Little success so far

Instead of going swimming this morning, I gave myself an extra hour in bed. Instead of my 15 minute walk to the office, I took the car (so much for "street walking as a therapy", etc etc). Instead of having only two biscuits with coffee for breakfast I had a huge Nutella sandwich. I also took a look at job advertisements and had the feeling I was going back in time to all those job-hunting moments in my life. At this stage, I cannot just take any administrative job in any company. My current employment has infinitely more sense. I should really only change it for something radically different that fits in with my nature.

The only opportunity I found appealing was "chamber-maid in a cozy hotel" somewhere along the southern Belgium-France border. Limited responsibility, a practical activity, the closeness of nature, anonymous job. My total lack of ambition has forever been mysterious to my parents, to my friends and to myself.

As a child, I wanted to be a detective or a library attendant. I used to cover all my books in transparent film and make an index card for each. My brother and sister would have to fill-in a card if they wanted to borrow a book. I also remember the interview with the Headmistress of a boarding school in England our parents had chosen for us. When she asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said without hesitation that I wanted to be a secretary. My ambitions had evolved at that time. My father's eyes widened and he said: "you mean you want to be secretary general of some institution, right?". Nope, I'm afraid that wasn't right. I just really wanted to be a secretary.

Faithful to that calling, when I finished school I enrolled in a secretarial college before even getting my final results. But when I got the marks of my final school exams and realised that they allowed me to access virtually any university I wanted, I thought I might as well study Politics, a subject I had enjoyed in the past. So for five years I studied at university and after a disastrous first round of exams (at that time I hung around with the worst students in our year), I made friends with the best students. Their attitude forced me (because I was lazy) to start studying well in advance of exams, which had the additional side-effect of leaving us a lot of time to play cards and do sport. I got pretty good marks all the way till the last year (my two university buddies got the all-round best marks of our year and received a special price for that). The subjects I excelled at were anthropology and geography, and any subject where it was about writing essays and doing research rather than memorizing data for an exam. I loved history and the evolution of social structures and ideas, but my lack of memory made it difficult for me to do well in exams.

Well, here goes a first round of self-examination to start looking for my dream job. The elements gathered so far are:

- laziness and lack of memory,
- no ambition
- desire to remain anonymous (ie no public speaking or spotlight jobs)
- need for natural surroundings
- interest in humanities
- enjoy research, writing and secretarial activities.

Wow, a real gem! Oh dear...