Back to the Rat Race

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I received a phonecall yesterday afternoon from advertising agency Whalley and Associates. Back in January, Shirley had sent me their ad for a writer of all trades, which appeared at bizcommunity.net. I updated my CV, sent it in, and pretty much forgot about it.

Once again, however, my very long, detailed CV (which not only isn’t blandly concise, but also mentions my fondness for The Pond online forum) got me though to the interview stage and on Wednesday afternoon I was at the W&A offices in Morningside to meet with Pete, one of the directors.

To summarise things, it looks as if I’m back to full-time wage-slavery. Probably as of the 20th I’m going to begin a probation month to see how things go. After that, according to my understanding, if they and I are still interested and compatible, there will be a 3-month contract, followed by a proper one, with a pay-jump to around what I initially asked for.

I’m not scared about the work, which spans all areas (print, radio, press release, video, web). W&A seems to be one of the more polished, conservative ad agencies in Durban- the people actually seem to be pretty normal. Rather, it’s the driving every day to Morningside. I hate daytime heavy-traffic driving. Particularly to places outside of my comfort zone. If I could have a personal chauffer on hand to drive me wherever I want for the rest of my life, so I could just space out on the passenger seat, I would. Every day I wake up knowing I have to drive, I wake up feeling anxious. Plus there’s the additional concern of having to park my car on the street all day- apparently there is a guard but how much of a deterrent are they really?

So that’s the big news of the week. Now I have to finish the majority of the work on those boring bloody technical manuals. Isn’t it amazing that when you have a countdown hanging over your free time, there are always the dullest admin things to fill it?

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