Unemployment

Something I wrote a while ago, on a spree of futile job hunting in Brighton....

When unemployment makes me feel like a butress of stagnant water, festering, purposeless, unsightly. Whose only prospect is to one day be absorbed back into the carbon cycle,I generally soothe myself by sitting in a dark room, in front of a bright screen, zealously trawling through site after site of so called jobs.

I apply for few, if any. I'm beginning to find it fairly pointless to do this to oneself if one has no real idea of what one is actually looking for. The motivation for such an excersise is twofold: the first reason is that if I can trick the panicky side of myself into believing in my character as laudably productive, maybe it'll fuck off for a while so I can go and watch neighbours guilt-free (this is of course an illusion. You can never watch neighbours completely guilt-free. Particularly not the 2.00pm showing).

The second reason is that it acts as a strange kind of therapy. In the same way that a big win is always around the corner in the world of recreational gambling so too is the perfect job in the act of ruderless jobseeking. I want some kind of a vision to cut through all the uncertainty. Each speck of gold in that dark mine promises to unlock the magic door in your bleak and sterile imagination, you think 'I'm sure I could do that. Why the hell not?' And the door swings open to reveal the wide lush vista of your future.

Untill, obviously, you realise that you can't be a marine biologist because you hate water, and all of its associated plants and animals, and your degree was in media studies.

It's not always a waste of time, I have to say. If you're looking for an gap filling kind of affair, if you need some money, if you've got a rough idea of your ideal job and a half decent CV (I have neither of these things). Just beware the subtle and delicate line between productive and mindless job hunting.

My number one survival Tip for this kind of endevour: never type 'graduate' into a search engine if you value the concept of hope. Particularly if you live in brighton. At first it seems harmless enough, a few inoffensive admin jobs, in your more desperate moments you even consider the 'creative!' marketing shit that comes up, although you come to your senses a little later. You scroll eagerly, naively on.

Untill, suddenly and without warning you find yourself bombarded from all sides by nothing but sleazily advertised shitty little call centre jobs. It's like exploring a strange city and getting accidently getting lost in the red light district.
Instead of the job title, it'll be some badly spelled tagline, applealing ideally to the hapless ambitious-but-lazy egocentric cretin just waiting for someone to take advantage of thier as yet incubating shrewd business skills and natural cunning. It'll be along the lines of 'r u tired of living life in the slow lane?' or 'your not greedy, just hungry for more'. Or, It'll be cunningly worded to avoid the unexplainably negative connotations of the word 'callcentre', like 'sales adviser' (may I advise you to buy shoddy insurance madam?) And probably the most transparent and undignified technique, the unexplained and all too casual use of the word 'executive' in the job title. That's pretty low. And once you have waded through this worthless quivering spewtum for HOURS, at you will feel just a little more mistrust of the world around you, at worst you will have landed yourself a job. Like I did.

So what made me apply to just such a job in the end? I actually can't remember. Probably because I was exactly the kind of lazy and appaulingly desperate drifter that jobs like that ensnare. I'd like, perversely, to think that it was a combination of all the devious devices whichever such unfortunate creature employed in making those adverts could dig up. Possibly then I would have an excuse.
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