Huis Clos

[j4]

I just feel like there's no way out of where I am at the moment.

I don't want to work for ProQuest any more, it's driving me insane. So when all this positive freelance-ish stuff came up about work on websites and proofreading work, I told ProQuest I could only do a maximum of 2 days a week for them. Now I've heard nothing from either WaxInfo or 2i Publishing, and it'll be a week before I hear anything from the Police (and given the interview yesterday I don't hold out much hope for that one, and even if they liked me at interview they'll take one look at my sickness record and tell me to get lost). I suppose I'll have to carry on working at ProQuest for ever, but if I do that I'll just get more and more ill and useless.

I don't see how I'm ever going to get another job, though. Everything I might possibly want to do or be able to do seems to need me to give details of every single day I've been off sick in the past 2 years, and I've had too many days off to be employable. I don't know how I'm going to explain the mess I've made of getting jobs, either: "Well, I sort of went freelance, but then I just gradually stopped doing anything, and now I have no skills, no experience, no motivation, and nothing else to offer the world." I can't see a way out of it. I can't get a job, but the longer I don't get a job, the more unlikely it is that I ever will.

I also owe sion_a tens of thousands of pounds and I don't see how I'm ever going to be able to pay it back, because even if I do get a job I'm not likely to be earning more than £12k and that just isn't enough to pay the mortgage, pay him back and still afford to live. Semi-anonymous Katherine from Oxford was right -- I'm a useless sponger who should just move out, give sion_a his life back, and ... well, do whatever people do when they have no job and nowhere to live. I can more or less play the penny whistle, I guess.

I keep thinking, well, I could retrain; but how? The application form's going to ask (in one way or another) what I've done with my life so far, and the answer is going to be NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING. I've done ONE JOB, so badly that I'm now completely unemployable. And I've done nothing else of note with my spare time.

There's no jobs I really want to do anyway. I don't have a career, I don't want a career. I'd love to be able to have children and be a full-time mother, but I can't do that either. At this rate by the time I get to a stage where I can, relationship-wise -- if that ever happens -- I'll be too old and tired (if I'm even alive at all by then) to even consider it. And then there's the money. It's already likely to take me the rest of my life to pay off the debts I have; I'd have a choice between never having any money (which is not a great state in which to try to bring up children), or just sponging off someone else instead.

I'm less than useless to the world. I want to just lie down and go to sleep and never have to wake up again.

Comments

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I was rescued after three years of irrelevant, dull, underpaid work by virtue of an opening that let me turn my hobby into a career. Which is always helpful. I'm sure eventually someone will recognise that you're good at a range of important things, it's just a matter of finding them at the right time and in the right place. So, er, yeah, *hug* in an ineffectual sort of way, and when you're feeling better I'll tell you the ace new 'your mum's so fat' I heard the other day.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

From my experience the police are extremely generous with sick leave, sick pay and so on once you're in their employ. I don't know how they feel about taking on people with an existing record of lots of sickies, but everyone has bad times when they get ill more often than usual or need lots of compassionate leave and it shouldn't count against you.

I hadn't worked in web design, and had done very little work of any description, for over a year when I was interviewed for my current job. I got through the 'if you're so great why have you been on the dole for a year' question by talking about the abysmal job market. Works every time.

[saraphale.livejournal.com]

Are you applying to be an officer, or for a civilian post, out of interest?

[rmc28]

You are not useless. You write very well, you've been good company whenever I've spent time with you, you're doing the Oxfam stuff ... you have a great deal to offer the world.

The WaxInfo and 2i Publishing people sounded very impulsive and slightly disorganised - it might be worth you chasing them up.

Don't give up.

[taimatsu]

I have no degree, withdrew from the course because of illness/crapness, have done a succession of temporary jobs, often leaving them abruptly, and I have managed to get a decent job which will start just under £13k, and increment yearly thereafter up to about £15k after six years. It took me three months after moving here - it can be done. I'm guessing I have been quite lucky, but you have better qualifications than I do anyway. Have you considered temping for a little while? It can be evil and wrong and bad, but it can also be quite fun, and if you hate something you get, you can just stop doing it. My temp history has meant I have a variety of office experience to draw on, which makes me more appealing to employers. I also concentrated much of my job hunting on academic environments where I knew I'd be happier.

I know this might not help right now, because you are obviously feeling far less than positive about the whole thing. I just wanted to say something a bit more constructive than '*hugs*' or 'You're great.' But you are, and things will look up eventually.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Mnn. My brain splits three ways. The part that wants to suggest they're being disoganised, and anyway you're underestimating your skillset, and encourage you to chase them up; the part that gets grumpily philosophical, to the tune of this being an immensely complicated world in which things to do with one's life can turn up in all manner of unexpected guises, as most lives I'm familiar with do eventually show, and that money measures nothing other than itself and is a really bad metric for almost everything else [ cost is not the same thing as value; Google gives me no hits on "metric of eudemony", in the event that reading practical/philosophical/organisational stuff is a thing you find cheerful you want to look up Stafford Beer's Designing Freedom, which has sort of helped me deal with the universe when I'm in vaguely similar useless moods ] and don't underestimate the value which other people may attach to your presence in their lives, because basically, if I like you, you don't really have the right to downgrade that judgement - and also that anyone who calls you a useless sponger isn't speaking with your best interests at heart and the validity of their opinion as a guide should be downgraded thereby; and the part that just wants to curl up around you and hug you and offer to adopt you.

tonight, one year ago....

[(Anonymous)]

...was my leaving do at Fort St. George, and I was very happy you joined! Yes, it's me - remember me? The "kindred spirit" from Proquest. I've only recently discovered your LJ; I don't have one myself, but occasionally read them because it makes me somehow feel closer to Cambridge, which I miss terribly. I'm very sorry you're still stuck at ProQuest although I have to admit that I sometimes miss it and have even regretted that I left as I've gone through hell here in Germany, jobwise that is. But that's too long a story, I just thought I'd say hello; maybe it cheers you up a little bit that some girl in Germany still remembers you, thinks of you and wishes you luck!! Don't give up! If you feel like it, get in touch. I might be in Cambridge around NYE. Take care, Claudia :-)

Katherine from Oxford

[(Anonymous)]

Didn't say you were a useless sponger. Not at all. Did imply that renting your room to someone and using the rent to pay for a place for yourself, even short-term, *might* be a good *temporary* option.

Your skill set is much more impressive than you think, and you have had more than one job, if my understanding is correct: are you discounting your librarianship, for example?

I am not suggesting how you should feel, or even how you might want to think, but things you could *do* irrespective of your feelings or even thoughts include hitting some sites which assist you in revising your own views about your skills and aptitudes, which you can then use in a revised CV. IIRC www.belbin.com offer a very cheap basic, but well-known, service which you can pass around to other people and use for a period of six months, at least.

You can play at least one stringed instrument and can do so in an orchestra: jobspeak translates this into teamwork, ability to take direction whilst acting as a responsible individual, and demonstrates commitment and self-discipline. You have a degree from a decent-ish university: not something everybody has, to my certain knowledge. You have had at least two 'real' jobs, as well as your free-lance work. You appear to have taught yourself proofreading, some Perl, and doubtless some other technical skills (although you didn't take a techie degree) which shows you to have multiple aptitudes and a talent for picking up complexities quickly.

Now, in Cambridge, amongst a very geeky peer group (not your good friends, but your potential competitors for some jobs), you may feel you have all the clout of some overcooked pasta, but transposing these and your other skills (which I don't know about, but you do, really) you have a lot of value to the right employer.

What you don't seem to have, maybe, is enough information about the job market, and what is being sought after. I say "maybe" - again, I don't know. You could easily spend a worse day than using your local Business Advice Centre's "start your own business" training day (at least in Poxford this is free training) just to get your head around what you actually CAN do and DO know about. It will be a revelation: you know more than you think you do.

As for kids and all that, I had my first at 43; being an Elderly Primigravida is just fine. Ox and Cambs are full of old mamas. We are just as tired as young mothers, but not more so, and we have more perspective and more to offer than Jane Twentysomething.

Many people get stronger and more well as they mature: you might well do so, too. If you have a deteriorating problem like MS I apologise in advance, but I think even if you *do* have MS your sickness record isn't who you are. Think about Andrew at the RSL: he is more than his illness, although it impinges more and more on his life.

Again, this is not about what you feel or think, that's up to you, just some ideas on actions to take while you're feeling lousy anyway. You might feel less lousy afterwards, you might not, who can say, but at least you'll have done some things a bit differently. You don't seem to be very happy with some of the things you have been doing, and there are a few things very much in your power to change which will have no side-effects you might regret later. Trust yourself and give yourself some time.

best wishes,

Katherine from Oxford
"Disillusionment? Why go to Oxford, I can make it for you at home!" (That Katherine.)