When jobs were fun

The greatest mystery in the world, I have decided, is how in the world I ended up as a journalist.

- Greg Dixon

It has all been a terrible mistake, and I am not alone in feeling that way. A recent survey for Seek found over half of responders regretted their career choice.

It doesn't help that when my cohort, Generation X, left school we were assured we were bound, if not for glory, then for greater prosperity than our parents, which we'd get through a respectable profession or a solid, reputable trade. Journalism, then as now, was viewed as neither. It wasn't as bad as going on the stage or on the game, but it was something of a shabby business all the same.

My path to respectability and prosperity was supposed to be as a “bean counter”. My father, a man with a keen sense of where money came from, told me I should become an accountant. I am not entirely sure I knew then what accountants did, but I took his advice. It didn't turn out well.

Eventually, I washed up in a year-long journalism course, and just before the end of 1992, I had somehow been employed as a junior reporter at the