Time as a van

To S.E. whom I hope to prove my worth in Salt

Time flies. God knows when will it stop. Future time is as abstract as a TS Eliot Poem.

I do not know when was the first time I started writing a blog. 2001? maybe later? Back then my blog was a sub-blog of an existentialist-Gothic wannabe blog. My identity was compromised for free blog hosting.

Then in 2002-3 I moved onto a hosted website with the word “sex” in it, to try to attract attention. As soon a the blog was set up, my creative juice dried up. My fiction dwindled to a mess of childish and bland stories which no one wants to read. I was despondent. I realized I just don’t have it to be a fiction writer. My knowledge in trivia my over imaginative mind might help me in that endeavour, but I lack the foundations and that power delivery to make the step up from a common everyman to a writer writing about my homeland in a posh apartment in Chelsea.

Blog after blog set up on free accounts. I am struggling in my formation of words. I have decided to focus on being a marketing and brand worker first. Writing can wait. I have stocked up on books for future consumption, a couple of hundreds. Frequently, I look at them with sadness, wondering when the words of Nabakov, Faulkner, Rushdie and company enter my mind. Take it step by step is all I can do. In between reading books on Marketing, I would occasionally take a sip of fiction.

The reality is cruel. Writing is hard work and life might often get difficult and wretched, I cannot waste my time obsessed about being the next Martin Amis. The chance had skipped past me when I decided to play the various installments of Blizzard Games instead of polishing on my poise and writing style.

Now, as a minor marketer, aiming to a Head Marketer or a Brand Expert is my ambition. The results can easily be seen and measured. The income is plentiful and sufficient for a comfortable living and I might even find a reason to use a wifi phone and get a laptop a great deal smaller than this mammoth of a computer. It just doesn’t come from the inevitability of choices. Somewhat surprisingly, I am beginning to embrace my new life. There is even a place in my mind for corporate backstabbing.

What are my immediate aim. To absorb all things Marketing and Branding and make a more than decent living from it.

The Education of Myself or How I am going to read myself to a Plush Job

I am upset, extremely upset. I have wasted the best part of my working life being upself with myself. I watched others zapped past me in their career and driving nice flashy cars and doing nothing but choosing instead to indulge in self pity. I don’t even have enough money to get a license, much less a car. I have been stuck in marketing field. Well sort of. I actually spent most of the time doing data entry and not doing enough marketing to justify my title. And my degree is actually in Economics, but I have forgotten enough to make the time spent in University worthless.

During interviews, I would be found wanting, an utter excuse for a marketing manager wannabe. I want to advance far ahead, to be in the vanguard of all things immensely sellable. I want worshippers, fanatical worshippers to my achievements. I want to brand my words so that I can actually charge people to listen to them.

I have 10 months to study Marketing. And study all of it, I hope that by the time I go for my next interviews, I would actually sound intelligent and confident about myself. Being somewhat of a Jack of All Trades doesn’t do me any favours. It might be great having me around in the office when you need a magic formula to sort out the excel spreadsheet, I am good at getting interesting information from the internet too. But when it comes down the crunch, “What did you do during the last job.” I must convince my interviewer that I actually ran a marketing campaign the scale of a Fortune 500 company and pepper spray my interviewers with marketing terminology and a fair bit of sophisticated business wit and humour.

What should I give up for the next 10 months

Football, Internet, Lazing, MSN, Yahoo, Surfing for useless information (If something is not on RSS, to bad), Watching Porno, reading non business related book

This is the equivalent of being a corporate monk

What should I focus for the next 10 months

Marketing and More Marketing, Communications, Advertising, Advanced Microsoft Excel, Business Management, Resume Writing, Korean (My girlfriend’s Korean)

This is the equivalent of losing my sanity. Economics Major, year 3 again, except that I would actually be studying this time.

Now focus…. how? The textbooks are dry and the words resembles a hundred year old dinner leftovers. Actually I am an avid reader of fiction and classics, but that isn’t going to get me anywhere in my career and I don’t have enough confidence or financial security to lock myself up in my room eating only biscuits in my literary pursuit. Maybe when ten years from now I would attempt to write a best seller or something critically acclaimed, but not now.

Now I gonna start reading as if my life depends on it (actually my career does depends on it, so its pretty close). There are tons of books in the library. I am going to go straight for books with hard facts and not business books sounding like Chicken Soup for the Marketing Soul. Take a deep breath now, when I am done, I will be zapping around in a BMW or a Lexus.

And there is also a matter of zillion of white papers, blog entries and ‘how tos’ online collected by various websites.

Lets Start… the journey to be better than David Ogilvy and having more purple ties than Seth Godin. 10 Months or be damned.