It used to be annoying, but it never made me doubt my sanity, or my path in life. When songs or noises got stuck in my head I knew why they were there, and that probably most people on the train, in the street or at the office had a similar irritating jingle floating around in their brain.
I may have heard the song in the car, on the train, or in a shop I walked past to get to the office. It could be the sound of the office phone, the incessant bleep of the fax or a particularly annoying colleague’s voice. Any one of the mindless drones that make up hundreds of thousands of work days around the country.
And yes, it was annoying. One line of a song circling the mind, for hours, or, worse, the machinery beeps and buzzes engraved onto your brain, even haunting your dreams.
But now, if it’s possible, I may have found something even more disturbing.
Ads. TV ads. The makers of the most inane jingles, designed to get into your head and stay there, are quite simply the bane of my life now.
Working from home, my hours are erratic: I may not get chance to do anything all day, and work all evening, or be up with the lark and finished by lunchtime, depending on family demands, deadlines, and my mood.
Unfortunately, as is often the way with my generation, as soon as I take a break and sit in the lounge, with kid, with lunch, with magazine or even (shamefully) with book, the TV tends to go on. It is on when I cook dinner, iron, do laundry – that background noise that may people can’t stand (lucky them) but which I find a bit of a comfort, like white noise. It burbles away innocently in the background, giving me the odd news update along the way.
Or, actually, it doesn’t. It burbles, sure.. But suddenly I am finding myself with these dreadful jingles in my head ALL THE TIME, getting louder and louder the more I try to escape them. I don’t even know what most of them are for, although on further investigation, most seem to be about insurance – car, life, or other.
In my dreams of leaving office life behind, the abolishment of night dreams rudely interrupted by the sound of my office fax machine bleeping angrily at me was one of the things I most looked forward to: a clear mind, a deep sleep, I thought.
But it was not to be, and there has, in fact, been many a night I have awoken, stressed and sweating, an ad jingle evilly meandering through my head at top volume, and wished for the days when it was tinny iPod tunes from the train, or the nasal drone of a fellow cubicle-dweller, which had lodged itself into my head.
Leah Gibbs is the Founder and Business Manager of Lifestyle Careers.
Lifestyle Careers is an online recruitment job board. Our niche and specific focus is the advertising of flexible employment and work at home positions. It is designed for professionals wanting to balance their work and personal life.
