Working 9 to 5: God & Careers

Originally published in Jan 2008


One of the signs to look out for that you're getting older is that when you go to parties you start having really dull conversations. Many times I've realised too late that I've been having a conversation about car insurance or mortgages ("Fixed rate or tracker…Hmm it's a tricky one…) with total strangers. I kick myself when it happens, and promise myself to try harder to avoid it next time. But I have an ace up my sleeve: when the conversation turns to, "What do you do for a living?" You get the 'I'm in insurance' or 'I'm a teacher' and sometimes 'I'm a doctor,' and these can degenerate into another dull conversation about Government policies or haemorrhoids. But I get to say, "I'm a sound engineer," and that apparently is a very enviable job. I like it because people don't know how to have boring conversations about it, although most people would find 2 sound engineers talking about work as dull as listening to 2 accountants but that's because we get to use a secret language involving decibels, modulation techniques and psychoacoustic principles which most people don't even know exist. I know I was born to be a sound engineer and I thoroughly enjoy my profession, but it was a long time after leaving school that I found my job – indeed it was a long time before I even discovered what I wanted to do.

I've written in previous blogs about how I didn't get on too well at school, so I won't go over that again, but when I left school after A-levels I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I didn't want to spend 3 years at university studying something I wasn't interested in and would never use, so I didn't go to university, I got a job and because I hadn't a clue what I wanted to do I took the first job that was offered to me which was in the kitchens of an old folks home. I worked there for 5 years during which time I did my Local Preachers training, played in a few bands, made my first tentative steps in recording friends bands on a 4 track analogue machine and tried to find some direction for my life.

As a Christian, one of the places I looked to try to find direction was my Faith. I believe it's vitally important to find out who God made us and how that fits into the wider world and from there we'll find big clues as to what our career may be. And so I examined my belief and knowledge of God to look for clues.
Now I'm not one of those Christians that looks for flashes and bangs and God revealing himself in supernatural ways, but there are 2 incidents which have lead me to my chosen career that I begrudgingly have to admit are probably too 'co-incidental' to be co-incidences. The first one is the smaller of the 2, but without it the second one couldn't have happened.

It was 1995, I'd been at the nursing home for 5 years and needed to do something else, but didn't know what. I'd figured I could do something full time for the Church and by a process of elimination I had settled on applying to be on one of Rob Frost's seed teams for a year. This would involve being placed in a small team for a year in a Church anywhere in the country and working part time with a local church on a project. I half filled in the application form one night and was going to do the rest when a letter plopped onto my doormat from a friend of mine. He said he was finishing university that June and was looking to set up a band in Leeds as a serious attempt to be professional musicians – pop stars if you will. I didn't really think it was a serious option, but considered it only because I wasn't entirely sold on the seed team. Guess where I ended up moving to. The timing of that letter was very important in my making the decision to try do music for a living, and for the next 3 years I lived in a house with the other band members and we all took bottom rung jobs with no responsibility to maximise the time we could spend on our music.

So to co-incidence number 2. Forward fast to 1998 and the band hadn't been the success we'd hoped for. The band split at Easter and we all had to then find proper jobs. I looked at the possibility of getting into sound engineering, as this had been a growing interest whilst the band had been operational and we'd made friends with a few engineers. I discovered that it's an incredibly difficult profession to get into. There are basically 3 ways into sound engineering; the first is to do lots of volunteering at a local studio when you're a teenager and gradually work up – if you're any good. The second is to do a course and then apply for jobs – a big risk as the best courses are at private colleges and cost thousands of pounds and there are very few jobs around and they rarely get advertised, and the third way is to buy or build your own studio – a massive financial outlay and again a huge risk. The second route was the only one open to me, so when I found a prize draw in a lads mag to win a course at Manchester's school of sound recording I entered it. I didn't win.
A month or 2 later again I'm filling in the application form to attend the college and wondering how I can raise the three and a half thousand pounds that the course cost to do when 'plop,' a letter on the doormat. This one was from the school of sound recording telling me that due to a mix up in the runners up prizes they could offer me a place on the course I was applying for, for a considerably discounted rate. I snapped up the offer and moved to Manchester to study sound engineering. Again the co-incidental timing of the arrival of the letter was a big factor in my doing the course, as I would have struggled to afford the full rate of the course I took. It proves to me that I am where God wants me to be. And without doing that course I wouldn't have got the job I now have.

Whilst writing this I've remembered another incident. The lowest point in my career was in 1998 just before I started my college course when I'd been working for minimum wage for 8 years, and it was at this point that I ran into a school friend I hadn't seen since sixth form. We talked and discussed jobs. He was working in finance and earning good money while I was struggling to get by on a tiny wage. He was really shocked about how badly I was doing and said to me that he couldn't believe it as I'd always been the most together person out of all of us at school. After I'd got over the shock that I'd been considered with such regard, I thought about what he'd said. He was earning good money, but hated his job. I was earning nothing and hated my job, but was about to go to college to train to do something I loved. He was envious of me for being able to go to college and totally change what I was because if he were to do that he's lose a lot of money. I had no money to lose, so it was easy for me to risk the change. And it was a risk that paid off, if only because it makes parties more interesting.