Diary of A Mid-life Crisis Part 3

Anniki Sommerville - 21 Jan 18

Working in market research was hard and the typical days back then went something like this:

5.30am- fly to Munich to research a new mustard sauce proposition

9.45 am- arrive at hotel and schlep massive bag full of new mustard sauce packaging up into the lift, lie down on bed for half hour, look out window and then leave

10.30pm- brief in German colleague so they can moderate the groups, meet German clients who all talk German and hate you on sight because you’re too young/blonde/British/tired/depressed. Sit behind a mirror manically typing up everything the simultaneous translator is saying, then try to make sense in terms of which of the dreadful ideas is the least negative. Tell German client your thoughts whilst he/she looks at you with disdain. Leave for hotel

11PM-1am- order room service, send emails and start to get grumpy emails back from the clients who are unhappy because the people who spoke to were wrong and they are going to ignore everything you suggest anyway. Watch infomercials for strange vegetable slicing machines and exercise contraptions whilst brain ceaselessly whirrs around and around and you worry about whether you’re going to sleep through your alarm and miss your dawn flight home again.

Okay, maybe there’d been a couple of trips that had been fun. New York for example. And you got some time in the day to walk around the city. It wasn’t all bad or if it was, why was I still here? The last five years I’d stopped travelling – it made me too anxious. I was glad when I only had to get a train to Manchester or Leeds and if I was lucky, could return the same night and sleep in my own bed.

Then Phoebe became my boss and things changed. The mood changed. It felt like things were even more accelerated. There was rarely time to sit down and eat lunch and sandwiches were shoved down your neck whilst typing with one hand. It became permissible to take client calls in the loo whilst urinating. There was no down time or if there was it needed to be spent brainstorming something new that would make the company money.

 There also seemed to be resentment coming from the younger generation. The previous Thursday during one of our ‘Share & Care Hours’ (you had to take a colleague you didn’t know out for coffee), a young man had informed me that Gen X were to blame for everything that was wrong – the flagging economy, corporate greed and corruption, bad housing in urban areas. He listed everything about my generation that he despised, whilst I quietly drank my coffee and reassured him that I wasn’t personally responsible and weren’t these coffee brainstorms supposed to be uplifting for us both? There was part of me that felt that there was some jealousy perhaps- we’d had had fun it was true (not me personally) and we’d been hedonistic (yes me definitely from what I could remember) and raved and all that, and now this generation were spending their youth taking photos of their food. The only office banter seemed to involve food or food-related activities. There was a new Korean bun shop opening. There was a place that sold seaweed soaked in gin. There was a stall selling kimchi that had been aged for four years straight. I loved eating as much as the next person, but where were the wild nights spent getting off with strangers? Or losing footwear whilst moshing at the front of a gig? Food was for old people who couldn’t dance anymore. My generation had eaten chips and didn’t worry about their ‘carb-load’. We didn’t find food sexy.  We avoided it and spent our money elsewhere- fags and booze mainly.

Anniki Sommerville

I'm Super Editor here at SelfishMother.com and love reading all your fantastic posts and mulling over all the complexities of modern parenting. We have a fantastic and supportive community of writers here and I've learnt just how transformative and therapeutic writing can me. If you've had a bad day then write about it. If you've had a good day- do the same! You'll feel better just airing your thoughts and realising that no one has a master plan. I'm Mum to a daughter who's 3 and my passions are writing, reading and doing yoga (I love saying that but to be honest I'm no yogi).

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