Still ungainfully unemployed

So still the search for gainful employment goes on, it's been over eight weeks now and to be honest I didn't envisage it would be this long or this difficult!

Jobs it seems in these parts are a rare commodity, or at least those that you might actually want to do and even having widened my criteria to include part time, painfully poorly remunerated positions, it's still difficult.....and who said there isn't a recession, if you're out there trying to find work it's beginning to look suspiciously like there is something very similar to a recession going on!

I am still trying to hang out for something at least vaguely reasonable but in reality even something very 'un'-reasonable is proving hard to track down. Yes I've had a few days temping here and there which is better than absolutely nothing but only just.

All this raises a few issues, not only the glaringly obvious which is that I'm broke and with a car about to fail it's M.O.T dismally and expensively but if you ever thought you would love to leave work think again. Yes, for a few weeks it's pretty cool but longer term, particularly in my situation with no children to take care of and only a small home to manage, no matter what interests you have, once you can pursue them so much of the time their interest gradually begins to wane, as does ten hours a day with only yourself for company, the inability to sleep night after night because you just don't get tired and the gradual whittling away of your self confidence as the result of constantly being made aware that you are not good enough to be offered even a half decent position.

It's an odd thing, kind of an emotional roller coaster. You begin by believing you have at least adequate skills, hell, you have always been employed, therefor you must be employable...... mustn't you? Each possibility brings the high of imagining actually succeeding this time, only to be hotly pursued by the low of not succeeding again and try as you might tell yourself not to hope to hard in the first place, somehow the promise of possible work and solvency is too much to resist daydreaming over just a little bit.

Then of course there is our culture's habit of defining the person we are by what job we do and our income level and whilst I have always tried not to fall into that trap, out there in the big wide world there are many that do. Believe me, when you have neither you qualify quite spectacularly as a nobody and begin to dread that old chestnut in social situations of being asked "so, what do you do then"? The response to the reply that you are currently unemployed usually meets with an embarrassed silence while your questioner tries desperately to think of what to say next!

I know I put myself in this position, a fact that only adds to the pressure, but whilst as a consequence I don't have the right to complain, it's turning out to be a damn sight harder than I ever envisaged and not allowing it to gradually erode away at one's self esteem and motivation is harder still.

Perhaps it's different if you don't need to work but it's only when you can't work that you realise that work is about so much more than just money!