photo credit: The Library of Congress

Dead, dead, dead;

my job search, bank balance, and blog posting ability, respectively. In the interests of following up on my pledge to dedicate my blog less to apologies and more to thoughtfulness, I’ll only mention that I’ve had another story up at COSMOS, and that I’m still nought for many in the permanent job application stakes. That doesn’t mean I’m without a job, though. I’ve been writing trivia questions for science students at a rate of fifteen Wikipedia searches per minute, and I’m selling my soul for approximately $30 an hour, plus food allowance, to go and work on top of a tailings dam for two weeks. That starts tomorrow, to expect this blog to be even quieter than it was before.

Now, to thoughtfulness. And I must start by admitting that a great deal of my thoughts have been turned to my current lack of work to wake up to. I was speaking to a friend of mine recently—he’s also unemployed and searching for a full-time position—and we were comparing notes on the process. I told him that I was astounded at the extent to which my sense of self-worth is tied in to having a place to go and work every day. And not only that: it is also tied inextricably to the numbers that spin around in my bank balance. He agreed.

For the last year, I have been effectively broke, with the glorious exception of a few months where I was employed at Synergy (glorious for the cash being earned, not the job). That is, before I went on consecutive month-long trips to Sydney (business) and Thailand (pleasure) and chewed even those meagre crumbs. And now I’m back to square one again, cashless and incapable of committing to even a single night out with friends. Relying on the kindness of strangers (even if those strangers are your closest friends) engenders a special kind of worthlessness. Anyway, what with the soul-selling and moving outside of potentially the most dangerous environment for that state of mind (alone, at home, in front of a computer), I ought to feel a bit better. Albeit completely fucking knackered.

Writing continues to be an off-again, on-again hobby. I don’t have the mental space or the ‘closed door’ (I’ve been reading Stephen King’s On Writing, thanks to Anthony) necessary to be able to string a few hours of quality text together. It’s difficult to justify satisfying creative urges when, at the same time, I could be tuning my resume, or checking back at SEEK to see if, y’know, my future career has been added in the previous five minutes. I know that, according to many practitioners of creativity, I should love the craft enough to put in the hours no matter the sacrifice required. But I mean, fuck, it’s easy to say that when you can put food on the table and still have a few dollars left over.

Anyway, enough whining. I’ll see you guys in a couple of weeks.