Sometimes people send me a message on Facebook. Rather than it being something like: “Hey how you doing? Fancy a coffee?”, it’s “You working yet?”. Sometimes if I dare to update my status at 8am, I get comments like “What you doing up so early? You shit the bed?”. People seem to think that my daily routine is this:
- Lie in bed until about 1pm.
- Get out of bed. Get some food.
- Lounge around in front of the TV all day. In PJs. Probably watching Jeremy Kyle.
- No exercise.
- More eating & watching TV.
- Playing on Facebook during all of this.
- Go to bed.
The reality:
- Get up at about 8am. A bit later if I didn’t sleep well. How bad am I.
- Have a cup of tea & a healthy breakfast.
- Shower & dress just like everybody else.
- Switch on the computer & APPLY FOR JOBS. Yes, you read it correctly. I apply for jobs.
- When my brain feels fried I have a break by doing some housework, yoga, and going on the cross-trainer. I will also have lunch.
- I check Facebook messages and have a quick go on a Facebook game. I’m a bad person.
It does puzzle me though how so many employed people judge the unemployed for being on Facebook, whilst they’re on Facebook themselves, whilst at work, whilst being paid for it. I’d like to know what their employers thought of that. Granted, they could be on a break, but all day? Really.
- I check my emails. I ignore the emails for Graduate jobs because I don’t think I’m good enough.
- I apply for Customer Service jobs because that’s where my experience lies. But I usually don’t hear back from them. If I get lucky, I get a rejection email, which goes like this:
~You see the email from them.
~You don’t want to be too hopeful just in case.
~You open it and your heart sinks.
~Every effort you put in all day to make you feel like less of a loser is thrown out with the trash.
~You go back to feeling really shitty once more.
What I actually feel like doing:
- Lying in bed all day.
- Crying.
The other day when someone asked me the dread question “You working yet?”, I ignored them. Yesterday, someone else asked me. So I said “No, because I’m an unemployed scumbag”. To my surprise, he was pretty supportive. I counted how many jobs I’d applied for in 3 weeks. 43 jobs. Yes, 43.
I must be doing something wrong, right? My CV must be rubbish. I must have no qualifications. I must have no people skills. I must have no experience of anything from never working a day in my life. WRONG. So why am I struggling so much?
- There will always be someone more experienced/ qualified than you.
- Unemployment exists. Competition is tough.
- Trying to begin a career in an entire new sector is never going to be easy.
- I CAN’T ANSWER THE PHONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, seriously. I have been working on this a lot lately though & things are improving.
To tackle my depression & social anxiety, I believe in thinking & behaving positively. BUT being unemployed has a HUGE impact on your social life. I will get round to explaining this later.
Now, back to the job hunting. Ciao for now.
socialanxietyandunemployment 