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SQUARE ONE |
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By Matthew P. Craig. |
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Did you ever play Snakes and Ladders as a child? I did. Never quite got into it. Not enough explosions and big-titted women for me. But, then, I was always a precocious thing. I fell in love with Spider-Woman at age 4, which informed my sexual preferences for life (willowy, damaged Goth chicks). |
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I find myself in the unenviable position of being more or less in the same position I was in four years ago. Finished my studies (early this time). No job to go to. Nothing to do but sign on the dole and hope they`ll give me enough money to keep me in comics. I say "more or less" because I can`t pretend the last four years didn`t happen, and nor would I want to. I`ve seen too much, been part of too much: the Human Genome Project; the Cambridge Concert Orchestra; the Department of Genetics. I suppose I`ve been fortunate. |
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Neither am I entirely the same person as I was four years ago. I`m a lot more bitter, although that`s a relatively new phenomenon. I`ve read more, seen more, and been further than I had in the four years before that. While I`ve only had one proper relationship in that time, however brief, I`ve been in love. I`ve been a shoulder, a friend, a knight in tarnished armour. I`ve made friends, seen entirely new humans come into the world, and lost surprisingly few of the old ones. |
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I weigh more: blame Domino`s for that. |
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It was clear from early on that Leicester wasn`t the place for me. I spent most of the first term avoiding work, most of the second term tired, and my last four weeks desperate to get away. And in the 36 hours since they told me to go, I`ve done more work than in the last thirty-six days. While I`m sorry to be leaving, I`m relieved that it`s over. I`m free to be a regular Joe again. I can feel okay about reading comics or watching TV all night long. I don`t have that weight, pressing down on me. I can afford to be lazy. I can afford to be me, again. |
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I`m free. |
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It`s exhilarating. |
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It`s liberating. |
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It`s bloody terrifying. |
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I have no idea what to do next. I can`t go back to acadaemia. That much is certain. I don`t think anyone is going to offer me a PhD ever again. I`ll never be Doctor Craig. And that`s sad. It`s what I`ve been working towards since I was fourteen, twenty, or twenty-two, depending on which story you believe. Maybe too much time passed between finishing my Masters and starting my doctorate. Maybe it was the wrong project. Or maybe, just maybe, it wasn`t what I needed after all. |
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Whatever the reason, I`m done with school. For good, this time, it seems. So the question that remains is: what next? |
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Do I go back to Cambridge? Should I try to get a job at the Sanger Centre? Can I go back? Is a step backwards the best thing for me right now? |
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Do I stay with science? I`ve had so many difficulties when it comes to benchwork that I don`t know if I can really call myself a competent bench scientist. Do I want to go through the misery of having to force myself to become fluent in techniques that I can hardly be bothered to learn, with all the pain that comes with the fuck-up? |
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If I don`t go back to bench science, what then? Science writing? Writing about other people`s research for the rest of my days? Is that what I want to do? Have I spent four years trying to prove Terry Brown wrong, only to admit that he had a point in the first place? Have I wasted four years of my working life that I could have used to hone my writing skills? |
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The only thing I care about right now, and I mean right frigging now, is getting my comics next Thursday. Can I stand the mind-numbing ennui of a Regular Job without going explosively mental? Can I do that now while I look for something better? I might have to. I don`t have any money coming in, I might have to pay the MRC back, and my overdraft is at an all-time high. Plus I want my fucking comics. Right now, they`re all I`ve got. |
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What other work could I do? I can`t teach. I`d end up putting one of the little...treasures into a mortar or something. I don`t have the charisma or the patience for teaching. |
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Can I write? Could I write for a living? I`d love to be able to do that. I`d love to be my own boss, and not have to interact with people in the workplace, where a lot of the time, they would just piss me off. But I`m hermitic enough as it is: what would I become without regular human contact? Where would I meet women on my level? What would I write about? How would I make a living from it? |
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Maybe it`s too soon to decide. Maybe I can get away with doing very little for the next couple of weeks, while I decide what kind of man I`m going to be. Maybe I`ll wake up tomorrow, and it`ll be 1997 again, and I can feel like I have the rest of my youth back. |
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Maybe I can turn this into something that`ll make me feel like a success, and not a failure. |
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Maybe I can stop feeling like the guy who landed on the snake in square 75, and has gone all the way back to square one. |
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Matthew P. Craig, June 30, 2001, free. |
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