Getting it together

Phew! What a busy week. After feeling really fed up and ready to give up at the end of last week, things have picked up considerably. I still don't have a firm offer of a job in my hands but I feel like I am moving forward rather than standing still and that it is now only a matter of time before I am back in to work.

I have an interview next week for a call centre job. Its not great pay and it involves working shifts, which I am not too keen on either. But its a job. I am hoping the interview goes well and that I get the job. If I don't, well there are other things on the go and besides this would only be a stop-gap to something better, not a permanent career move.

I saw two agencies this week and spoken to a couple of others. All seem quite enthusiastic and keen to get me into a position as soon as possible. I feel encouraged by that and confident that things are beginning to turn around.

As well as looking for paid employment, I've also been considering doing some voluntary work until I get myself into something more permanent. I've volunteered for a couple of things, which I am just waiting to hear back on. According to the Job Centre I am okay doing this as long as its no more than ten hours per week and I keep actively looking for work, which I fully intend to do. Also, I've signed up to work a couple of conventions at the beginning of March. I'd been thinking about doing this for a long while, having done a couple of cons here in Milton Keynes about 5 years ago. Then there is my OU course, which I've just started. The calendar is beginning to look quite full for the next couple of months!

So I feel a lot more positive than a week ago and a lot more in control. Despite not having any money, I feel happy. I feel contented with my lot at the moment and happy and glad for the things I do have.

Same crap different day

I've just about had enough today. I feel so many different things at the moment I am not sure how to focus my feelings. Everyday just lately has felt like one slap in the face after another. I believe I must be some sort of idiot or have a sign hung around my neck saying 'hey, come and walk all over me, I don't mind.'

Sigh.

I had set myself a deadline of finding a new job by the end of this month. I have been out of work now for about 3 months and I feel absolutely gutted that here I am still not working and with no propsect of securing a decent job in the forseeable future. Where did it all go wrong? What is wrong with me?

Part of me, the really negative side, feels like I've been a complete and utter failure. Its like I've finally been found out. That I am thoroughly crap and useless and I've only just realised it. If I wasn't surely I'd have a job by now?

I got turned down for the job that I'd applied for where I used to work. I had the test and interview last Thursday - where they kept me waiting for half-hour - and only got the feedback today that I didn't 'meet the required competencies' for the role! What the f**k does that mean?! I thought it had gone well and the fact that I can't even secure myself a crappy job answering the 'phones really does my head in. Am I so utterly unemployable that I can't even do a school leaver's job? And they've messed me around so much. I had to 'phone five - yes FIVE - times to get that piece of feedback. Well, thanks so much for wasting my time!

About five minutes after I had that call I had a call from a friend who I used to work with. He suggested e-mailing my CV across to his Manager and was as surprised as I was that I'd been turned down for a job where we both used to work. That at least made me feel a little bit better. But the best he could offer was a role paying £15K a year in Coventry - that's half what I was earning a few months ago! And no matter how much I move the figures around it would be financially unviable with the travelling costs.

I feel so utterly shit at the moment. I don't know whether to be angry or just sit in the corner and cry. It's probably just as well that I live on my own because I really want to hit someone at the moment. Aaaaarrrrgh!

I decided that just sitting here beating myself up about it all isn't going to get me anywhere. So, I've taken a deep breath, looked at my budget for each month and what I have coming in and I am going to have to make some drastic changes. I need to prioritise what is critical and what is not. I also made a list of agencies to call in the morning and I've set myself the lowest hourly rate I can possibly live on and I am just going to keep going until someone gives me a job. I am not going to put up with this crap any longer. I can't. I think I am slowly going mad or at least that is what it feels like. I am not going to let this defeat me, am not going to give in.

Please bear with me, I hope to resume normal service soon...

I'll be glad to see the back of this week...

I heard on the radio this morning that this week is supposed to be the most depressing of the year which seems appropriate as it hasn't been a particularly good week for me. Not that anything bad or awful has happened. Its been one of those weeks where everything seems to have gone wrong, where the little problems have mounted up. Today I've gone back to my old ways, what I call the 'fat Mark' way of thinking, which is that if I am under stress or unhappy I'll find comfort in food, so yep, I've been grazing all day, eating all the wrong kind of things, not doing any exercise at all. Just sitting on my fat behind and feeling miserable about it. So, let's get it off my chest!

Monday - I hate Mondays! Even though I am not working at the moment, there is something about Monday mornings, which just isn't conducive to being happy. I was feeling rather unwell on Monday this week, getting disconcerting dizzy spells, which I realised later could have been something to do with forgetting to take my blood pressure tablets the day before. It sounds silly but it could have been the cause, although the long list of horrible side-effects on the medication does warn that one of the commonest ones is dizziness, vertigo and the like. Whatever, it made me feel unwell all day. I also had a call on Monday to advise that the engineer who was coming to fix my boiler on Tuesday was off sick so the job wouldn't be done. After much hassle and some 'phone calls later, the engineer is now coming next Tuesday...although I'll only believe it when he's actually here. In the meantime I don't have a reliable supply of hot water.

I can't remember what happened on Tuesday but something went wrong, I know. Maybe it was the lights blowing in the lounge...No, I know what it was, I'd spent a long time over the weekend and Monday and Tuesday working on redesign of a web site that I manage for one of the railway societies I belong too. Only thing is when I came to update it, everything got cocked up and I managed to delete a fairly important file by mistake. All got sorted in the end but that was stressful!

Wednesday was my sign-on day at the Job Centre, which always makes me feel down. I find it so demoralising and degrading, especially when most of the people there seem to be no-hopers or benefit cheats. The advisor I see there, nice guy but completely useless. I had a whinge about the fact that if I was a single mother I'd probably be better off and that I feel penalised under the benefits system because I am a single person with no dependents. How is anyone supposed to live on £60 per week? I was just sounding off.

Yesterday I had a job interview, which went okay apart from the fact that they kept me waiting for almost half-hour! Yes, thirty bloody minutes before anyone came to see me! I was annoyed about that but was even more annoyed that in the afternoon I had an appointment with an agency for temporary work, which proved to be a complete waste of time. Apparently because I possess neither a passport nor a full birth certificate (I do have a birth certificate but I am told it is not a full one) they were unable to register me. I am beginning to hold agencies with the same contempt as IFA's. Stupid rules! The interview in the morning on a positive note seemed to go well and I passed the first bit, which was a telephone test. I find out early next week if I got the job.

When I eventually got home I decided that I would sort out my Sky box so that I can record from Sky. Easy I thought. Oh dear, how misguided must I be? I nearly turned the flat upside down looking for the instruction manuals for my DVD player and the Sky box and could I find them? Well, of course not. Being a man my filing skills are not what they could be and I hoard so many different things, stuff inevitably gets shoved in folders and away in boxes or on bookcases where it has no right to belong. Anyway I found the necessary instructions today and made all the connections as per the diagrams but guess what...still can't work out how to record from Sky, so I've given up on that.

Today, I've just been in a bad mood. I had a bad dream last night, which I think freaked me out more than I thought because it was still lingering with me when I woke up. Its probably a result of all the fretting that I've been doing all week.

Tomorrow I am taking myself out for the day to see a bit of the countryside and get some fresh air. Hopefully things will go a bit smoother next week.