Farewell 2008

I've had better years.

I spent the first half of this year in Sheffield, one of my favourite cities in the UK, almost totally broke for most of the time and having to deal with several people I will never get on with on a daily basis.

I then returned to Edinburgh for a week's work experience at the evening newspaper there. My stay was extended for a month and I was told there was a good chance of it becoming a permanent position. However, it did not. A few weeks later the publishing company laid off about 30 people after seeing its half-year results - perhaps indicating why the permanent job didn't materialise.

After that I had an interview in Cumbria, again one of my favourite places in the UK, and was turned down for the job because I didn't bring "greater balance to our [the newspaper's] existing team." I have my own opinion on what that means, essentially that the newspaper wasn't prepared to hire a white, heterosexual male.

One month and several unsuccessful applications later, I landed a job at The Northern Scot in Elgin, a beautiful, if isolated, place in Morayshire. After I got this job I knocked back one interview in Dumfriesshire and a second interview in Dundee.

I wasn't to start until November 17 due to the office having to be rearranged to accommodate me. Then on November 12 I got a phone call from the editorial director of the Scot's publisher saying they had had poor half-year results and they couldn't afford to pay me. So for the second time in three months I had, in modern parlance, been credit crunched.

And with this happening just before Christmas, job vacancies were harder to find than a polar bear in a coke shower and I was too late to cancel cancelling my second interview in Dundee.

And so I find myself in my mid-twenties blogging on Hogmanay in a room in my parents' house (having run out of money after Edinburgh), working in a bar and totally unsure about my future.

Given the current circumstances we find ourselves in, both as a country and as a planet, I am grateful that I at least have a job and am at least not financially unstable.

Nevertheless I feel unbelievably frustrated at my current plight. Next year has to be one of change for me. Perhaps I may even have to abandon my journalistic ambitions for a different career.

I hope and pray that next Hogmanay my blogging is as cheery as this post has been whiney.

Happy New Year.