When you’re young you want the world. You want respect from every member of your Sylvanian family and you want it now. You want 6 different types of icing on your 6th birthday cake because otherwise why bother? As far as you’re concerned, your parents are only there to stand in the way of your potential greatness. Why would they not understand your desire to jump the 20 foot gap across the canal? Because, given the chance, you could definitely do it. Dream big is what your teachers would tell you, and yet, when you explain to them that one day you’re going to build the first castle on the moon they find it highly fucking amusing. Where was their vision? Now however, 15 years down the line, you’re beginning to understand. You’re beginning to see that although in your distant child’s mind, you are probably the best at more or less everything, it is proving difficult to demonstrate this to prospective employers. There is only so far an A* in GCSE Drama will carry you, and this is just far enough, as it happens, to handily drop you right outside your local jobcentre. Next thing you know you’re crying into the lilac trouser suit of some trainee advisor called Tanya who has just been notified of a job going at Dixie Chicken and wonders if you might perhaps like to give it a shot?
Whereas a few years ago you would laugh into their acne-ridden faces, now you find yourself redrafting your 10-year old CV in order to become a fellow member of the Dixie team, because the elitist bastards at McDonald’s rejected you months ago. It’s not that you’ve lost all ambition, it’s just that you’ve finally come to the realisation that although you’ve watched every episode of Madmen threefold, you do not instantly get that glamorous job in advertising. And, just because you’ve dressed as an astronaut every Halloween since 1992, you do not instantly get lunar planning permission for that castle you’d promised yourself. Sadly, that’s not the way things work. At the very least you’ll need one generic science degree and a close family relation with an integral directorial role in the NASA program. That, or stacks of cash. And, judging by the scant size of your cash-only envelope of minimum wage, handed to you by your dodgy manager of unknown origin round the back of Dixie’s, this is probably not the case. So your advice to 5-year old you? Lower your expectations, and then lower them again, because, like it or not, your parents were almost certainly right.
