I’ve been out of work, mostly, since July. I worked just a bit in August, and could have continued for a little bit after that, but the payout from accrued vacation at my old job was more than I would earn regularly for a while, so I resigned and took the payout.
Now it’s October, and I am still unemployed. I had one interview, and a second, for a job that seemed promising, then I was passed over in favor of someone else. Then I had an interview that I never heard back from. Then, last week, I had another interview that seems promising, and will be a good job, but it may not be filled with me, or someone else, until the end of the year. I don’t know that I can wait that long. The second interview for that job is a panel interview, which I have never done before. That intimidates me. But I am also not there yet.
So what do I do? Do I wait on this job, which could be very good in various respects, or do I keep looking? The answer seems obvious: as the proverb goes “never count yer chickens before they hatch” and no job is a job until a contract is signed so I will keep filling out applications and looking for employment.
It is quite disheartening, looking for jobs and hearing nothing, or being given an interview and still not hearing anything. And this has been going on for months now. It depresses me, this job hunting. I’ll have a day ahead of me, and first thing pull out my laptop to scour the web for an opportunity. I spend an hour or two searching, and if I am lucky, I find one job that I am qualified to apply for. So I drop my resume and an application, and wait to hear nothing back. If I am very fortunate, after another hour I’ll find another job and apply to that one as well. Regardless, I don’t stop searching until I find something that I can apply to.
I have lost track of how many jobs I have applied to at this point.
And then, I feel ruined for the rest of the day. I am so emotionally down after applying for work, that I can’t get back up again. I have plenty to do, between chores some days, or working on projects for The Workshop I have over on Patreon, or reading, but I can’t seem to find motivation to do any of these things. The effort required to put myself out into the wide world of work takes all the energy I have.
So what to do? I obviously can’t stop looking for a job until I have one, but I can’t do anything else as a result, or not without extraordinary motivation most days. I am about at my wit’s end. I feel so much Frodo and Sam tramping towards Mount Doom. Can’t go back, nothing left to sustain, and only endless steps upon steps towards an unachievable (seeming) goal. I don’t even have the impetus to sit down and cry, which is what I feel like doing (even assuming I could cry, which is a whole ‘nother thing).
I made the decision long ago on this weblog to not apologize for the content of what I post, and this is no different, though I feel the impulse. This is my life right now, that I didn’t choose, and seeming can’t get out of. This is my reality. Quite honestly, I don’t want another hourly job. I want to be an artist, working on beautiful things, and researching the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien and put what I find into the world. But that doesn’t pay. This upside-down world of runaway capitalism that I was born into won’t allow for people making beautiful things. It crushes such souls beneath the iron feet of commerce. It creates “artificial intelligence” to do these things so that artists can toil in the black coal mines beneath the earth (if they had their way).
Wow. That got dark, none the more so for being fairly true.
So what do do? I wish I knew. For now, I’ll keep trudging. If you want to buy me a sandwich along the way, or help pay bills while I am out of work, please feel free to drop a donation into my PayPal account. I promise to pay it forward if I am afforded the chance, and in the meantime, you will help my wife and I avoid accumulating more debt as we afford essentials with her salary.
I really wish I wasn’t in this position, but I suppose this is what it means to be an adult in this current day and time when one isn’t in a higher position of privilege. Thanks for hanging in with me, and I will try to get back to more upbeat postings when I am able.
