unemployed and staring into the void
confessional #3
Ladies and gentlefolk, I am in freefall.
If life could whoop my ass anymore, I would be without buttocks. I’m pretty amazed that I’ve even organised myself enough to publish an article today, but I do think that is the beauty of this Confessional series, where the requirements are the following:
write words
do those words make grammatical sense?
if no, edit lightly. if yes, hit publish.
It keeps me accountable to publishing on here, where I would argue that quantity over quality is helping me to stay consistent. If I only posted articles that I felt had ‘quality’ in them, I would upload once every three to four months.
So, I bring you the update this week that I am unemployed. Without work. No longer earning money. Sans paycheck. Senza dollar. This is a first for me, as since I have legally been able to work, I have done so. I am not good at being unemployed. In fact, I have been unemployed for a whopping five days, and I have spent most of those days with pure fear coursing through my veins and Indeed staring me in the face. I am lucky enough to still be living at home during this period, but I am stressed. I think my hair might actually be falling out? An unprecedented (I do love that word) amount of hair came out when I combed it this morning. It prompted me to go to the Grape Tree, where I spoke to a lovely lady who sold me some hair oil. Will it work? Probably not, but I’m desperate to believe in something and hair oil is a cheap antidote.
The word ‘unprecedented’ makes me laugh. I am reminded of all of the so-called unprecedented times I have lived through, and I am now wondering whether there is even a precedented state of existence anymore. Each year seems to bring some new situation where we are living in Unpredented Times. I am tired and in need of 5000 years of sleep. The last time I felt calm and rested was in 2001. Tuesdays scare me these days and I don’t like the tetxure of bananas.
Anyway, back to the elephant in the room. My unemployment. This is due to a combination of narrowly missing out on my dream job (seriously, I was one of the two final candidates), and my leaving my previous one as it was making me so anxious that I was becoming ill. I have had a couple of interviews, and and have a trial shift at a coffee-shop-cum-bar next week. I’ve never done barista work in my life, but I will try my best. In my head, I will be living out my cutesy coffee shop life. In reality, I will probably have a lady shriek at me because her latte has the wrong type of milk in it. Still, if it goes terribly wrong, at least I can post about it on here.
In light of having a life crisis, I have bought hair dye. I don’t need to explain my reasoning; all people who don’t cope with chaos normally have at some point bought a home hair dye kit. I am aiming to go a gorgeous copper that simulataneouly compliements my skin tone and makes me a 10/10, but have a hunch that I will look like a slightly orange broccoli.
I keep telling myself the chaos will end, and I will stop job-hopping and become a Sensible Settled Employed Adult (new acronym formed: SSEA). Once I reach SSEA status, my hair might stop peeling out in chunks and I might even form healthy coping mechanisms. People with SSEA status seem to emit this debonaire and mysterious air. Although, I am beginning to think that the mysterious bit might just be that they don’t really know what’s going on either. They just buy workwear and look put together. If I sound bitter, it’s because I probably am. I too want to look sexy and expensive and put together, and most of all, I want to wear one of those waistcoat things that cinch your waist. Every time I have tried one on, my boobs have made the buttons pop open. I can’t imagine that will go down very well in an interview, or when I’m consoling a client. I want to wear heels that click on marble floors as I elegantly sway from side-to-side in a pencil skirt, but then I remember in order to wear clothes like that, I will probably have to work in some soul-sucking job that hates joy and penalises laughter.
Thank God I have Substack. Whenever life happens, I retreat here and share far too much. I’d even go as far as to say that it’s more effective than cheap hair dye and hair oil.
As ever, here are a few of my photo highlights this week:
All my love,
Emma
sorry you didn’t get the job!! it’s literally the worst feeling :( as someone else who is currently battling the uk job market i get it, it’s really rough right now!! i will say from a former barista it’s a cute job at first but it depends where you go! if it’s not a chain then you’ll enjoy it, if it is then avoid it at all costs
sending you so much love and many good vibes!