Opportunity lost

A couple of years ago, when I was toying with the idea that I might actually try to be a writer, I had a brilliant idea. In my day job I encountered a constant stream on potentially interesting people.

I thought it would be a good idea to interview people with interesting jobs, and turn it into a regular column for one of the mainstream publications. A kind of "this is who I am and this is what I do" piece, a fly on the wall thing about whatever their job entailed on any given day, including the mundane details, which might actually be quite interesting. For example, while talking to an international commercial pilot one day, he was complaining about how much paperwork had to be done during the flight. And I thought: paperwork? What paperwork? Why would you need to do any paperwork? Don't you just turn up, fly the plane to Los Angeles, land it, and hit the bars downtown? Paperwork? Who knew?

So I thought, if I didn't know what a pilot actually does all day, maybe others don't. And perhaps those same people might actually like to know.

I also wondered about an escort/prostitute. We all "know" what they do, but do we really know what they do? What occupies their average day? I thought that would be interesting to find out about, and write a piece on.

As I do with so many things, I promptly dismissed the idea as untenable. Who would pay for such a thing? Who would publish it? It probably wouldn't be as interesting as it sounded. Maybe I was the only person in the whole world who wondered what a pilot or a hooker actually did in an average work day.

Well, apparently not. Because now, two years later, there's a new regular column in one of the leading weekly publications. Guess what the column is about. Go on. Guess.

Yep. Interesting people with interesting jobs and what those interesting jobs entail.

ARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!