The Rise of the Warmth of Spring
It's been awhile since I posted, and the reason's been very simple: I'd lacked the motivation to do it. I was, for a time, consumed by the all-encompassing desire to find paid employment and, as a result of it, hopefully start an actual life that has not been handed to me by someone's parents.
After many long, isolating weeks of pouring over job adverts, a steady stream of rejection letters and an epic battle against my waning confidence, a creature so skittish it would shrink away from itself, last week I finally had a bite: a week's work at the UEA to cover someone on sick leave. I gladly took it, it was full-time at least, though I have to admit that putting a week of work on my CV is not very flattering, nor does it make me terribly more employable. But it is something. I finished on Friday and now I'm back here. But at least that one hurdle has been overcome at last: I now have work experience in the United Kingdom. People will know that I'm employable here.
I'm still on the temp staff register at the UEA and with luck they'll call me back in. I will also, in a couple of days, maybe sooner, resume the hunt for longer paid work, knowing full well that any public advert I reply to may be up against as many as 300 other applicants. It's a rough world out there, folks. It's also crystal clear that you won't get anywhere in the hunt without that lucrative experience. You can take that diploma and shove it up your ass, it means nothing to employers who don't want to train you. Which is most of them.
Yeah, I'm still a little bitter. I do feel like that mantra we were constantly subjected to when younger about how education is the ticket to everything is a lie. They don't want 22-year-olds fresh out of college. They want 35 and 40-year-olds who have done this already. Get out, newbies, welcome back old farts.
But I'm proud, too. That difficult first hurdle of getting a job in England has been overcome. I'm still in line for employment at the UEA, I'm still a staff member, just one who is employed on an as-needed basis. And I'm still able to pay down my student loans (thankyou savings).
Maybe one day I'll be able to afford that independent life I value so highly. But in the meantime I'm trying something else: self-discovery and self-improvement. I might just learn how to be a better person (being less bitter would be a good start). Over the past few months I've been in intensive training: assuming the identity of the clan and not of the self. I'm a better person for it. But I'm still learning.
Maybe one day I'll reach my goals. But in the meantime it's a beautiful day outside. And life is still worth living.