Finding the right words

Exasperation would perhaps best describe my state of mind at the moment but really that is not the right word. It isn't enough to say what I feel. I can't be bothered to think of anything better or more eloquent to put in its place though.

The end of last week was a particularly bad time, not for any specific reason, I just felt shit every day. Not physically; emotionally and mentally drained, unwilling and distant. I am not even sure that I was here at the end of last week. Of course, physically I was here but otherwise it felt like I was living on auto-pilot. What prompted this sense of crisis is many things. Mostly that little voice in my head that keeps on and on about how things will never get any better. Everyone says that I should stay positive and that is sound advice. I try; it is becoming harder and harder though. I find disappointment everywhere, I look for positive signs and find them wanting. I also feel a lot of anger at the injustice of where I am. The trouble is I have no direction to vent my anger. I have no one to blame, no one who is culpable, only myself. So I end up dwelling on it, over and over again until it comes to a point when I just shut myself off and drift through the days like I did at the end of last week.

I can't explain what an immense mental effort it was to go my first Open University tutorial last Saturday. It sounds ridiculous and probably is as I only had to walk into Bletchley and it was only for a couple of hours. The night before and on the Saturday morning I kept going through whether I would go or not, running all the possibilities of why I should or shouldn't. More than that, I was running through all my insecurities, all my feelings of doubt and loathing, making it all seem like a Herculean effort rather than the simple task of turning up for a few hours and getting something valuable in terms of learning. On reflection, I wonder why I do it to myself. Why do I put so many of these ridiculous barriers in my way and then view them as being completely insurmountable, when in actual fact there is nothing to fear in the first place?

I am keenly aware of when I am doing this and I know it makes no sense. I am alert to the signs of when I am not coping and I suppose I should stop myself and do something about it. Like the mantra of 'staying positive' the words come easily, doing the same comes much less so.

Where am I now? Well, I feel better than I did. I go through these phases from time to time, there is nothing new in it. This was just a particularly bad experience.

I am immensely frustrated and disappointed that I am still unemployed. Every deadline that I have set myself for getting a job has come and gone. I have only had one interview this year! Is it any wonder that I feel so pissed off? I wish I could say that I am 'keeping positive' but you already know from the above that is a lie. Not that I am completely negative; I have moments, maybe days when I feel that things are finally coming together. Then that feeling passes and I am back to where I am now, wondering if things will ever change. I keep thinking to myself, this wasn't how it was supposed to be. Not that I ever had any grand plan for life although it certainly didn't involve being 32 and unemployed with nothing important achieved.

I keep looking for work although more often than not it feels like I am just going through the motions. All the agencies I have registered with seem unfeasibly positive at first and all have great jobs that will suit me just fine and then the reality strikes and they fail to deliver anything at all. Or they seem incapable of understanding my skills and experience and matching me to jobs that would suit my background, instead offering jobs in sales, which I have no experience of and is always required for these type of roles. I trawl the Internet job sites and the local papers, occassionally a job will appeal that matches my skills and experience but then it is either a case of the salary is too low or it is in some far distant place that would be difficult, if not impossible to get too.

Stay positive? Yeah, right. I've been out of work now for three months and I've had four interviews (and two of those were with the same company)! I can't help thinking that I will never find work. I don't know where I am going from here.