More Rauschenberg than Cyborg

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Met up with someone today on going over to the Anglesey Arms with Joe for a pint, whom I've not spoken to for a good while, what with the COVID upheaval and all the changes that have happened to our old pub in the interim. Talking about life and careers got me musing on just how I got where I am at present and where I might be going henceforth.

Fact is, I left school halfway through sixth-form without much of an idea what the future might hold and not much particular concern either. Eventually fetching up at my first art college in the Potteries - North Staffs Polytechnic, I embarked on a lifetime of improvisation and expediency: going with whatever presented itself and guided accordingly to the next step.

I remember us going for a drive around the Black Country with Dad when I was in junior school, just cruising around and having the boundaries of that very particular area delineated from its neighbours. At one point, we passed a Labour Exchange (look it up if you're not old enough to remember the places), which to my untutored eye and intellect had a single purpose. I told the old man that I guessed I'd be going there for work when I left school: the reply was scathing, to say the least. Dad held the view that I'd do better than that.

I suppose I did, in that at least I got a degree and studied to postgraduate level; but to be honest, as good and fulfilling as all that was, none of it really impacted on the forty years that followed. I have had [and made] so many direction changes in my life in that time, driven by both necessity and personal will, that to call it a career path would simply be perverse. Where I am at present looks halfway decent to me, but I'm moving forward to the next phase: not rusting out yet, our kid... 

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