There is no time I hate more than working hours during the
week. Not for the reason you would think though, it’s not that I hate my job
and I would rather be anywhere else. Quite the contrary, I hate these hours
because I don’t have a job. I haven’t for months since getting back to Canada.
I could sit here and victimize myself and claim it’s a recession time or that
the “system” doesn’t favour thinkers and dreamers, like in my moments of self
indulgence I like to believe I am, but the truth is apathy has surfaced as a coping mechanism. Pleasures can’t be
enjoyed during these hours, because not unlike a person that bought something
they felt they shouldn’t, doing things you would normally consider fun creates
a feeling of guilt. That is the action of a “normal” mind trying to sanction
itself in order to focus itself to the task at hand. However, like a white elephant
in the room, trying not to have any “fun” till properly sanctioned times – like
the later evening or weekends - is a focus diverter in of itself especially
with diversion a click away on a computer.
Monday to Friday
sitting here on the one specific cushion that hasn’t sunk in on our brown,
slightly grungy, couch I feel sometimes like my truest job lies before me - keeping
the motivation to keep on doing this. The game is layered on thick here in
Toronto. Resume creation now involves - as directed by resumes “professionals”
– looking at job requirements for
specific jobs and placing those requirements directly inside your resume. I was
a bit confused by this at first...
aren’t you supposed to list your skills for employer’s consideration,
your real skills that is? As opposed to just saying you have what they want. It
actually sort of seems to defeat the purpose of a resume at all. However, the
job skills listed are so generic and abstract – things like: superior
organization skills; adept people skills; magnificent multi tasking – that
there’s always a way to claim that you have them. It took awhile to get use to this and that
was before dealing with the North American interview, which has felt worse than
selling yourself during a first date. After five failed interviews already,
after a nearly spotless European/ Australian interview success rate, I’ve
realized that the interview here is just an extension of the phoniness of the
resume.
As a vehicle
for my self esteem I consider myself unique. I’m not alone on that one. You’d
probably be depressed if you didn’t consider there to be something special
about your own subjective experience. An issue is though - if I, and everyone
else for that matter, are unique than wouldn’t we all need unique jobs that
befit that status? At one time or
another I have done pretty much every type of job. As a traveler, I had a
skill, or I guess you could say penchant, for things just coming to me be it a
good job – my first copy writing job came through sheer chance – or a shit one at
a necessary time – when I moved to Amsterdam with 500 bucks and somehow got a dish washing job about a day before I was set to join the homeless population. I
always felt fortune favoured the brave and for that reason something would
always come. And it did, though not always in shimmering form. I’ve done loads of shit work: fruit picking,
sales, warehouse, labour, landscaping, data entry, customer service... I even
cleaned a yaught one day in Sydney harbour. The thing is being “home” the feeling is that you
should do something that personifies you and this purported “uniqueness”... The issue with this is that other unique
people also feel they should work in media as well and there is a vast sea of
competition. Often ten plus interviewees for one position...
The hardest is maintaining motivation to
play this game. Scanning through want ads, feeling pangs of guilt as the wealth
of cyberspace constantly calls me somewhere else... if just for a minute, then
another. Maybe that is the writer’s curse, glorifying themselves, but surely I
can’t be the only one who has ever suffered the Monday to Friday blues? Having
the sense of dread as the weekend comes to a close and knowing that I face another week ahead here on the brown cushion.
ReplyDeleteAn update. Perhaps it was the pressure of quantifying the unemployed experience here that acted as an impetus- perhaps not... but, either way I was able to step away from the unemployment rolls and take a job doing communications for a not for profit organization. And not a moment to soon. :P Still though I'm happy to have written this piece as I hope that I touched on some small universality in the jobless/ job hunting experience.
Ha - back looking for a job again. :P
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