About

Hello,

So I’ve read a few articles which say that the ‘About’ section of any blog is one of the most important and most clicked on articles on any blog. They say that the ‘About’ section is vital for setting up the tone of your blog and whether people will engage with your blog and keep coming back to read more. As a reader of many blogs, I can definitely attest to the importance of the ‘About’ section, given that almost always I read one article, then click on the ‘About’ section, read it, then proceed to pass snap judgment about the person and ‘how lucky they are to make a career from taking photos of themselves wearing hipster clothes’, then lament the fact that my generation craves so much attention and validation from peers, then repeat said process for another blog.

Wow… did you notice what I just did there? What I did just then was tantamount to the old Year 8 debater trick, where you have to make a 5 minute speech and you’ve only got 2 minutes of speaking material so you start off with “The Macquarie English Dictionary defines ‘justice’ as…” . That paragraph was essentially just a filler. A complete waste of your reading time. I’ve been trying to write this ‘About’ section for a while now, but have just ended up writing about ‘About’ sections to try and fool you into thinking I was disclosing something real and wonderful about myself. Ok I’ll try again…

How about in 3^rd person?

Born in 1986 in a small country town, Arani was a bright but annoying child who…hmmm no I don’t want people to know how old I am, right? Yeah fuck that. I’m defs going to be one of those people who no one ever knows how old they are – like one day Wikileaks, leaks all these CIA docs about how they assassinated JFK [like how I threw that little gem in there?], and how they’ve been the controlling shareholder of Google for 20 billion years, but the one mystery they can’t solve is how old I am because they just couldn’t figure out what was written under that font with a ‘strikethrough’ through it. Yeah that would be cool….but no. The third person part sounds too wanky.

Ok. Sooooooo my name is Arani. [ooh that’s a good one I’ll start there]. My name is pronounced like the letters “R, N, E” said altogether at once. Simple. I’ve had a few variations, the most common of which has been “oh did your parents name you Irony?”, which is usually followed by that dumb laughter of someone who laughs at their own jokes. Dickheads. Needless to say, I also dislike Alanis Morrissette for introducing the word ‘irony’ into the common vocabulary of many idiotic people who, but for the popular song would not know what ‘irony’ means.

Some examples of what my name is not:

Ok back to my ‘About’ section…so conscious of the fact that I’ve spent 500 words and considerable time explaining what an ‘About’ section is, then ranting about my name, I’ll keep ‘the most important part’ short.

Basically The Escape Key is collection of articles about how much I hate being part of institutions and how I stumble through life and work in what feels like an ad hoc manner, all in the hope that one day someone will finally recognise my true talents and just pay me to watch reality TV and practice my cockney accent all day.

This feeling of wanting to ‘hit the escape key’ [yes yes I’m going to go all corny on you now] starts from going to the token private girls school, which if you’ve had the pleasure of going to one, seems to have a KPI associated with strangling the life and individuality out of anyone who goes to one. Then off I went to university to study Law and Commerce…I never had any real desire to be a lawyer, apart from fleeting moments whilst watching Law and Order SVU, nonetheless 5 years of study and countless essays about hypothetical legal situations which I could not give a stuff about, seemed like a good idea at the time. Anyway I have 2 degrees – both of which I’ve used about 5 times in my entire working life to date [I did once get asked a legal question at work which I had no idea about so I then Googled and then found my own notes on the internet…].

Then because I didn’t want to be a corporate lawyer [and the Law School I went to seemed incapable of telling you how to become any other type of lawyer than one that works for one of their many donor corporate firms], off I went to be an investment banker.

I went to work for a bulge bracket investment bank [that’s the wankiest way I could say that I worked in investment banking. Reality is that no one gives a fuck if the bulge is in your bracket or in your pants if you’re not a nice person. Anyway please know that I was intentionally being wanky to cater for the actual ‘Banker Wanker’ who will no doubt one day read this and say “well she didn’t even work for a proper bulge bracket investment bank for that long, so what would she know”, to somehow justify to themselves that they should stay and keep jumping for that carrot and not venture out and actually use their brains to add value to society].

Ahhh banking. Whilst I do hate thee, you are ultimately the father of this baby called The Escape Key. Without you, they’d be barely any rants or angry emails about shitty bosses to write about.

Anyway I’ve managed to leave banking but still seem to be caught wandering into workplaces and situations which irritate me and cause my left eye to twitch. Apparently incompetent people just love to work with me [ooh that could be a bit awks if anyone from my current employer saw that one…ok to any of those people just assume I’m talking about that other really annoying dick…not you of course].

Oh well.

I hope you enjoy my collection of articles which I think are least likely to get me fired or sued for defamation.