Touching Bottom

I started out feeling positive – giving up a job isn’t the worst thing in the world, is it? This is a golden opportunity and anyway, there are lots of jobs that would suit. Aren’t there?

A few weeks into the search and after lots of applications and agency interviews the enthusiasm and confidence begins to diminish. But you keep up hope…hey, it will work out if you stay positive. Won’t it?

After a couple of actual interviews – at last, people can see your potential – and you hear yourself saying the same old thing and wishing you had different words to speak. Several rejections later and the confidence and the positive attitude are definitely shaky.

This is the second time along this route. This time I look back at the last time and know that things didn’t work out then either, did they? I didn’t solve the problems, or make the changes and here I am, back in the same place with the same issues staring me in the face. I am demoralised and demotivated and depressed. Any confidence I ever had about my abilities and achievements were mistaken, misplaced. If they had been accurate assessments of me, why am I struggling to find a job, any job? Why am I touching bottom?

I’ve hidden away for the last couple of weeks. Someone said ‘stop looking for a while’ and I took the offer. For two whole weeks my heart sang with joy as the pressure was off. I became a housewife and threw myself into domestic stuff. Our cake tins were filled with fresh baking and I looked lovingly at an expensive food-mixer as the next ‘must have’. It was a wonderful fantasy. For a while. But reality hits, discussions about bills and finances burst the bubble and once again I’m touching bottom.

No one said ‘get a job’ but I know its only fair. I should contribute, should pull my (considerable) weight and take some responsibility. I can’t opt out. It isn’t fair. This wasn’t the agreement – we are partners. But the knowledge has turned my head and heart upside down and the pressure is back. I am trying to find the words to say why I am the right person for a minimum wage job that I did fifteen years ago and sounding unconvincing – even to me.

I ought to be positive and innovative and spin the problems the way all the job-hunt books suggest but I can’t. I feel like the rabbit caught in the headlights, scared stiff – I am right out of enthusiasm and bright ideas even though I struggle to come up with something every hour of the day. Last week, when the pressure was off, I filled every hour and needed more. This week I sit and think and think and think and…should I get a job, any job? Or should I aim for the right job? And how do I find the right job? What do I put on an application form that shows I’m the perfect person? What do I need to do to change how I feel about work and its importance to me? How can I find the work that makes me glad to get up in the morning? How? What? Should? Too many questions and no answers. That’s what its like down at the bottom.

Time out

After all the tension of last week I’m trying a new experiment: not looking for a job. That horrible, whinny voice that shouted ‘get a job, get a job, any job…’ in my head constantly has been silenced for the time being and the silence is golden. Now I can relax a little and not feel that time spent doing anything other than job hunting is time that is wasted.

And so I’m taking a breather. Perhaps if the ‘should’ is absent, the ‘could’ will find its natural place? The need to find a particular type of job paying a specific amount of money has been removed, thankfully, and now I’m free to consider all sorts of options. Hopefully, I’ll have one of those ‘when you’re not looking’ experiences when the perfect opportunity pops up unexpectedly. Who knows? Why not?

In the meantime, I’m creating a new daily routine and trying my hand at all those things I used to wish I had the time to try…the house will get the TLC it needs and the cobwebs will be blown of the cookery books. What a great time to plan the garden, next year’s holiday and dream up all sorts of little adventures along the way…perhaps I’ll learn a language, or read the Bill Clinton bio…who knows? The world’s my lobster, as they say!

For the record I have to thank the major shareholder. The wonderful man has made this possible by taking away my worries and giving me space. I am truly blessed. Thank you, Mr A!

A bad day

Come in, sit down. I want you to be able to do everything I can do and more. I want you to be my clone. Can you do that?

I’m being interviewed by a JD copycat. Suddenly I am transported back to 1996 and the twelve months I spent as PA to a management consultant. It was the most miserable experience of my working life. Today, I’m trying to look competent and capable as the woman in front of me reels off the things she may ask me to do. She is changing her mind as the interview progresses. This is a new post and the first time in ten years that she will employ an assistant. I have serious doubts that she will be a better employer than JD or that I am what she is looking for. My heart sinks half way through the hour we spend together. I tell her that I feel I’m not what she needs but she won’t be put off and continues her monologue.

Later that same day I hear that the council and the chocolate wholesaler have offered their jobs to other people. And I know that if the consultant makes me an offer, I’d decline. It’s been a tough day and I’m disappointed by the rejections. Why is it so hard to find a job?