Eleven years ago today, I started my working life. It was my first full-time job after university. I was a support engineer on a satellite audio network: the shifts seemed awful and the pay (at least in the first few years) not much better, but I loved the job and the people. Many of those colleagues continue to be friends to this day, although we haven’t worked together for seven and a half years. It also means that I have been living in London for eleven years as of yesterday. I’ve been trying to notice what’s changed in that time. I live in a different place (but only the second place I’ve inhabited in London), and I’m on my 5th job. I don’t work the shifts anymore but, in many ways, miss them and the routine they gave you. I’m Wi-Fi-ed, pda’d, multi-channelled, and mobile (in the phone sense) where I wasn’t – which I guess means my money is being spent on more frivolous things.
London has changed, that’s for sure. We have a Mayor and Congestion Charging. Docklands has grown beyond recognition in the last eleven years; there are some new buildings on the skyline, and the South Bank has been opened up considerably.Like Edinburgh, there are now branches of Starbucks (and every other coffee shop you can imagine) where once there were other retail outlets. The Gap no longer seems to be the height of fashion, but then again I can no longer wander a branch of C&A looking at all the clothes I don’t want. There’s still a good sandwich shop on every street, but they’re now mixed in with branches of Tesco and Sainsbury’s, which seem to have rediscovered town centres.
I know an eleven-year working life has let me travel to places I perhaps wouldn’t have gone without work (and many I couldn’t have gone to on the cash from working). It certainly has allowed me to try more restaurants and cuisines of other countries than I ever thought possible. I imagine I own more than I did back then, but I can’t really quantify it (I may be a frying pan down and a dinner plate up, but I’ve never really counted them).
I’m older, but fitter, than I was eleven years ago. I have a wider circle of friends in London than I could have thought possible eleven years ago. I’m always short on time now, whereas I used to find things to fill the hours when I wasn’t working.
Of course, the biggest change in those years has been the social use of the internet: email, Usenet, and the web weren’t commonplace when I started working. That first job introduced me to more than academic networks. When I first got an email address, I only knew one person outside my company I could give it to. Now, it’s given me a career, a whole new way to express and organise myself and – probably – hours of entertainment.
All in all, I think I am a wiser, happier and more contented individual (perhaps a little more stressed). So, happy anniversary to me.