don't forget the free in freelance.

As the 2008 sun edges away from the horizon, I still can't quite figure out a year that saw me move country, have 6 completely different jobs (from working with ex-cons in a chocolate factory to the white collar world of private health insurance), and spent a few months in a post graduate journalism course which if nothing else, I suppose taught me that journalism is whatever you want it to be. After being bombarded week after week from special guests, mainly macho "fuck the people, get the story" newspaper tycoons who I thought died out with the Daily Planet, and countless others telling us there simply is no work out there, to move to the middle east where the newspaper business is booming. Magazines are cutting back, and nobody has a copy of Fowler's modern English anymore. Still, freelance will do me just fine.

I suppose everyone today is a journalist. I don't care how many hits a website gets, how often you write on your blog, most of it is as disposable as the internet itself. Sure, Mr Graham from Stratford may very well care to offer us his ill-informed thoughts on the demise of Woolworths, but when he starts telling us about his new years eve plans with Aunty Betty that's the time to switch the off button. And please, that picture of your little dog by the christmas tree with the father christmas beard on. It isin't funny, it's embarrassing your poor poodle. I know I am in the minority and blogs, twitter, and all the rest of it is, rather awkwardly, the celebrated trend of the zeitgeist.

I suppose history books will be written about all this, and perhaps it's modern life itself I have a problem with, daydreaming of a time when all magazines were like the new yorker, and my shorthand skills and proof reading actually meant something rather than a curious smile from the well meaning bus driver ("My gran learnt all that during the war. Didn't know it still existed!")

It's just passed 2 on a glorious winter afternoon in the country. I've just drank my third coffee. I spoke to my fatter who is the Caribbean a few minutes ago on skype. My wife sits here reading, Ezekiel is enjoying his afternoon sleep, and I have a piece to write about my time working in a chocolate factory. Is this freelancing? Yes, I think it will do me just fine.