2020 Blog 48 — Reemployment
No word of a lie, having been unemployed since February, two jobs got back to me on the same day. What is it they say about waiting for buses?
Well, one of those buses took me onboard. Sure, it’s just about the shittiest, most-decrepit-looking bus you’ve ever seen, but at this point I’ve been out in the cold for so long that I’m getting on regardless. I am now a freelance writer.
Relief — firstly, so I no longer have to lie about being a freelance writer on my CV, but also, I might be able to buy my family Christmas presents this year. And even as a synecdoche that means such a lot.
Somewhat inevitably, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about unemployment this year. I haven’t struggled to get a job since 2012, when I scraped my way into a Christmas temp position in Debenhams, from which I was promptly ejected when the New Year came around. Since then, things have more or less worked out for me, and I’ve never been unemployed for longer than a few months. In fact, I realised that since the weapons-grade disaster that was my Cambridge interview in 2013, I haven’t failed a single job interview.
Most of that was luck. Part of that was me never gunning for particularly high-flying jobs, preferring fun and activity to glum and selectivity. But part of it was skill. For some unknown reason, I am quite good at job interviews. Once in the moment I feel confident and articulate, and I think because the nature of an interview is that it’s so obviously a performance, I don’t feel awkward putting forward a false version of myself.
So yes, if you’d asked me this time last year how I felt about jobs, I would say I felt pretty good. But that was last year, and 2020 is 2020. This year, everything ground to a halt, and I got rejection after rejection.
Well, maybe not more than 10 rejections, in all. I’ve known lads in nightclubs to get 10 rejections in half an hour and not lose their enthusiasm. But there’s something unique about jobhunting — it’s incredibly easy to get demoralised. Time and again I’ve known versatile, dynamic friends reevaluate themselves into failures off the back of one bad interview, and this year it happened to me. Never have I felt so insecure in my own abilities, never have I felt so worthless.
This idea of worthlessness is one that’s worth dwelling on. I’ve never been the kind of person that needs to work — for me, there is nothing better than the knowledge that I have a day off tomorrow. It feels like the older I get, the less common it is to have this viewpoint. Sure, some people are complete workaholics, but even non-obsessive friends will say “oh, I’m happiest when I’m busy”; “I can’t handle more than a week off.” I worry that we’re trained to be proactive, and a day without proactivity is by definition a day wasted, and we’re all becoming worker drones in some hastily-sketched derivative scifi.
Everyone I know would choose constant work over constant leisure — of that, I’m pretty certain. I always thought (and perhaps, hoped) that I was a little different, because in the weeks and months between jobs, or uni courses, I’ve often been at my happiest. As I’ve got older I’ve been more accepting of my own need for solitude, and indulged a little bit more. And I have to admit, when I lost my job and then lockdown started, I kind of relished not having to do anything. I liked not having an imperative to go out, but also not having fear of missing out. I’m gonna say it: lockdown was nice.
But time went on, and before long, the lack of proactivity got to me, too. The nagging sense that my life had no meaning. And yeah, sure, philosophically life has no meaning, but when you’re unemployed for 9 months, your life really has no meaning.
There’s a great video series by Guardian journalist Iman Amrani on modern masculinity which has been running for the past few years — she focuses on traditional blokes and how their core values have adapted to the changing zeitgeist. In the most recent episode, a hairdresser of about my age said “you don’t feel like a man if you’re not working.”
I’m not sure I agree — for me, it’s not really about masculinity, it’s about being able to stand on your own two feet. I would cringe every time I needed to ask my parents for money for a physio appointment, I would dread going round to my girlfriend’s house because I knew when I’d get there, her Dad would ask any luck with the job hunt, Ben? It’s not just internal worthlessness that affects you, after all. All of my grandparents have openly equated worth with employment at some point.
And now, FINALLY, I have something to say. It’s far from where I wanted to be aged 25, but hey — tiny changes.
