to a zoo or something.

It's this big, snarling, drooling, beast, but each time it comes to see me, it rolls on its back and purrs like a kitten, waiting for its belly to be tickled. I don't want it to go, but I know it has to. I wake up, my mobile's alarm jolting me back into reality, but the dream doesn't seep out of the back of my head. Instead it lingers, its meaning completely apparent - I have to quit my job, tonight. The sense of loss and sadness left over from the dream subsides, replaced by a feeling of calm that I haven't felt for a long while. It is time.

Listen: Everyone has a shit job. There are notable exceptions, but in general most of us eventually have to face that horrible truth that begins to make its presence felt in your early to mid-twenties. If you're fortunate to have wealthy parents you can sometimes delay its onset for a while. If your parents are piss-poor and have loads of other kids, then sometimes you have to face up to it earlier.

This truth, this realisation, it doesn't have a name. Unlike the French or German language, English is hopelessly inadequate at providing words or expressions vague, obscure feelings.

The Germans have the word Schadenfreude for example, which describes feeling pleasure at other's misfortune. The French have the expression Esprit d'Escalier - the spirit of the stairway - which describes that moment when you come up with all the witty things you should have said, long after the conversation has finished.

Anyway, this thing I'm trying to name, this truth, this realisation - it's that point when you finally admit to yourself that you're never going to be the thing you always thought you would be, somehow, someday.

You're never going to be the captain of the England football team, leading them to victory in the World Cup. You're never going to be the lead singer of an ultra-cool indie band, hanging out with Kate Moss and Noel Gallagher, snorting coke and collecting platinum discs. You're never going to be a world class actor, the new Brando, waiting in the audience at the ceremony waiting to see if the Oscar's yours.

You're never going to be a best selling author, watching as his stories are all bought up and turned into multi-million dollar epic films.

Continued ...next page(2/4),

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