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People ask, they say: How do I get your job? Students email me and say: I want your job. Tell me how to get your job. They are like ancient tribesmen, the students, sick with the belief that if they slay me and consume my heart and follow my deviating career path then they, too, one day, could be sat in an office chair on the hottest day of the year writing content for you.Do you not understand that no man alive has been through such torture as me?I am good at being in the sun, is the thing. I am sun safe as all hell. I wear my sunscreen and I reapply it. I have a good collection of blankets I can put down beneath me if I want to sit on some grass without getting mud all up the arse bit of my trousers. I know how to jerry-rig an impromptu icebox out of a bucket and some ice. I have sunglasses. I do not have bongos. I do not sit in circles. I am the perfect man to have sat in your park. I am a patient ice-cream van queuer. I do not ever complain if you sit vaguely near me and get a portable iPod speaker out and start playing not one but multiple songs by Bastille. That's how chill I am in the sun; it relaxes me. My worries melt away. I can stand to hear Bastille.Because of you—because of you, the manacles around my wrist—the closest I will get to enjoying the sun today is my lunch hour, where everyone on our desk will go, "Lunch?" and some fucker will have to take a detour to a cashpoint, and we will all en masse have to queue at two separate lunch places because someone always wants a salad instead of the sandwiches the rest of us want, and then we are walking to the park with flapping hands full of napkins and little white paper bags of lunch food, sat making small talk, enjoying the sun but not truly enjoying it, nervously glancing always at our watches because eventually we will have to come back to the office and generate more content for you.
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The torture never ends, because I will go home tonight and I will not sleep. I will not sleep because my bedroom is a sweatlodge now. This city. This disgusting, dusty city. I will not sleep because of the flies that worm their way through my open window. I will not sleep over the sound of an oscillating fan. I will not sleep with the worry that this content I created for you wasn't good enough and that tomorrow I will lose my job. "A lot of complaints on this one, Joel," my boss will say. "The content you provide for free wasn't deemed good enough by the wailing masses, so it's time for your P45." My boss is saying, "You always sort of knew this would happen."Lucky enough to be drinking in the sunshine today? Here's how to do it without doing it like a prick
The sun is warm and hot, the sun is luxury and pleasure. The sun is a rare orchid shining on this grey and damp green country for just one day. I want my freckles to join up into the approximation of a tan. I want to snooze in the heat. I want to wear big, long swimming trunks and flip flops. I am here making content for you. I want to be on a beach putting sand in a sandcastle mould and being disappointed—as I constantly am—by the fact that the sandcastle comes out looking like a collapsed turd. I want to have a 100-meter race with a wet-from-the-sea labrador. I want a cold Coke and a crunchy Corona. I want to push the lime in with my thumb and forget all my worries. I am here making content for you. Do you know how good people look in the sun? I want to go and look at people. I want to watch people giggling and having fun. Getting rounds in and laughing. Taking Instagram photos off rooftop bars. I want to eat chips on the seaside as the red sun sets. I want to walk home without a jacket in the cooling heat of the day. I want my freedom, I want my joy. I am here making content for you.Joel Golby isn't always this depressed about working here—follow him for daily proof on Twitter.Trending on NOISEY: We Sent an American to His First Ever Glastonbury