It's Taking A While

I'm rolling into the middle of the third month of 2020. The days seems to be folding in on each other and it's becoming one long haze.

I have been applying for work for almost three months and, like waiting for the rain during a drought, nothing has happened or is happening. I have a folder that holds all the job ads that I've expressed interest for. The sleeve is getting thicker and thicker each week.

I scroll through social media, looking at posts by friends my age and seeing how they are soaring at life; professionally, academically, maritally. Not that I envy the marital part, because you know there is still time for that and I am not in any rush. The part that I envy the most is the professional aspect.

I don't think of myself as ambitious, probably because I'm not. I don't strive for greatness or have the drive to be better than somebody else when it comes to work. I remember talking to an intern at work once and he just had ambition oozing out of every pore. In all honesty, I felt sorry for him. To me, being that enthusiastic about work, about a career, is something that I don't find appealing. I could actually be shooting myself in the foot by writing this and having it be read by a potential employer but in the grand scheme of things, in the bigger picture, I believe that it is more important to prioritize Life over work.

I haven't been called in for a shift since the end of November. I have been sending out countless copies of my resume and tailored cover letters to recruitment agencies and career teams that have put out job adverts but I still have been left with bupkis.

As you can already imagine, it is starting to take a toll on me. What jobs have I been applying for you might ask? Well at this stage, everything and anything I think I might be good at. Jobs from retail, to waitressing, to marketing, forklift operations (yes, I am qualified and licensed to drive a forklift) to warehouse labour. Applying for a job is actually a job in itself, isn't it? It can literally take you a whole day to sit at your computer and type and retype cover letters, trying to sell yourself as the best candidate for the job that recruiters will ever find. It's quite emotionally exhausting.

I am not completely unemployed. I work in a casual capacity for a media company but feel restricted in my form of expression when it comes to writing. Which I guess is fine, you know, to each their own. But I can't just sit here and stare at my phone, hoping that they'll call me in today for a shift. It's not practical. I need a job, just like everybody else, that has fixed hours and is, hopefully, permanent. A steady income is always a nice way to stabilize some of the stressors in ones life.

I don't know if you can tell or not but I like to put a lot of emotion into my content. I believe that it makes it more relateable to whoever reads it, whether they have experienced the subject or not.

As I look up at the clock that hangs on my wall and the calendar that sits directly below it, I can physically feel the time slipping away from me and the creeping icy clutches of depression make its way closer and closer. As I had mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I had a podcast that I wrote, produced and presented myself, using my bedroom as a makeshift studio. I do admit that the audio quality was not exceptional, but it was the best that I could do at the time. I could still produce episodes but my laptop can't keep up with my editing software and overall it takes longer than it should to put one episode together. The reason I started up a podcast was because I needed that creative outlet. I needed a way to keep myself busy and to keep the depression at bay. I didn't want it to catch me. I didn't want it to control me. And as of last November, I have substituted podcasting for blogging as a means of keeping myself in check, both emotionally and mentally.

I don't necessarily do it for the likes or for the exposure. I do it for me. So that I can be safe and centered. It is difficult to log in to my email account to find that email in my inbox that says another one of my applications has been unsuccessful. I do keep a folder of those emails too. But one day, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day that "no" will turn into a "yes".

(Photo Credit: Ryssa Fiu)