Birth Days

When I write these entries I usually put them here having written them all in one sitting, or saved and returned to for some minor adjustments. This is on about the sixth edit. It's been the hardest week and the stuff has been the hardest to write.

I have been almost catatonically depressed this past week, not only have there been almost no jobs to even bother applying for it was my birthday the other day. I suddenly realised that were I to drop dead at this precise moment then I would be described in the media as "an unemployed 45 year old", which is far from edifying. The thing is that our work, our career, defines us and plays an important part in the perception other people end up having about us. Like it or not, we are the work we do, or don't, do. It's probably why we look down upon people who are not working as if they are lesser people because of it. If someone confounds the type we tend to view them with some kind of saddened sympathy which is actually rather patronising when I think about it. The current situation means that we have entered a time when the prospect of secure long term employment looks like a relic of a different time. We are trying to see where the future will lead us but it doesn't hold out much hope. We will have to change our thinking about the people who don't have jobs and that is going to be difficult - even for some of those in that situation themselves.

My friends are starting to sound worried when they send me messages and on phone calls. All I can say is that I'm not doing well. It's like being hit by waves, you are thrown under by one and then you manage to drag yourself out, only to be hit back under by the seventh wave. After a while you become seduced by the strange otherworldly sounds of being underwater. There is a wonderful sense of security and solitude here. Nothing can hurt you, cold numb and suspended in a kind of stasis away from hope. You know you should not be here, it's dangerous, but after a while you are so immobile you just don't care.

Perhaps it's the ordeal of the birthday. Why celebrate, there is nothing to celebrate and even less to see in the future. There are times when I look at my life and find it's like waking up in the middle of a busy motorway, with things whizzing past you, scary and confusing. All the more so because I've no idea how I got here. "You're 45", the voice said, and I look around and see a desolate remote place, far from home, far from anywhere. There is just a mirror, I look and see the face staring back at me isn't young any more and I no longer recognise it. I'm stranded somewhere and I don't know how to get back.

The other downside is the thought of what I should have done. I think I want a lot from life but I'm not very good at getting it. I've dealt with a lot of difficult things in my life and they do have an impact on you. If you get battered by events in life often enough then it definitely affects your ability to look at yourself in a positive light. I do find that hard. Yet people have been crawling out of the woodwork to offer me words of support and encouragement over the past few weeks, and that has increased a lot in the past week. This makes me feel both grateful and guilty at the same time.

I was reading a posting on a website by someone who was feeling very negative about themselves, and the difficult thing was that he described his problems as not that important in the grand scale of things. Like his, mine aren't either. Yet, like his, they are my problems and it's my world. At the moment that world very seriously out of balance and there are aspects of it I'm finding very hard to survive. This isn't actually the most difficult thing I've ever had to deal with, not by a long way. I've dealt with things that would have destroyed some of the people I've met in my life. Yet this is the one I'm finding hardest to deal with. Maybe living alone gives me time to reflect and remove the mask I would wear around others to cope with it, or perhaps it's more about the age I am and the fact that there are different rules, the older you get. There is less chance to manoeuvre and re-inventing your life takes time, and there is less of it left in which to do this.

I've been selfish and I'm finding it hard not push everyone away. I've lashed out at someone for pushing me hard. I am, in some aspects, quite a selfish person, I can be very stubborn about what I want and I know I've made a lot of people very concerned about my well being. For that I'm sorry in some aspects. I've always been a little too private with my feelings, and perhaps that's a good thing in some ways. I want to live my life on my own terms, my own way, that is difficult sometimes both for me, and the people around me.

I'm glad I waited and touched this up over a number of days. I hope it really is darkest just before the light.

Endless Days

There is something terrible about the prospect of endless days, they drift on forever like being becalmed on an ocean. It is no wonder that our oceans include becalming weather known as the doledrums. We are used to living lives where there are always things to be aiming for and things to do. We structure our lives around them, although in truth we structure them around our work. It's the fabric of our lives, the reason for getting up and getting out and doing. Without it what is there?

Friday I woke up and made some breakfast and thought about the things I needed to do. I checked the job sites and found the usual nothing awaiting. I considered a list of things, and thought, not one of them is urgent in the slightest. I I felt the emptiness of the day, I felt nothing. I went back to bed and put the radio on, played some games on the computer, and that was the day done. I spent it in bed trying to wait for the hours to pass.

Depression is like quicksand, it slowly envelops and suffocates you. Yet it has an almost seductive quality about it that lures you into its arms. There is a wonderful description in Shakespere's Hamelt of the drowing of Ophelia and they describe her sinking into the water, "her clothes heavy with drink". It is a beautiful description and one I still cherish. I feel very much alone in all this. There is a silence to depression which only makes those images of quicksand and waters all the more sensible. Perhaps I would be experiencing things differently if there were people here every day, but there are no people and the solitude grows heavy when the spirit dips.

I know I have wonderful friends who have leant me a lot of support, but it is hard to drag yourself out of this kind of inert state of mind. It is a physical thing too, limbs heavy like wading in deep water, there is slow progress and sometimes it seems better just to stop and surrender to the cold numbing feeling all around you.

I've got a home, a computer to write this on, I have some money - at least at the moment - so I have food in my cupboards, I have a place I can go when I can no longer stay living here. Sometimes it seems this is all just self pitying indulgence of someone who really should pull himself together and get on with things. I am trying to do this and I know that I will succeed in this endeavour. However there are times, a lot of times, when it is almost like the stopping of time, a life in stasis, over. It is these overwhelming times that are the most difficult to endure.

Sometimes I look and think there are probably a thousand decisions which could have changed things for the better so I wouldn't be here. The fact is I am and there's not a damn thing I can do about that. The things I wish didn't happen in my life did happen and there isn't anything I can do about what happend in the past. If Marx is right, perhaps I'm doomed to make the same mistakes, but the difference is in the fact that, once they are done, you do know how to deal with them. It won't make the coping mechanism perfect - if it did then I wouldn't need to write any of this - but it does at least give me a sense that there is a light at the end of the tunnel even when I can't see it in the darkest hour. Somehow I know it is out there.

Introspection Days

It's difficult sometimes to see the light at the end of a tunnel. This week the radio has been broadcasting a documentary on the issues a group of people are facing now they are unemployed. The programme is dealing with people who have been out of work for a lot longer than me. It's quite a strange feeling listening to others who seem to be experiencing the same kind of hopes and fears. I'm not one of those people who is reassured by the comfort of sharing feelings, hopes and fears, so I wasn't sure about this.

The people all got to spend time with a development coach, and one of them suggested that the person asked some of his friends to tell him something surprising about himself. The idea is that you may find others see in you qualities you fail to see in yourself. I've decided to do a similar thing and picked a selection of people I know in very different contexts so I can get a picture of the person people who know me more through the working environment and the social environment see me. I want to see if there are similarities and also if there are differences in how I behave in different environments. Additionally I'm hoping that some will be honest enough to say, "the thing that frustrates me about you is...". We shall see what the result is. There is every chance that not one of them will even reply. Let's just see what the outcome is.

It's the middle of June for some reason and I'm really not sure where the last few weeks have disappeared to. That said I suppose time is just moving imperceptably along. The sun is shining brightly and I'm supposed to enjoy this but as a fair skinned person I just find it rather uncomfortable. That said, I'll head out and see what the world has in store for me.

Radio Days

I've been listening to the radio and chatting to one of my online friends this morning. I have a number of people I've met who are in far flung places and it's nice to be able to talk to people whose perspectives on the world are totally different to mine. Some are nearby and some are thousands of miles away in places I cannot even imagine what their worlds are like. I remember when I was at school we were encouraged to find a pen pal - someone in a far flung place who you could exchange letters with and find out what kind of a life they had. I didn't have one but my sister did. I do spend some time talking like this. It's nice to do and it does help the day pass by without too much tedium. What I would like to say to all my friends is that their support (however little use they sometimes seem to feel it is) is very much appreciated. It's horrible when there is nothing you can do for someone but sometimes just being there really is enough. Knowing they are helps a great deal.

The radio is like a friend to me. I live alone and so, as I've mentioned before, there are times when I barely speak to a human being for ages. I listen to Radio 4 and music - depending on the programmes (as I don't like all of them). Today there was a programme about the experience of unemployment. It was a really interesting programme, sometimes it was like being in a support group with people articulating some of the things that I felt, and even expressed in this blog. It was quite a liberating experience to hear this. The other side was a lot more depressing.

I've long expected that the unemployment rate could rise to 3 million, and I've said here that the possibility of a recovery does not mean that people who have been directly affected by it will actually see the benefits for a long time afterwards. An expert predicted 3.5 million people being unemployed before things get better. She also indicated that these numbers would not start to fall until 2011. This seems an inconceivably distant timeframe to consider recovery. I feel at the moment that I'm in a situation where I am making do and getting by with my life and little more. If work isn't forthcoming, how do you manage to see a vast expanse of nothing spreading out before you which could last years? I felt like a ship, run aground on rocks in a storm and as a blot of lightning splits the sky, the ship groans and lurches further up splitting the bough, realising that the situation is much worse than you thought.

While listening to the programme I realised - as I do often - that this blog isn't here to represent the experiences of others. This is no "voice of the people" blog. I'm degree level educated (crap university, average pass rate), no family of my own and not even a partner, a critical mind. I do ask questions about everything which, particularly in a man, isn't something people tend to do. I don't want to say that the experiences are unique, they're not. I've had the same kind of bad deals that thousands of people have had. I am also older than some and facing my 45th year in a matter of weeks. Of all the things that get me down this month I think the "unemployed 45 year old" tag is probably the most depressing.

One thing is the stereotype of being an unemployed jobseeker. The difficulty is that people see jobseekers in a certain light. You are perceived as a failure in that you have had to resort to asking someone for money. People also assume that people on benefits are a certain kind of person. Educated people don't claim benefits, do they? Well yes, they do. The trouble is that the support network devised to help people also assumes the kind of help needed is of a rather remedial level. Help with writing a basic CV, literacy, and the like are the primary functions. Yes, when I'm at the job centre I do see people who are a lot less educated and some have an enormous amount of other issues to deal with which make things really hard. That said there is little that the Government is offering to people like me. We need support but it's not there. There is a real lack of understanding that resources do need to be provided, as some of us don't have masses of reserves to get us through this "difficult time". Yet we are lone voices calling for action, barking at the moon.

Endless Days

Sometimes time slips by almost unnoticed, and sometimes you are painfully aware of every minute. I've felt the minutes don't always sweep by sometimes. It's been a frustrating week and an up and down week. I spent a good deal of time telling the job centre person who signed me on, my landlord, and my father (in that order) that I have barely managed to apply for anything in the past week. It seems almost a waste of my time even looking for a job at the moment as there seems to be something close to a drought taking place in the market.

There have been some positives. I've purchased a new tin for baking my bread and made a pretty good loaf today. I've also had my CV jazzed up by the career coach and so it is a pretty flexible and exciting thing now. It's flexible enough for me to adapt it specifically for any particular job I wish to apply for. So, as the bread tin will make me sexier bread, I've sexier CV which should help target me towards the perfect job. We shall see if this all comes to pass in the next few weeks. You can see the results of the bread here.

It's difficult dealing with the fact that the job prospects have hit what I can only describe as drought proportions. I wish it were otherwise. It's difficult explaining to people that the current situation offers absolutely no prospects whatsoever. Especially when the people you are telling are your father and the man you pay the rent on your flat to. It's difficult accepting the recovery time seems to be stretching itself into next year now. People are just making do with the staff that they have and treating departures as an option to reduce costs and increase productivity. My surviving colleagues are apparently not enjoying the new role at all, but I still find it little consolation as I've nothing at all to complain about on that front as I've nothing to do.

Everyone always says that they would love to have the time to do whatever they like. Trouble is it takes money. Although I do get something from the Government, and I have some reserves, this isn't enough to keep you surviving for eternity so you end up watching carefully how much money you have and how much you are spending. It's not a good situation. The other difficulty is trying to motivate yourself. Nothing actually needs to be done at that instant. It can be done later. It doesn't matter. Eventually you find yourself in a state of inertia. The other week I managed to say to myself for 3 days I needed to leave the house and get some milk, as I'd run out. After 3 days I had to go out and do something else, so I got some milk then. I'd managed without it for 2 days. That's the biggest challenge I'm finding, getting some structure to my life. Sometimes it's there and then at other times I just can't find it anywhere at all.

Some days I can't even be bothered to enjoy the sunshine.

Another Week, Just Another Day

It has been something of a productive day today. I updated my CV and sent on the results to my Career Coach. I included my thoughts on producing a CV which would cover me for the possibilty of having a different one to target possible downgraded jobs. I don't need this just yet but it is something I need to look into sorting out for the future. My coach's response was that my approach to the situation was "considered". It's interesting how people perceive what your decisions are. To me this was an obvious thing to consider.

I've actually got 8 weeks to go before I have to start re-assessing my objectives with the Benefits Agency. For the first 13 weeks of a claim I'm permitted to spend my time looking for work in my specialist field. After that I have to broaden my search and make other considerations in order to try and find work. That's where the possibility of downsizing comes into play. Because I will be moving out of my home at a point sometime before the change is due to take place the terms of the agreement will be a little more straightforward. I've thought about these things earlier because of the events of the other week, so perhaps from heading into that dark place at that point may have produced a benefit.

I also checked out the storage options and think I may have found something which will suit my needs. I envisage that the process will involve storing things for about 3 months or maybe longer. I don't really want to head into 2010 with no home and my stuff in storage. If I can get a job quickly then things will be pretty managable in a short space of time. I won't exactly have a mass of overheads and there should be some money left from the final settlement and also there is the pension scheme. I was paying into a pension scheme whilst I was there but I cannot remember how much I was paying in. Due to the fact that the I was doing so for less than 2 years I will get the money I saved back as a little windfall after 8 weeks. I'm calculating that will be around the time of my birthday - so that is quite a nice little present. On top of that I should get back my deposit on my flat (or at least some of it) which again means I'm probably going to arrive in August in reasonable financial shape.

I'm being as frugal as possible with money. I'm not going out all that much and I'm still shopping sensibly so I am not spending vast ammounts of money. I am learning to live a frugal life. That side of it is probably proving quite a positive thing. It's funny doing without some of the things I take for granted but that's the way it has to be for a good while to come. I guess the one advantage is that it's healthy for me. I eat cheap fresh fruit and vegetables from the market and have time to cook really good food. Sometimes it's the simple pleasures which appeal - although the huge ammount of flat mushrooms I got for 50p the other day means I'm beginning to look like one... Oh well, they're very nice. Tomorrow they're going in an omlette for breakfast.