Should have stayed a checkout girl...

I just caught myself considering applying for a position as an 'Online Editor/Feature Writer' for a specialist magazine. The position requires, among other things:

• experience in writing and published work;
• 'understanding of' (read: experience in) online publishing, social media 'and the blogosphere', digital media and design; and
• an undergraduate communications or related degree

So essentially, they require  an experienced web and features writer with skills in web content and graphic design. Fair enough. Sounds great.

So, the remuneration you can expect for fulfilling this multitalented position? $35-45k inclucding super.

For. Fuck's. Sake. I earned more as a graduate professional writer. Why? Because I was working in IT consulting, a field which, bizarrely, understands that communications professionals deserve to be paid for their skills. More so than the print media industry does, apparently.

If this job was designed for a graduate, that pay would be acceptable, if only at the top end ($40-45K). If you want an experienced communications professional, you should pay properly for one.For $35K, I might as well apply for another job I saw on Seek: Retail Sales Assistant.

No job, no car, no money make me something something...

As a little girl, I was always the first out of us kids to become bored on school holidays. I'm just not that good at keeping myself occupied.

And now, I'm in a fabulous new city with a million new things to do...and I'm bored. Granted, it doesn't help that it's absolutely pouring with rain and I have no umbrella, no car, no job, no money and nothing to read, but still, I do feel guilty for being bored when there's an entire city to explore.

At least I could explore it, if it wasn't belting down. Despite all the helpful warnings, I admit to being totally unprepared for solid rain in the middle of December. Call it Perth-brain. We're just not wired for weather that isn't sunny and hot, particularly in December (it's going to be 34 degress centigrade there on Sunday).

I even had the bright idea of hiring a Wi from the local Blockbuster so my partner and I could battle it out on some ridiculous Mario-based game. But we can't even do that, because we don't actually live here and have no proof of address to open an account. That's probably a good thing though - I joke with my partner that the reason he left WA is to escape his mounting late DVD fees from five different places.

Even the small amount of freelance work I have lined up is finished until the New Year because the agency is closed. When you're excited about the idea of endless writing SEO business listings for not-very-much a pop, you know you are BORED.

Reading spare copies of BRW bored (Money, money, crush the underlings, CEOs don't get paid enough, money, money, cars, I'm so successful, money, etc.)

Cleaning the bathroom bored (Not yet, but I think I'm almost there).

Reading 'A Bad Case of the Dates' bored.

BORED BORED BORED!

I don't think she actually lives there

We're boarding in Essendon and every time I travel through Moonee Ponds (an adjacent suburb closer to the city), all I can think is "Dame Edna lives here!"

I know she doesn't actually live there...but I confess to keeping my eyes open for a garden crammed with gladioli in front of a house with screaming pink window frames.

Twilight: New Chest

Twilight: now with 60% less shirt.

The Twilight books really are junk food for the brain: you enjoy it as you're doing it, but at the end you feel slightly unwell because they're difficult to stomach.

Plus, they hurt me in my feminist bone. Ow, Bella, stop being so submissive and pathetic. A heroine who's only power is 'shielding' herself from temptation and invasion? Gender Studies classes all over the world must be loving that one...

How interesting it's going to be when they film the fourth book, Breaking Dawn. Good luck with trying to translate Bella being shagged unconscious by Edward and giving birth to demon spawn into something palatable for the soccer moms trying to protect their teeny-bopper daughters.

Almost like a local

I didn't fall over on the tram or the train today, not once. AND I got totally rained on.

So you're like a journalist

When I say I’m a professional writer, people often say “Oh, so you’re like a journalist.” No, actually, I’m not. If I was a journalist, that would be like being a journalist.

It’s like speaking to an equine veterinarian and saying, “Oh, so that’s like being a gastroenterologist.” No, it’s not. They’re kinda similar and you have some of the same skills, but it’s actually very different when you get down to it. I wouldn’t want a horse vet doing my colonoscopy.

The difference? Journalists research and write news stories. Professional writers write everything else. Sometimes, this includes news; mostly, it doesn't. Many of the journalists I know are actually fairly average writers – because it’s not about writing, it's about the story. Which is fair enough, because they need to sell papers, create scandals and get ratings.

Alternatively, professional writing is about getting a written message across the best way you can and with the best result. That copy could be a website, letter, brochure, report, technical instructions, feature article, travel guide, newsletter, e-zine or blog. Anything, really. It's about crafting engaging copy that serves a purpose: to inform, to sell or to entertain.

Society seems almost completely unaware that it actually runs on the written word - so many people just can't separate writing from newspapers and novels. This is just astounding in the age of the 'interwebs', where incredible amounts of copy (good and bad quality) are spawned every day. My secret hope is that professional writing is currently in the place graphic design was about 15-20 years ago, when businesses were DIYing their brochures using Microsoft Publisher. Now even Tom's Mowing has graphic-designed business cards.

I can only dream of the day when clients don't think to themselves, secretly, "It's only writing, I know how to write. How hard can it be?"

Why Melbourne?

It’s the main question people ask. I know they’re just curious, but honestly, why live anywhere? Why do you live where you live? If it’s pure inertia, maybe that’s not the best reason.

Because I like it. Because it’s arty and I’m kinda arty. Because there are funky cafes everywhere and little hole-in-the-wall bars and street art and you can go out on a Monday night and people are out, not sitting at home watching Paul McDermott make sexually suggestive comments on Good News Week. Because people care about art, books, music and writing. Because they film television shows there. Because there are more people, more things, more variety. Because it’s older, grittier, has more texture. Because it’s closer to the rest of the country. Because you can food shop at 8pm on a Tuesday. Because the market for my skills is bigger and more interesting. Because I can, because I’m 25 have no mortgage, no kids and no debts and why the hell not?

That’s why.

Things people have said that I am sure they thought were helpful but actually made me want to slap them

There’s a phenomenon we all face in the path towards a big life event: the unhelpful know-it-all. It doesn’t matter what it is: weddings, babies, a new job, a new house, disease, death, baking sponge cake. Everyone has an opinion, and they all want to share it with you, asked for or not, useful or not.

If you listened to everyone, you would sit in the house with a Coles reusable green bag over your head, not eating, moving or breathing. So don’t. That’s what I’ve decided to do. Here’s my top three 'My Two Cents' gems on the subject of moving to Melbourne. These are the commonest pieces of advice, and they mostly come from people who have:
a) never lived anywhere but Perth;
b) never even visited Melbourne; or
c) both of the above.

Mmm, relevant your opinions are...

It’ll be cold there!
Yes, I am aware that Melbourne has a different climate. I’ll wear a coat and buy a heater. I actually hate the heat in Perth and visit the beach about once a year. Plus, did you know Melbourne is actually in the middle of heatwave and drought anyway?

The rental market is really tough over there, I hope you’re ready.
It’s been twenty years since you last rented a property in Perth, isn’t it? The recent mining boom means the rental market in Perth is now one of the tightest in the country, and my partner and I found a place here just six months ago. Sure, it was difficult, but not impossible. I’m not expecting miracles, just a roof.

Gee, the job market is really tight, you might just have to take what you can get.
Thanks for your confidence in my abilities. If I wanted to ‘take what I could get’, I would have stayed in the eyeball-stabbingly-boring government agency job. Plus, I got made redundant smack-bang in the worst part of Australia’s economic dip in the GFC and found a job within weeks. Good jobs are rare, but I'm not about to give up looking because you think I should.

Click those heels together

When I tell people I’m moving from sunny, isolated Perth, Western Australia (a common nickname is ‘Dullsville’), to Melbourne, Victoria, the first question they ask is, "Do you have a job there?”

Well, no, not yet. But the professional writing industry is much bigger there, and I’m sure I’ll find something.

“Oh…right.”

In Mission Impossible II: Revenge of the Cruise Hairstyle, the bad guy says to the one-dimensional love-interest, “Women are like monkeys. Won’t let go of one branch until they get hold of the next one.”

The average Perth person is like a monkey, sitting in the same tree they started in, afraid to move on to the next tree because they can’t safely reach the fruit from their current perch. They tell themselves they don’t want that exotic fruit, that this dry, scratchy bark is quite fine, thankyouverymuch, and it’s a good place to raise children.

Many people I speak to can't comprehend why I would want to move across the country to a city I’ve only visited a few times. It’s so alien to the ‘get a good steady job, pay your mortgage, buy that bigscreen and Foxtel’ mentality that pervades Perth. My most recent job was in a government agency, filled with middle-aged women working part-time (and not doing that much) for the security. When the agency advertised my role, there were many patently overqualified applicants just looking to get into that stable, 8:30am-4:30pm slow, steady, hard-to-be-fired from job. You could set off a bomb in that place at 4:32pm and not kill anyone.

I could not wait to be out of there. If I’d had to endure one more conversation about the front page story from The West Australian in the lunchroom I may have punctured my own eardrums with a teaspoon.

It’s really not the end of the world to not have a job lined up the moment you step into a new city. At least, that’s what I’m hoping. I’ve done the desperation-I’ll-take-anything job situation before. I’ve been a hopeless grad, been fired from selling mobile phones, been made redundant – all of which led me to taking job I knew I would hate, to be ‘safe’. To sit in that bloody tree eating scratchy bark and hating it.

So, without getting too, “50 ways to fulfil your destiny” on it, this move is my time to be unsafe. What I need is a pair of sapphire shoes, to click those heels together three times and be somewhere else.

Click, click, click… Oh shit, I’m in Adelaide.