Ten Years On

I almost forgot until yesterday afternoon but on the 25th August I celebrated (if that's the right word) working full-time for ten years. Aside from a month unemployed when a studio I worked for went bankrupt leaving us owed a couple of months pay and no opportunity for redress I've been working solidly for all that time. I'm really thankful for it too; the film industry is a fickle beast and it's not unknown for work to dry up and for good people to find it nigh on impossible to get jobs so I've definitely had much good fortune along the way.

Ten years ago I was a callow youth, working as a runner, making tea and getting abused by the rich-kid offspring of millionaires who'd decided it would be fun to work for an advertising agency and had daddies who could arrange that sort of thing. Those were not great days, I shall always fondly remember the happy mornings cleaning the tramp piss out of the company garage so that the MD could bear to drive his top of the line BMW into it (apparently tramp piss must be very corrosive on the those expensive Goodyears his motor was sporting). Sigh, it's a glamourous industry being in the movies.

I'll also remember the happy day when having worked for less than minimum wage for well over a year I was promoted to a junior designer role where I worked for at minimum ten hours a day and made almost as much money as the receptionist - who did nine till five only.

I cannot really complain though, ten years has seen a lot of companies come and go and I'm not the same person I was then, partly I suspect because my outlook has changed with the work I've done. I am much more confident now, I am probably also more curmudgeonly though I think that's also tempered by a greater understanding of how other people think and feel - I wasn't the most socially adept person straight out of college. All that said I do still recognise myself looking back, I wonder whether the ten years ago me would recognise today's Mr Atrocity though.