Getting older. Being unemployed
Aug. 31st, 2010 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
askygoneonfire In 26 days I will be 26. Struggling to have any positive feelings about this.
Today I visited the job centre to transfer my claim from the Brighton office. As with the previous visit the advisor was rude and...stupid. He mocked my signature for looking silly (I know, wut?) and kept laughing at the course title of my Masters (Sexual Dissidence in Literature and Culture) before needing convincing that yes, that is what it says on my degree. He snorted once more and said "I won't write that on your file" and simply typed 'M.A.'
I spent the afternoon with my brothers, which was lovely. Although we all had a bit of a weird psychic moment where brother 2 and I left his flat to surprise brother 1 with a visit - 1 didn't know I was even going to be in town today - we arrived to 1's flat but he wasn't in. So we nipped into the nearby Asda and received a call from 2's partner who was still at their flat. 1 had just arrived. This means that we both left our respective departure points at the same time, having not planned to meet or visit and all three of us deciding on the spur of the moment to visit at that exact time. Weirdness.
I got home to my parent's house and my Mum tells me that the school at which she works, the same place I had an interview the other week, want me to work there in some sort of admin role. Apparently it pays better than the one I interviewed for and I won't have to interview again. So obviously I'll take it if they offer it to me - don't look a gift horse and all that.
I was planning on going to the cinema with brother 2 tomorrow for Orange Wednesday to see Salt. We were going to go to a matinee because it's cheaper and he needs to get home at a reasonable hour to go to bed as his schizophrenia medication makes him sleep for at least 12 hours and he's at work at 7am the following morning. ANYWAY, I'd be leaving at 1:15pm for the cinema, not unreasonable that I won't be constantly in the house between 8:30am and 4pm, surely? My parents believe I'm being reckless with a solid job offer and I should arrange to stay in ALL DAY. This is particularly stupid given my Mum could just say to the recruiting woman tomorrow morning "oh, she's only in until 1pm as she has to go to the job centre" or just "go out". Not unreasonable, right? Parents continued repeating same thing.
Eventually I packed up my stuff and went upstairs to my room, once again - I've spent a significant portion (if not all) of 5 of the 6 evenings I have been living here for, in my room (and the sixth night was spent at a friends house). I may as well have got a bedsit and stayed in Brighton.
I am, despite my above refutation, thinking about looking a gift horse in the mouth. I have spent the last 3 years trapped in a job I hate in a city I love. I say trapped because of the working pattern of 1 day on, 1 day off, 4 days on, 1 day off, repeat didn't allow me time or energy to look for new jobs with necessary zeal. Financially, of course, I was also trapped, unable to afford luxuries or save any money, but earning just enough to pay rent and bills; making myself unemployed in Brighton would have been suicide/was unthinkable. But the gleaming, shining, bouncing, glowing star of optimism that convinced me to move back up North was the idea I would have space and time to find a job I might enjoy, as well as live in a place that would allow me to save for the now mythologised PhD.
In short, whilst the prospect of a job falling into my lap seems a delight, I can't help but sigh a sad sigh and prepare myself to be reinserted into just the working environment I so gleefully fled in Brighton. I feel trapped all over again and I haven't even had the job offer.
I was meant to be having some sort of careers guidance meeting with an advisor a week on Friday. I was feeling really positive about that. And I was planning on going to Nottingham on Thursday to register with some agencies in the hope of striking out into publishing/editing industry - copy writing? Yes please. But agencies and waiting for the career you've picked to turn up requires having an empty calendar - you have to be able to answer the phone call that says "we have a 3 month contract for a copy writer in x, can you start on Monday?" with "yes" not, "no, I have to give my one months notice first".
I keep getting trapped in this stupid fucking economy with my fucking useless (although, apparently amusing) degree and attempts to break out of it last LESS THAN A MONTH. I just want a good job. A graduate job - £20,000 p/a is not an unrealistic salary expectation. What was the point in going to University, getting myself a £15,000 student debt, when I could have got a job at a local paper or something and worked my way up. I could have done a degree at 50 if it was still something I felt I needed to do. Instead I'm completely fucking stuck.
I'm single. And I'm 26(ish) and I'm living with my parents again - the latter being my choice in principle, by only because I thought it was a radical move that'd give me the opportunity to break out of the have no money-get paid-pay rent-have no money cycle of finances I simply couldn't break free of in Brighton. And here I am, feeling more hopelessly stuck than I have done since I made the decision to move if I didn't find a new job in Brighton back in May.
ETA: Oh, and the rats aren't settling in nearly as well as I hoped they would and the only time they come to me is when they are cowering in fear and want to hide from everything/nothing in my arms/under my legs, rather than for kisses and tickles and hugs like they used to. I feel fantastically guilty for upsetting them so much
Today I visited the job centre to transfer my claim from the Brighton office. As with the previous visit the advisor was rude and...stupid. He mocked my signature for looking silly (I know, wut?) and kept laughing at the course title of my Masters (Sexual Dissidence in Literature and Culture) before needing convincing that yes, that is what it says on my degree. He snorted once more and said "I won't write that on your file" and simply typed 'M.A.'
I spent the afternoon with my brothers, which was lovely. Although we all had a bit of a weird psychic moment where brother 2 and I left his flat to surprise brother 1 with a visit - 1 didn't know I was even going to be in town today - we arrived to 1's flat but he wasn't in. So we nipped into the nearby Asda and received a call from 2's partner who was still at their flat. 1 had just arrived. This means that we both left our respective departure points at the same time, having not planned to meet or visit and all three of us deciding on the spur of the moment to visit at that exact time. Weirdness.
I got home to my parent's house and my Mum tells me that the school at which she works, the same place I had an interview the other week, want me to work there in some sort of admin role. Apparently it pays better than the one I interviewed for and I won't have to interview again. So obviously I'll take it if they offer it to me - don't look a gift horse and all that.
I was planning on going to the cinema with brother 2 tomorrow for Orange Wednesday to see Salt. We were going to go to a matinee because it's cheaper and he needs to get home at a reasonable hour to go to bed as his schizophrenia medication makes him sleep for at least 12 hours and he's at work at 7am the following morning. ANYWAY, I'd be leaving at 1:15pm for the cinema, not unreasonable that I won't be constantly in the house between 8:30am and 4pm, surely? My parents believe I'm being reckless with a solid job offer and I should arrange to stay in ALL DAY. This is particularly stupid given my Mum could just say to the recruiting woman tomorrow morning "oh, she's only in until 1pm as she has to go to the job centre" or just "go out". Not unreasonable, right? Parents continued repeating same thing.
Eventually I packed up my stuff and went upstairs to my room, once again - I've spent a significant portion (if not all) of 5 of the 6 evenings I have been living here for, in my room (and the sixth night was spent at a friends house). I may as well have got a bedsit and stayed in Brighton.
I am, despite my above refutation, thinking about looking a gift horse in the mouth. I have spent the last 3 years trapped in a job I hate in a city I love. I say trapped because of the working pattern of 1 day on, 1 day off, 4 days on, 1 day off, repeat didn't allow me time or energy to look for new jobs with necessary zeal. Financially, of course, I was also trapped, unable to afford luxuries or save any money, but earning just enough to pay rent and bills; making myself unemployed in Brighton would have been suicide/was unthinkable. But the gleaming, shining, bouncing, glowing star of optimism that convinced me to move back up North was the idea I would have space and time to find a job I might enjoy, as well as live in a place that would allow me to save for the now mythologised PhD.
In short, whilst the prospect of a job falling into my lap seems a delight, I can't help but sigh a sad sigh and prepare myself to be reinserted into just the working environment I so gleefully fled in Brighton. I feel trapped all over again and I haven't even had the job offer.
I was meant to be having some sort of careers guidance meeting with an advisor a week on Friday. I was feeling really positive about that. And I was planning on going to Nottingham on Thursday to register with some agencies in the hope of striking out into publishing/editing industry - copy writing? Yes please. But agencies and waiting for the career you've picked to turn up requires having an empty calendar - you have to be able to answer the phone call that says "we have a 3 month contract for a copy writer in x, can you start on Monday?" with "yes" not, "no, I have to give my one months notice first".
I keep getting trapped in this stupid fucking economy with my fucking useless (although, apparently amusing) degree and attempts to break out of it last LESS THAN A MONTH. I just want a good job. A graduate job - £20,000 p/a is not an unrealistic salary expectation. What was the point in going to University, getting myself a £15,000 student debt, when I could have got a job at a local paper or something and worked my way up. I could have done a degree at 50 if it was still something I felt I needed to do. Instead I'm completely fucking stuck.
I'm single. And I'm 26(ish) and I'm living with my parents again - the latter being my choice in principle, by only because I thought it was a radical move that'd give me the opportunity to break out of the have no money-get paid-pay rent-have no money cycle of finances I simply couldn't break free of in Brighton. And here I am, feeling more hopelessly stuck than I have done since I made the decision to move if I didn't find a new job in Brighton back in May.
ETA: Oh, and the rats aren't settling in nearly as well as I hoped they would and the only time they come to me is when they are cowering in fear and want to hide from everything/nothing in my arms/under my legs, rather than for kisses and tickles and hugs like they used to. I feel fantastically guilty for upsetting them so much
