The AV Club and "peak content"

My laptop is fine, it literally fixed itself in front of the repair guy in the shop. Just got back from Rushey Green Medical Practice in Lewisham for some blood tests, nothing serious, just a precaution. I've realised that the only way to get regular check-ups in the NHS is to go in with some vague symptoms (mild but persistent chest pains, almost certainly just muscular, in this case), and trick them into giving you X-rays, ECG etc. Obviously I'm hoping for the all-clear, but if they do catch some horrible illness I'll feel quite smug, amidst the existential terror.

Peak content.

Just to quickly set the scene, I was doing fine up until about the end of March, ticking along and keeping myself sort of busy, always had some kind of reasonable answer when people asked me how the job hunt was going, "building my portfolio", "first this, then I'll approach X, and if that doesn't work I guess I'll Y," that sort of thing. Had more or less convinced myself that I was on track, and was uneasily enjoying my "sabbatical". Sometime around the end of March, staring at 7000 words of notes I'd taken from interviews ("The Class of 2013: how new UK breweries are adapting to a busier beer scene"), something inside kind of snapped and I froze up. I just put it to one side and diverted myself with something else. A few days later, walking home from Monday night band practice, I fell into a hole completely and spent the rest of the week in bed.

While in bed I watched all three seasons of Portlandia available on Netflix (a friend gave me a login, another friend called me a 'freetard' when I told him). I then read the AV Club's "TV Club" reviews of each episode. And the comments. I felt reassured that the United States is in no danger of running out of cognitive and intellectual capital anytime soon. There could literally be a plague that wiped out 90% of Americans and there would still be enough cultured and intelligent people to keep government and civilisation going. They're just sitting around in their bibs and tracksuits, keeping warm on the touchline.

I'll skip to the conclusion - I don't want to make content anymore, there's too much of it. Peak content. I mentally resigned from my job as an aspiring freelance writer on Easter Sunday and immediately felt a wave of relief. I was drunk on the Eurostar after a boys' weekend in Paris with my dad, a 1980s Ogilvy & Mather ad man. You can imagine what he thinks about list-icles and various shitty digital content-farts. He can still crank out an OK living from it based on past glories though, leaving the really soul-destroying execution shit to junior people - I need to get out now. I need to get out yesterday.

(This blog will get more fun soon, I promise. Just need to finish off this report.)