Casual labour

I'll spare you the details of my shitty day at work. Just one more to go and then I'm heading back to Denmark on Wednesday. Not sure what the next few weeks hold really. Every time one stint ends at the Mail I get scared that they won't ask me back. I imagine the conversation - Me: 'So, I'm available again next week.' Them: 'I think we'll leave it now. Thanks for all you've done.' It's strange how much that job affects my self-esteem. There is literally no feedback. The only way you have of assessing your effectiveness and skill is to look in the paper the next day and see how much the chief subs have altered your work. If one of my headlines makes it into print, it's like all my Christmases have come at once. The worst days are (like today) when I sit there for hours on end while all around me are given stories to work on and I am just bypassed. I had one story today. One poxy story in six hours. I'm not complaining, I'm still getting paid. But I'd rather be busy. I'm not going to improve my editing by working on one story a day. Fuck it. I hate that I get so sucked in by it all. I want to remain aloof and impervious to these imagined slights but it's difficult. Work is how us most of us humans gauge our worth. Currently, my only output is an average of eight or nine days a month and even those are only six hour days. As a casual, I am little higher up the food chain than dog shit. I am barely tolerated. An occasionally useful resource. My girlfriend is always trying to pin me down on what I see as my dream job. We have lots of chats about what I can do in Denmark and quite often she tells me about utterly dismal-sounding jobs. The most recent one was a PR officer for a company which specialises in freeze-drying things. 'But I will kill myself doing that,' I say. 'So what do you want to do?' she responds. 'Something with words!' I shout. 'Yes, this is working with words. You have to think about what it is you want Aaron, and maybe not be so snobby about what you do!' Of course, she's right. They always are. So, maybe it's time to bite the bullet. Take something I can do but which might not be the most intellectually stimulating employment. Start learning the language, give it all I've got. I dunno, all of this will fall into place one of these days. I guess.