With a year passed since my last update, I think it's time to let you all in on what I've been up to since starting my first journalism job at online news provider Adfero back in January.
Working here has been almost exactly as I expected. I knew it was going to be hard work and to say it has been would be an understatement.
For my first three months I stayed at home with my dad in Burnley and commuted to Manchester on the bus - an hour and a half each way, longer if the traffic was particularly bad. That meant early starts and late nights. I was little more than a zombie for the first few weeks as I got used to being out of the house for at least 13 hours a day. Going from being almost nocturnal to working normal office hours was a major culture shock.
I kept up my bar job, so I was working 8am to 5pm through the week and then doing another eight hours at the weekend. It was exhausting, but I needed the money. The week before my first pay cheque cleared I was down to the last £10 of my extended graduate overdraft.
I settled in quickly, much better than I was expecting. I was a little nervous of the office environment but everyone was friendly enough. The office tends to be quiet, matching my experiences of most
newsrooms, but there's always banter when a daft press release or email comes through, particularly when it has some spurious link to a news event like the royal wedding, which suits me. I've been able to get my head down and crack on, which is exactly what I wanted to get out of the position.
Having spent seven months out of work I had begun to doubt myself, but this job has proved to me that I'm capable of a writing career. It's just what I needed. I've learned loads. I knew coming to work at Adfero wouldn't develop all of my journalism skills such as interviewing, but my knowledge base has increased exponentially. I'm now comfortable writing about finance, property or technology, areas I had little or no clue about before I came here.
After making it through my three-month probation, I moved to Salford, living alone for the first time. It's expensive but worth it, I value my own space and don't have any arguments over what goes on the telly when I get home. I'm aware that I'm spending all my wages every month though, so I'm starting to think about moving somewhere cheaper or finding someone to share with. My best mate is waiting to hear where his place on graduate scheme is going to be in September, so hopefully he'll be coming to Manchester then.
My plan was always to spend a few months settling in at Adfero, then try and bolster my income with some freelance writing. This has yet to come to fruition, partly through my own laziness and partly due to my continuing struggles with various internet service providers to get my flat hooked up. But I've told myself 2011 is the year I will really kick on. 2010 has been a success for me, generally, but I feel ready to push on professionally over the coming months.
A guest post I penned for Wannabe Hacks recently reminded me just how much I miss doing other writing, while
I've been keeping up my football musings – which are becoming more frustrated as Burnley toil fruitlessly in the Championship - by contributing to No Nay Never, a new fansite I helped to set up in August.
I've also got a new music writing project lined up with a friend from university - the Alphabet Project - which we'll be launching in the new year. It's just for fun, but I'm looking forward to finding the time to do something I love that's just for me. If other people like it, that's a bonus, although half the fun of music writing is tempting the trolls to come out and comment on the pieces.
I would love to get some part-time radio work, but I haven't got a clue how to go about it. At university I did some bits of presenting on the student station and loved it, but I never learned the technical stuff. That's definitely a road I'd like to explore in the future and I'm also interested in television so I might get myself a simple camcorder and teach myself the basics of shooting and editing footage.
To improve my CV for the future I want to complete my NCTJ qualifications. It was a major error not getting them sorted out while I was at uni and I want to make amends for it over the next year.
When I was searching for work I'd never really considered news agencies. Any journalists out there still hunting for their first graduate job could do a lot worse than applying at places like Adfero. It's a great first role which tests your willingness to work hard enough to make a success of yourselves.
