Well, I have long suspected this, but now I know.
I am the human equivalent of a rat-tailed maggot, a worm-like creature with stumpy little legs that wriggles through the mud on pond bottoms.
Who says so? The CareerCast’s 2012 Worst Jobs List, that’s who, although it doesn’t quite put it that way. It’s not so kind.
Instead, it declares that being a newspaper reporter is the fifth worst job in the world based on stress, income and hiring outlook. New technology, that blight of modern living, has made me irrelevant. I am at the bottom of life’s pond.
But at least I have company. Worst job of all is the lumberjack: very stressful, income of about $32,100, and a bleak hiring outlook. Then comes dairy farmer, enlisted soldier, oil rig worker and newspaper reporter. Six to ten goes: waitress, meter reader, dishwasher, butcher and broadcaster.
Movies and books often depict newspapermen as grubby, irritating little creatures in ink-stained clothes; they are invariably cynical and with a weakness for alcohol. An unflattering caricature, but at least a low public opinion removes the pressure of expectation.
Nobody, for instance, expects journalists to be fashion plates: we can wear toques that unravel and look like chef hats, shabby coats and scuffed shoes with threadbare laces.
People merely shake their heads and say to themselves “there goes that ridiculous reporter, fifth worst job in the world.”
There are limits, of course. The Worzel Gummidge look doesn’t always go down well.
Never heard of Worzel? He’s a British children’s fictional character popularized on TV: a scruffy village idiot with a head full of straw. A talking scarecrow.
On my first day in journalism in the UK, the editor was unimpressed by my unintended Worzel imitation and ordered me home to get changed, saying: “You can’t interview people looking like that. Go to a mirror and look at yourself.”
I did. I saw faded, turned-up jeans with a hole around the knee, my old, frayed school jacket which I could barely squeeze into, and orange frying pan shoes with flapping soles. At the time I thought I was hip, grungy before grungy became the rage. Without doubt, an absolute disgrace.
Journalism and vagrancy also share other characteristics. Neither vocation makes a concrete contribution to society. Journalists don’t build roads, skyscrapers, cars or anything; we don’t cure people, feed anyone or clear snow-covered streets. Everything we do is so nebulous as to be practically useless.
Being practically useless – and enjoying it – creates a paranoia that pursues a reporter all his life. I still live in fear of someone important in a suit and tie collaring me in the street and saying: “I’m making a citizen’s arrest, charging you with journalism.”
But I suppose nobody wants to touch a journalist. That’s a plus.
Another good thing about the bottom of life’s pond is that with a little self-counselling you can live in a permanent state of optimism: things can only get better.
Your pay may suck, your prospects are nil and you have no status, but at least you’re not a target of envy. You have nothing anybody wants.
Oh yes, there’s another thing. Happiness often goes in inverse proportion to a fat pay cheque, or so some people say.
Actually, I’ve never heard anyone say that, but it sounds good in a vaguely pompous way.
Well, it’s time to return from whence I came. Back to my freshwater pond. Back to the mud and the suffocating dark.
And the slime.
