I work with a 24-year-old. More than one, actually, but some embody it more than others.

He’s called Alf. He starts his cover letters for other – what he imagines are better – jobs with “My name is Alf.” He wants to write but seems to spend all his time in the pubs where his friends work, drinking free beer and playing pool. He also attends weekly meetings of the Revolutionary Communist Party. As I said, 24.

He seems to think his life lacks direction. He’s not wrong, but that doesn’t mean he’s right either. When I was 24 I was finishing up a stint teaching English in Japan, about to embark on six months of backpacking across Southeast Asia, China, and New Zealand, followed by a homecoming to… friends’ couches?

I wanted to write too. Somewhere along the way I forgot that if you wanted to write there was only one thing for it: Write.

It didn’t have to lead anywhere. It might have, but that isn’t the point. You do a thing because it is a thing you want to do. It is not part one; it is not a step; you are not progressing.

He says he doesn’t want to work in a bookshop because he should be able to buy a flat in London. I say, “Why do you want to buy a flat in London?” Alf says it’s home, and his Mum and sister and friends are here, and okay, sure, but just because you have a place you identify as Home doesn’t mean you have to live there. New York will never not be my home.

But Alf says it’s more the idea of a Proper Job. A Proper Job should pay the bills and buy a flat. He has this idea of what an adult looks like, and what we are isn’t it.

Fair. I once thought I wanted a Proper Job too. So I found one. And I spent 7 years working it, and another 5 working another, and then I had a baby and moved to London and wondered what the hell I’d been doing all that time.

A lot, I suppose. And not enough. None of it was wasted; if I hadn’t decided on a “career” I wouldn’t have met Richard. Much follows. But I wasn’t writing, and I should have been. Not to publish a book but because… Look, if you’re a Librarian, you will always be a librarian, whether you work in a library or not. If you’re a writer: you write. I don’t want Alf, who says he wants to write, to forget that.

Right now his main concern is dating. More important than finding a new job is finding a girl he can be crazy about. He thinks the way to do this is to have, as one of his Hinge questions, “What is your madeleine moment?” As if a girl, a) getting this reference, and b) thinking it’s profoundly meaningful, is the key to lasting happiness.

I asked him how many volumes he’s read. “Two?” Right, of course. And did you like them? I mean look, Alf, if you’re going to attach this much weight to a reference, it has to be both a lot more obscure and a lot more important to you. And it has to be something that if they don’t get it, once you explain (with no judgement you ponce) they'll think, okay, this is interesting and I want to learn more.

I once had a dating profile (on a book-based site) with the fake name Carrie Kelly. No one got it. And it’s worth noting that I did once date someone who would have, and am glad I stopped, and that Richard still wouldn’t. But I know if I handed him the book he’d enjoy it and agree that I should totally dress as her for Halloween. Why else do I keep rollerblades in the closet?

Well, Alf can’t help being 24. I was no better, and I can’t stop him from making his own mistakes and learning his own lessons. In 20 years he’ll agree that office jobs suck, but maybe he’s got to have a few first.

He really does need to read more science fiction though. Most people do, but especially if they’re in danger of becoming one of those people who Do Not Read Science Fiction. Nip that shit in the bud. Otherwise you end up yet another old white man going into the bookshop and asking for military history and reading only books about WWII, of which there are way, way too many.

(The British obsession with WWII: Discuss. My theory is that this country has been involved in many wars over the centuries, many of which they should not have been, and in all that time, all those conflicts, about only one can they feel fairly unambiguously proud. 1939: The other side was Nazis. ‘Nuff said.)

So please Alf, don’t become that guy. Don’t hang all that meaning on Proust while sneering at literal time travel.

Because… I can’t believe I have to explain this… The literal “science fiction” stuff that happens in those books is all metaphorical. It’s time travel because time travel is fun to think about but also because it gets at the human condition. Could you kill Hitler? Should you, sure, but could you? At the end of the day the best science fiction is not about the future, or aliens, or space ships, or the apocalypse; that’s window-dressing. Science fiction is about people. Who are we, really? When we’re at our best, and our worst? When we follow the logic and ask What If?

(Potentially much more meaningful Hinge questions: Which of Heinlein’s 3 kinds of SF appeals to you most? Or, Do Asimov’s Laws of Robotics need updating? Would you kill Hitler? Would you travel forwards or backwards in time? Would you push the button and invite the aliens in?)

Because humans are not, after all, homo sapiens. Wise my ass. We are (I don’t know if Pratchett originated this or if that’s just where I heard it first, but I’ll take the opportunity to plug another SF name) pan narrans. Just another ape, but with stories. So many stories.

You’re an animal, Sibling Dex. You are not separate or other. You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is. If you want to do things that are meaningful to others, fine! Good! So do I! But if I wanted to crawl into a cave and watch stalagmites with Frostfrog for the remainder of my days, that would also be both fine and good. You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do.¹

It is not easy, explaining this to a 24-year-old: that your life is what you do with it, every day. Your obituary will have a narrative but your days, hours, minutes are discrete, and yours alone. I don’t dislike office jobs; I dislike spending my days in an office. I left the archives not because the collections weren’t fascinating (hello, Maya Angelou’s porn), but because no matter how fascinating they were (that frisson when I held Malcolm X’s briefcase) it didn’t change the fact that I was spending all my time a) commuting, to b) sit in front of a computer, in c) a windowless room, temperature-controlled for the comfort of paper, not people.

And that’s it, isn’t it? Pan narrans to our own detriment. So good at stories we conflate them with reality or worse, believe the story we tell is more important than the reality we live.

Alf tells himself a story where he has a Proper Job. He is a writer, editor, publisher – a person of that world – attending salons, drinking cocktails with people who, it goes without saying, understand what a madeleine moment is. He goes home to his North London flat with his very attractive lady friend who will not pressure him to have children, where the walls are lined with the books of people he regularly meets, as well as a tasteful number of his own, perhaps translated into Russian and French. The Booker, when it arrives, he keeps in the downstairs loo.

¹Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Recipe: The sleeper hit of last Thanksgiving, an updated creamed spinach.