Best Job In The World

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And, sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could.
- Robert Frost.


It would be nice to have as much foresight as Robert Frost, but sometimes when a road divides into two you don`t stand and look for long at all; sometimes, in fact, you don`t even notice that there is a fork at all, and only realise when you have gone far enough down one of them to never walk back again.

It has been a year, now, since The Best Job In The World finished: a dramatic year which owes none of its drama to The Job itself, and absolutely all of it to events resulting directly from the competition. Because - as you may not have put two and two together already (and I see no reason why you should have, when I kept it secret for a year) - The Boy was another Best Job candidate, and that was how we met and fell in love: thus why I moved to Japan to be with him, thus why I had my heart badly broken, and thus - perhaps - why I am still here, trying very hard to unbreak it again. So, in the largest and most unexpected way possible, The Best Job In The World changed my life, but not at all in the way I hoped it would when I applied for it. (I was hoping for less of an emotional journey and more for $100,000 and a big house on a tropical island.)

So: yes, The Best Job In The World changed my life and sent me down an entirely different road, and the reason I am answering this apparently unasked question one year later is because I have been asked it: by the BBC, because they want to do a follow up film documentary.

My initial response, of course, was split between genuine, British politeness and genuine, British rage.

Of course, I emailed back: anything to help, although I'm afraid I'm abroad and will be for some time, when actually what I really meant was: fuck right off, because I'd rather poke pencils into my tonsils and leave them there. Which some people would call two facedness, and I would call manners and extreme sense: angering the BBC is not clever, no matter what kind of honesty you pride yourself in. They're really quite powerful.

The thing is: it would be an interesting documentary, if they did it properly. The last one was not good - at best a fictional, manipulated story masquerading as journalism and at worst downright exploitation - but the next one could be. It did change our lives: all of us. Ben is now rich and famous and jetting the world at Oprah Winfrey's expense; Sarah has stopped travelling the world and is working for a glamorous, multinational marketing company; Doug has graduated and moved to Australia; I am in Japan, teaching and still - still - trying to write something worth reading. No doubt they would focus on the irony - that I was cast as the 'tortured romantic' and rather obediently had my heart broken, that Ben moved 'for love' and it failed, that Doug ended up in the same country as Best Job regardless, that Sarah stopped travelling and began working for the industry that made her come back - and we would all be made fools of again.

What they probably wouldn't mention is: the last documentary meant nothing. To any of us. "This documentary will change your lives," the director kept whispering at us from behind the whacking great camera and film crew: and we all thought then what we all think now, which is bollocks, will it. And - just as we predicted - it didn't make the blindest bit of difference to any of us, apart from to confirm us to our friends as "the kind of person who goes on telly instead of getting a real job" (although it has now become: "the kind of person who moves abroad instead of getting a real job").

No, the difference it made to us came in smaller places, and with much more subtlety. For me - once I push aside what Best Job did to my heart and location (both were too vulnerable anyway, and were destined for disaster regardless of the catalyst) - it was the tiny things that changed me permanently. Tiny things that have taken a full year to really appreciate.

Simply put, I started this blog because I was forced to by Best Job judges. I would never have done so otherwise - ever - and it has changed how I see writing: it has made me braver, and far less shy, and open to subjecting my writing to criticism and rejection in a way I never have been before. It made me realise that it doesn`t matter if nobody believes you have a chance, because they`re probably wrong. It made me realise that I don`t want gratuitous attention, fame or money for something I have not actually achieved. It made me slightly more comfortable taking risks - going on television, doing interviews, falling in love, packing and emigrating - when I was far too scared to before, because it pushed me further than I ever thought I could be pushed without falling over. And it made me question the significance of bad odds when I had always been terrified by them: because I had been one in thousands and thousands and I could be again. For anything. At any time. In any way.

Which is the point of Best Job for me: not that I failed, but that I tried and got as far as I did. And that I let it change my life, when it would have been easier to continue on the same path: the same, but sadder.

I won't be doing a follow up BBC documentary. I don't regret being a part of it - even if sometimes I want to run back down the path and see if the other road might have hurt a lot less - but it is over now, and the past is where it should be left. Any good that can be taken from Best Job has been taken, any damage caused is being healed, and everything else should be forgotten. Publicly, privately, and - certainly - in front of 3 million viewers who have little genuine interest and absolutely nothing riding on the results.

I'll never know where I would be now if I hadn't sent that video off; if I hadn`t made a decision that split my life into two. I`ll never know where that other, different path would have led me, or what to. But I know who I would be. I would be someone far less brave, far less broken, and far less hopeful.

And I don't need a BBC film crew to tell me the value of that.