'Positive' Thinking
We've all had those rubbish, low paid, means-to-an-end jobs. Mine was in a chemical analysis laboratory that checked soil and water samples for all manner of nasty smelly things.

There's a thousand and one entertaining things I can say about that job (and probably will in future QOTWs), but for the moment all you need to know is that I was *desperate* to leave there for various reasons - the main one being that the pay was atrociously low, and I needed more cash.

Now, a hippy friend of mine could tell how narked off this place was getting me, and gave me a great spiel about the power of the human mind. She told me about the uncharted capabilities of strong thought, and told me to imagine, as vividly as I could, leaving the place. She told me to think about getting a new job, writing my letter of resignation, saying goodbye to everyone, clearing my desk into a box, carrying it out of the gate, and waiting for the bus home for the last ever time.

Well, what harm could it do? I played along and thought very hard about kissing goodbye to the place. I probably thought a little too hard about the resignation letter, what I would say to my old boss and what bodily fluids I could leave in his coffee machine (more about him in a future QOTW too)

A week later I was made redundant. Bugger.

The whole thing was made doubly worse by the fact that (because I was a matter of weeks from working there for the required two years) I got absolutely sod-all from them in the way of redundancy payment.

And then later that same week, the radio show I'd been working on at weekends was axed too.

I've made it my business not to think too hard about anything ever since...
(mellotron never could get the hang of Thursdays, Fri 3 Apr 2009, 21:28, Reply)