Life's Under No Obligation To Give Us What We Expect

This hasn’t been the easiest year so far. A silly start to it whereby I attempted a career in internet sales (ew, gross) left me stressing full time and bed bound with a horrendous case of tonsillitis. I quickly gave up on that job; I thought there must be better out there. And there was! A short stint at Comic Relief gave me the confidence I needed to go forward and find a longer term role. Except I haven’t. I’ve been unemployed for about 4 months now, and anyone who thinks the unemployed laze about watching Jezza all day dreaming about how they’ll fritter away their benefits – let me offer you another perspective on our situation...

I receive about 7 email alerts a day from various job sites about all the vacancies in the area – some completely irrelevant (bus driver, that would be disastrous) some completely out of my league and most completely miserable sounding. Even if I wanted a day to forget my predicament, these emails would provide a little pinch-in-the-arm reminder that I’m out of work. Then there’s the actual job-hunting. I hate sitting at a computer all day – it’s lonely, and tedious. For all the jobs I apply for, I rarely get a reply and when I do, it’s another little sting. I’ve been fortunate enough to get a few interviews earlier this month, but there are only so many times you can hear ‘you were our second choice!’ without wondering why you weren’t first.

This little post is turning into a right sob story, so I’ll stop all that right here. This is basically what I’ve been doing for the past few weeks, in essay form – berating myself and listing all the negatives until I feel completely despairing. Then stopping. And remembering having a job isn’t quite the be all and end all. This is a temporary situation, and it’s not so awful. Having a job, or rather not, does not define me. If my unemployment does define me to you, that’s your prerogative and it’s a little bit silly to be honest.

It takes a great deal of mental energy to stay positive through being out of work. There are moments when I simply can’t deal. Then I remember to have patience with myself, have some Pepsi Max, a little cry maybe, and carry on. So whatever you may be struggling with at the minute – I hope it gets better soon. Be kind to yourself, always.