Originally published in The Clifton Courier, April 11, 2018
I find it quite difficult to answer when people ask me about my ultimate career goal.
Essentially, my aim is to remain employed for as long as possible in a world that is becoming more and more automated by the day. It’s depressing, but it’s true. I yearn to remain a cog in the corporate, capitalist machine that is slowly crushing us all.
But, ignoring our dystopian future for a second, I guess I do have a vision for what I want my life to be. It is, however, difficult to sum up in a single job title and requires a lot of adjectives.
The real dream is to one day be an author, working from home on my little hobby farm.
I’ll flounce around in my breezy white kaftan (that somehow has zero gravy stains), starting the day off with a cup of tea with the cockatoos on the veranda of my lovingly-restored Queenslander, smashing out a few chapters in my light-filled home office at a large desk made from reclaimed wood before hosting a relaxed but extremely sloshy dinner party for my marvellous friends.
Obviously, it would be nice to have a man and/or children around, because I’d need someone to collect the eggs from the chickens, as I refuse to go near those scratchy, spiteful bastards… but love the yellow of a good farm-fresh yolk. But I’d insist on having my own suite in the house, because creativity needs space to flourish/I don’t want anyone skewing my artfully-arranged knick knacks.
And I’d have to make regular trips to “the city” to attend fabulous book parties and buy expensive candles. Sometimes I’d have to “go off on business” to Italy. But, for the most part, my well-styled dreamhouse would be my workplace and my sanctuary, all paid for by my ability to put one word after another.
The problem is, however, that I don’t really have much of a personal story. To write a memoir often requires something extraordinary to happen in one’s life. I haven’t smashed glass ceilings in the entertainment industry, I’ve next to no juicy dirt on famous people, I didn’t build a business empire based on mops and I didn’t come to this country in the belly of a convict ship before pioneering wool production or something.
My story is comfortably unremarkable.
And, at this point in my life, I’ve not got the attention span, the stamina nor the imagination to produce The Great Australian Novel. I couldn’t even knock together an Australian rip off of Harry Potter built on replacing English elements with their bogan equivalents (the flying car would be an old Holden ute with a Ned Kelly quote on the back windshield; the invisibility cloak would be a beer-soaked Australian flag, tied like a cape around Potto’s neck, etc.)
So I feel like Memoirs of a Self-Obsessed Middle Class White Girl Who Wants to Be an Author but is Too Lazy to Write a Novel wouldn’t get published, let alone produce enough profit to sustain the lifestyle I hope will fill the black, gaping void inside me.
As such, I’m going to have to rely on gimmicks to get published, and I’ve come up with something that might, possibly, maybe on-a-slow-day, work.
A while ago, I thought about making the family a cook booklet for Christmas, which would have been stapled print-outs of my iconic recipes adapted from the back of ingredient packets. But I’d never be able to just write, “mix butter with flour”. No, I’d need to also add a dash of why-margarine-is-congealed-saddness and a dollop of over-sharing about that one time I ate chalk.
Eventually, the idea evolved into something I would describe as an autobiographical cookbook. It would be accompanied by underwhelming, deadpan photos of me stiffly posing with various cooking utensils and feature a half-baked recommendation from my friend Christina, who I would credit on the cover as “a lawyer who bakes real good”.
And because I want to bash out a month’s worth of columns so I don’t have to form and submit coherent sentences while I’m on holiday, I’ve decided to test out a few of these ideas on you, my poor unfortunate readers.
So, please, enjoy this next month of unnecessarily wordy recipes sprinkled with insights into my life. Maybe, if it’s raining out and the internet’s down, you could even try them out. Please send your comments /cutting critiques on my culinary abilities in the comments section or write them using cut-out magazine letters – ransom note style – and slide them into the Clifton Courier mail slot.
See you on the other side!
Just a Thought 