With plenty of time on his hands, Larry Ryan writes about the mid-20s crisis that afflicts the Irish middle class, and hears from some fellow sufferers who have come out the other side.
It's the second day of 2006. I am in a car with my father, and we are on our way to play our annual round of golf. He leans on the accelerator. The central locking kicks in. RTÉ Radio 1 burbles in the background. After barely two minutes he turns and asks: "So, what's your plan for the year?" My New Year's Eve hangover returns with a vengeance. I look out of the window, gaze at the door - locked, no escape - stare straight ahead, generally avoid eye contact. I fix on the radio. Blaupunkt. I make an "eh" sound, followed by an "em" and what might be described as a harrumph. "Well," I say, "I suppose . . ."
My answer boils down to: first I'll try this vaguely unrealistic plan, and if that doesn't work I'll try a second, even vaguer and less realistic one. I resume concentrating on the radio. RDS tuning. My father, unconvinced, remarks several times, and in a variety of ways, that I'm now 24 and that it's time to move on with my life. Eventually, he gives up. I sigh with relief and return to contemplating playing golf badly for the next few hours.
What next? What's your five-year plan? What are you doing for the rest of the year? The month? The week? Tomorrow? Today?
Since I emerged from college, in June 2004, my parents have asked me such questions every so often. Although they are generous, helpful and supportive, it gets awkward when the clearest answer I can muster is: "To get a job that I vaguely enjoy and that pays okay."
I got an arts degree from Trinity College in Dublin, with decent results but nothing deserving a ticker-tape reception. As a student I occasionally imagined that when I graduated someone would offer me a brilliant job: interesting, well paid, satisfying. Two weeks after college finished I had an interview to become a waiter at a themed diner. The interviewer's second question was: "If you were an animal, what type of animal would you be?" I sighed, then replied: "I wouldn't say no to being a horse." "Why?" "I like the way they jump." I got the job. I lasted five months. While I was there I refused to sing Happy Birthday to customers; I like to think that the managers found my defiance endearing.
Next I became an office temp. Filing, inputting, answering phones. All the things you dream about as a child. The money can be quite good, but little else is. Your colleagues assume that, because you're a temp, you're stupid. Nobody will listen to what you say. Twice while temping I have been shown how to turn off a light, and I've lost count of the number of times I've been asked if I know how to send e-mails. Boredom features highly. I once spent a week alone in a room in a little-used corner of a pharmaceutical factory, putting files in chronological order. I finished my task after three days, but as nobody checked on me I spent the next two reading a book. I also spent a fortnight answering telephones at a company that received no phone calls. I even temped at a temping agency, which felt a little transitory.
After a brief and unhappy return to being a waiter, I wound up in the very confusing area of "level-one technical support" at a telecoms company. I don't know what I'm doing, but at least, being on the phone, the customers can't see the bewildered look on my face. Embarrassedly, I tell one irate customer after another to turn it off and turn it on again, The IT Crowd-style, amazed by how often this works. Occasionally someone technical phones, shouting jargon; I put them on hold.
Throughout all this I have been attempting, with minor successes here and rejection letters there, to find a career in the things I'm interested in. Journalism seems to be the path I've settled on. I have had internship-type placements in several media and arts organisations. All without payment, of course. The aim is to get one's foot in the door, but it hasn't gone particularly smoothly. Perhaps I'm just not very good. It's the Pop Idol syndrome: piles of thirtysomethings auditioning despite being talentless. None of their friends or family has dared tell them the truth. What if it's the same for me?
When should you face facts, cut your losses and find a safer job that might pay a little better? Mid-20s? Late 20s? Then what do you do? Go back to college or get an entry-level job somewhere and hope to work your way up the ladder? By the time you get a well-paid position, you might have made it in what you really wanted to do.
It is with great relief that we arrive at the golf course. I probably surprise my father with the eagerness with which I get out of the car. I am not a keen golfer, as they say. My first drive hooks slightly to the left and settles in the rough. I'm not too bothered; at least I am free from the claustrophobic car interrogation. Then it dawns on me that I'm about to spend the next couple of hours with nobody but my father, playing an uncompetitive round of golf. There'll be plenty of time for more questions about my future. Oh, screw it. I'll just do a law conversion course.
Larry Ryan is preparing to leave Ireland to work for an Irish publisher in New York
GAVIN DUFFY 23: I did commerce at University College Dublin. I think it was my fifth choice. I had psychology, law, journalism, business and legal all down ahead of it. But I was happy when I got it. The course was pretty easy. I didn't go to many lectures. You were just able to get through it. I scraped a decent degree. I had no idea what I wanted to do next.
I did commerce at University College Dublin. I think it was my fifth choice. I had psychology, law, journalism, business and legal all down ahead of it. But I was happy when I got it. The course was pretty easy. I didn't go to many lectures. You were just able to get through it. I scraped a decent degree. I had no idea what I wanted to do next.
When I finished college I had a job in a restaurant, which kept me in money, so there wasn't much pressure straight away to get a job. I did a fitness instructor's course and a personal trainer's course. I did the first one to get back into exercise after a few years of college debauchery. I did work part-time in a gym for a while, but it wasn't worth keeping up. If you want to be a personal trainer you have to give it a lot of time and have a business plan. You can't do it half-assed. Around the first Christmas after I left college, a friend who was working at a school said there were a few hours available as a cover teacher in economics until the summer. They asked me to come back in September. I did it for another year, but I missed the cut-off for applying for the higher diploma, so I decided to give something else a try for a while. I worked for a bank in town for five months. They were a nice bunch, but I didn't enjoy the work. Then another job became available at the school.
I'm teaching business studies now. It was strange at the start, especially doing my first parent-teacher meeting. Sometimes, in class, you almost want to laugh when a student says something funny, but you have to be serious or discipline them instead. Sometimes you think of a smart-ass comment but have to hold your tongue. There's a really nice atmosphere in the school, though. The students and teachers get on well. At times I see traits in some of the kids that remind me of how I was at school; they're the ones that get to you the most. It depends on your mood on the day.
Sometimes you laugh, others you put the foot down. I've applied for the higher diploma at Trinity. I see it as a good job at the moment. It's challenging, trying to get the students to respond to you and get something out of it. I don't know if I'll stay at it forever, but the longer you do it the easier it becomes. Also, there's lots of free time and holidays, to do other things.
My parents have been okay. I'm the youngest and the last to leave, so they're probably just waiting for me to get set up and out of their hair. They didn't put on too much pressure: they just wanted me to decide what I wanted to do instead of floating around, taking every day as it comes.
ELSKE RAHILL 23: When I began college I was working on a novel, and I really wanted to get that finished and published, but I'm still not finished. It can be hard doing it all at the same time: when I'm writing I'm not studying, and when I'm studying I'm not writing. Then I had to take a year out when I started acting seriously. I couldn't do acting and college at the same time.
When I began college I was working on a novel, and I really wanted to get that finished and published, but I'm still not finished. It can be hard doing it all at the same time: when I'm writing I'm not studying, and when I'm studying I'm not writing. Then I had to take a year out when I started acting seriously. I couldn't do acting and college at the same time.
I was in a Marina Carr play, Ariel, at the Abbey about three years ago. Then I did another play, at the New Theatre, and had a small part in a film called Shaun of the Dead. I had a few lines, but they got cut. I always intended to go back to college after the year out. In the summer of the following year, after third year of college, I put on a play I wrote, After Opium, at the Project.
Then I went into fourth year and got pregnant - as you do. I had morning sickness during my finals. I didn't realise what was wrong at first; I was eight weeks pregnant. I went into the exams, but I could barely lift my head off the desk. I had to defer the exams and resit them this year. I have a master's place for the creative-writing course at Trinity next year, which they are holding for me if I get an upper second in the exams. It's harder to study now: I can't cram, because I'm running on no sleep, and you can't ignore your baby for three days to study.
It's brilliant, having a child. It does change everything, but you couldn't regret it. He's called Phoenix. I had him on New Year's Eve. When I went back to college I was just sitting there during lectures, thinking, This is so trivial. And the same with writing. Because you can't put words on the big things. I suppose I'll get used to it.
College used to be an annoyance, distracting you from the rest of your life. Now it's a break from everything else. Acting is very insecure, as is writing. My attitude used to be that everything would be fine, that it wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to live on pasta. Now I have to really budget. I can do the master's, but I can't faff around after that. I have to get savings together and have some kind of stable income. In that way, having a baby does change your plans. Ideally the writing would support me, but, let's face it, it probably won't. I'm not sure what the master's qualifies me for. I'm not even sure what the BA qualifies me for. My boyfriend, Caoimhín, is an actor. We were only living together a few weeks when I found out I was pregnant. He graduated from the acting degree at Trinity two years ago. He's doing quite well. But he's taking some time off to look after the baby, especially while I finish my exams.
My family have been brilliant, really supportive. My dad minds the baby a lot, and I have lots of brothers and sisters that help out. I was dreading telling my parents, but they were actually happy for me.
MARK DUCKENFIELD 27: Even during my first year of computer science, at Trinity, it was obvious I was not going to spend my life in computing. I loved college life, so I stuck it out, getting a good degree in the end. I still had no idea what I wanted to do. I was an extra on King Arthur, in Co Wicklow. It mostly involved sitting in field dressed as a Roman soldier. The money I earned from it paid for me to go travelling for a year. When I came back I got a job as a salesman for a recycling company. It didn't work out. It's hard to sell things to people when you don't really care about what you are selling.
Even during my first year of computer science, at Trinity, it was obvious I was not going to spend my life in computing. I loved college life, so I stuck it out, getting a good degree in the end. I still had no idea what I wanted to do. I was an extra on King Arthur, in Co Wicklow. It mostly involved sitting in field dressed as a Roman soldier. The money I earned from it paid for me to go travelling for a year. When I came back I got a job as a salesman for a recycling company. It didn't work out. It's hard to sell things to people when you don't really care about what you are selling.
Before I left I happened across two groups of top-notch buskers in Temple Bar. They each had an audience of about 500 people, almost all of whom gave them a coin or note at the end of each show. Here was entertainment that Dubliners and tourists obviously enjoy. So a friend and I played with the idea of holding a festival of street entertainment. We began to work in my kitchen, writing plans, meeting other festival organisers. My friend left his job, then we invested our savings, rented a small office and started working full time on the project.
The idea is that, on August 5th and 6th, we'll bring 16 of the world's best street performers to Blackrock, in Dublin, to compete for the title of Street Performance World Champion. We'll subsidise their flights and accommodation, but we won't pay them. At the end of their 40-minute shows they'll put out their hats. If you like them, throw in some money. My parents were happy when I got the sales job, but they are much happier I'm doing this.
ROSSI McAULEY 23 and RORY McCORMICK 24: McCormick: We studied design and visual communications at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology. There was an option of doing a one-year interactive multimedia course after the diploma. Neither of us did it; we thought it was bullshit.
McAuley: It was one of those courses that meant you could put a degree on the end of a diploma . . . Your options are so limited after college. It's difficult to get a placement in one of the better graphic-design firms in Dublin, and you're getting paid very little . . .We had never thought of working together. A friend asked us to work on a magazine during college, and after that it just happened. Now we're a proper business partnership: swollen design.
McCormick: All lowercase. We don't even have a logo yet, which is nice - never to have a set identity for us.
McAuley: We are getting enough work not to have to do part-time jobs, which at our age is pretty handy.
McCormick: We had a workspace in a studio with a group of people, a place called Monstertruck, on Francis Street, but there wasn't enough room.
McAuley: Rory has a studio in his house, and, although it would be great to have new premises, it's still handy to work from home, because it becomes your life.
McAuley: You have to look serious if you're doing a prospectus for a college, but if you're working with a musician, someone who's in the same boat as you, you can just hang around with them and work together.
McAuley: The older people, who came up through the economic boom, know design is relevant, but they don't know why. They start asking younger people to do it because they think they're in touch, but in fact somebody in their 50s can be as valid a designer. There are people in their 70s still doing lovely design.