Posts Tagged ‘career’
I’ve had this problem before, more than once. I suppose everything is just a repetition.
This fucking job. My boss is so keen that I apply, keeps asking how the application is going, and I tell him I’m doing it, it’s going well, it just needs tidying up.
Sometimes I type up paragraphs. I read them back and feel sick with the arrogance and lies leaking out of those words. Highlight, and delete. Hope no-one can tell by looking at me what bullshit I’ve been writing. Positive words sit uncomfortably on my shoulders. I feel the need to clarify and negate them. I feel like a liar, even hinting at any sort of competence.
I don’t even feel depressed, not really. I just can’t bear to praise myself, can’t see any good in me. I can’t tell you why I deserve the job because I feel that I’m fundamentally unemployable, lucky to have the job I have, a dead weight. I can’t even tell you why I want the job because I don’t know. It sounds interesting and people tell me I’d be good at it and I suppose there is some indestructible kernel of pride in me that doesn’t want to be seen to be giving up.
My qualifications, my experience, my knowledge – none of it seems relevant. It all just crumbles away. How can I convince them I can do this when I don’t believe I can do anything? I want to advance but I’m fucking terrified of sticking my neck out and saying I want this job, I can do this job, and I can tell you why.
I don’t know how I’m supposed to convince anyone to employ me. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t employ myself. I’m useless. But the alternative to applying for other jobs is to stay where I am, doing what I’m doing, and stagnate. What am I supposed to do?
People say I’m quiet. I don’t know who I am any more, this meek, pathetic thing. I am so afraid – of movement, of staying still, of being completely lost. I don’t know how to cope.
Plans
Posted on: August 27, 2013
Optimistic Laura
I’m going to move out. I can buy a house, or a flat. I’ve been looking on property websites, and there’s a flat for sale in almost the perfect location for me – a short walk or bike ride from work, close enough to home for me to visit occasionally, for Sunday dinner or DVD marathons, but too far for my mum to walk over and cry on me when she’s annoyed. I can afford it, or something like it. I could buy it, get a mortgage sorted, live at home for a few weeks and go round to decorate and move in furniture, then I could move in and be surrounded by my own peace and silence.
Then I can start studying again. I’ve been looking at Open University courses. I’m interested in so many things, I just want to find stuff out, I want to get new skills and knowledge. Start small, don’t make too big a commitment until I know I’ll be okay with it, but just do something, a few hours a week, to make me feel like my brain is still working, like I really can learn something new every day. I can do other things, too. Maybe relearn the musical instrument I used to play as a child, and join a gym, and learn to cook. Tentatively, I might try writing again, like I used to always want to, although I’ll do it with the knowledge that even if it doesn’t work out, it’s not the end of the world. I might learn a language. I might volunteer for a charity that helps people.
Every day, the not-getting-the-job thing gets easier. I can say it without the stabbed-in-the-heart feeling now. I didn’t really know if I wanted the job, so I can’t be surprised that I wasn’t really considered for it. But the whole incident has shed light on my life. I was right when I said it: everybody needs something. More than one thing is best, in case the one thing falls apart. I want to fill my life with activities, things that make me feel movement and progress. So even if work, or anything else, isn’t going particularly well, I can carry that with the strength I’ll gain by all the other things. I can build skills and knowledge and confidence and independence, and that’s happiness, for me.
I can write a timetable for every day and a budget for every month, and I’ll be happy. I don’t know what job I want to do, I don’t know where my future lies, but you build your future in the present, and that’s what I need to do. In the words of Malcolm Tucker, “life is just a succession of five minuteses”. If each five minutes is the same as the next, and they’re all dull and empty, then that’s my life. I need to stop worrying about the long-term, if I don’t have a plan for it, and focus on making now work.
Pessimistic Laura
The perfect opportunity is coming up. I need to take this time to withdraw money from my bank account. Small amounts, consistently, so I can build them up. Once I go, that’s it. I don’t want to be traced by my card transactions.
I have an old friend, who lives in a different city. I can say I’m staying with her. I haven’t seen her for ages, but I used to go to visit her regularly. My parents don’t even know she’s moved, so I could say I’m going to stay with her in the city she used to live in, to cover the trail further. She wouldn’t have to lie for me, my parents don’t have her number, so they wouldn’t be able to contact her. She wouldn’t have to know.
I’ll leave it open-ended, say, “a few days”, so they won’t be expecting me back at a particular time. I’ll take a bag and say we’re going to sight-see and have a few drinks and just hang out for a while and catch up. Then I’ll go to the train station, and get on a train in the opposite direction. I’ll head to the coast. My mind is full of sea and horizon and cliffs, and that’s where I want to be. I could stay for a day or two, get my head straight. Breathe fresh air and cushion myself in quiet, and think properly for a moment. I could send a postcard, maybe. Not a note in the traditional sense, just something to let them know where I am. Maybe an apology.
Jumping off a cliff seems a simple way to do it, but there’d be other methods available too, if for some reason that doesn’t work out. I will end it there, or else move on and find somewhere else to do it. No turning back. I want to be in a place where I’m a stranger. Somewhere calm. I will run until I can find it. No-one will mind, no-one will care, because no-one will know me.
The awful truth
I’ll probably do neither. Lately, I’ve been believing both of these things, pretty much at the same time. But this is me we’re talking about. I can’t change.
I’ll stay at home, doing nothing, and let my brain rot. Too scared to make my life better, too scared to end it. This is it, this is me – forever.
I wish I had the courage to do one thing or the other.
I applied for the job
Posted on: August 22, 2013
I was in two minds about whether or not to, but then, in a brief moment of care-free decisiveness, I thought fuck it. If I don’t apply, I’ll always wonder what might have happened.
I should have been able to predict it, really. Read the rest of this entry »
A blog of two halves.
Posted on: September 27, 2009
I have, I suppose, two main things to write about tonight. And it seems pointless to write about them as two separate posts. So I’m shoving them together, whether they belong together or not.
What am I doing?
Posted on: September 19, 2009
For perhaps a day or two, I have, without really noticing it, been incredibly cheerful and optimistic.
I’ve been looking at PGCE courses again. I even started an application.
I’ve been looking for jobs for when I’m back at uni. I even emailed my CV to one of them.
I’ve been looking at volunteering again. The schools one and another placement. I’ll go, this time, I’ll go more often and really make the most of it.
I’ve been on the university’s gym’s website, planning what I’ll do and when I’ll do it so that I can lose weight, but being careful to pay attention to the costs of it…which lead to quite a detailed budget plan.
I’ve been planning, planning, planning. Listing things I need to buy before I go back. Planning what meals I’ll make for myself. Actually feeling hopeful about getting a decent dissertation topic, even at this late stage. Planning to talk to new people, make friends. Imagining it in my head.
And then, just now, I realised I was doing it. I realised I was looking at the future as it if wasn’t an obstacle, as if it was something fun and exciting, and as if I was running towards it at great, gleeful speed.
And I just feel like…oh.
I only ever really feel good when I’m hurtling towards something…thinking about it so incredibly, but at the same time not really thinking about it. I feel good when I’m lost in something, not when I’m jolted into the present.
It’s not that I feel bad, now. Slightly foolish, perhaps. It’s just that the total, uninhibited joy that I was feeling when I looked towards the future has dimmed quite a bit. And I’m trying to stop the thoughts from creeping in.
You’ll never get accepted on those courses. You won’t get a good enough degree or good enough references and you don’t have enough experiences and the places on them are so limited and who would choose you over anyone else?…You’ll never get a job. They won’t contact you, and they’re not alone. Everything you ever apply for, you’ll be turned down. Even if you make it to an interview, you won’t get the job because seeing you face to face is enough to make anyone realise they don’t want to do it again…As for the volunteering, you KNOW you’ll fail at that, because you failed at it last year. You signed up for it and got all enthusiastic and then you hardly ever went because you’re lazy and stupid and you throw every good chance away…Gym? Are you having a laugh? You can’t do it, you won’t do it, you’ll fail like you fail at everything else and you’re always going to be fat, always going to be unfit and unhealthy and ugly…It doesn’t matter what you buy, because you won’t be using it. It doesn’t matter what meals you plan, because most of the time you’re too scared to even go into the kitchen. You’re pathetic. It’s too late to sort a dissertation, so you’re going to fail your degree. It’s not like you don’t deserve to fail, you are a FAILURE. As for making friends, don’t be ridiculous. You don’t have any friends, you’ll never have any friends because EVERYBODY HATES YOU…
The thoughts aren’t properly there, yet. I have them, but they haven’t taken over. They’re not consuming me. But it’s only a matter of time, isn’t it? I feel so weak. I see them, hear them coming, but I can’t stop them, can’t avoid them, these awful thoughts…they eat away at everything, they eat away at me. They make themselves true.
I want my optimism back. Even if it’s hopeless. Because at least if I’m optimistic and confident, I will try to do things, try to achieve something. And maybe some of it will stick, some of it will work, and I will be a better person, and it’ll be something to hold, something to use, something to show me and my thoughts that I’m not completely useless.
But it never lasts. All that happens is that I end up embarrassed and rejected and even worse, because I’ve done stupid things and I’m no longer brave enough to cope with the consequences of all these plans and enquiries.
I need consistency. I need stability. I need some kind of middle ground.
I feel like such an idiot now.
Daring to dream.
Posted on: September 18, 2008
Curled up in bed, on my laptop, with a horrible cold. Talking to friends and stopping what I’m doing every two minutes to blow my nose.
I had a bit of an epiphany. Read the rest of this entry »
Loopy, Lonely and Lost 
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