Trying not to make a complete job hunt of it
In a personal reflection, the author finds himself jobless but not hopeless.
For reasons as pedestrian, as they are personal, I’m currently job-hunting.
This is, in itself, not especially noteworthy; at least not on a national scale. There are, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), around 1.36 million people in the United Kingdom currently unemployed and being one of that large a number is hardly grounds to feel special. It’s more likely to be a spur to solidarity and cause of anonymity, perhaps even facelessness, but it’s certainly not grounds to feel unique.
Regardless, the headline is that, for me, at the time of writing, a full decade of working across journalism, communications, politics, public relations, and public affairs has met a temporary pause. Add to that the part-time, temporary, and seasonal jobs I did before my career began and the present period marks the first time since the age of fifteen that I have not had somewhere to clock in. It is new and unexplored territory for me.
Context, as ever, matters and I have some privilege points to register before anyone starts calling Bono and urging him to hold a rock concert to support me, presumably advertised with that caterwauling Sarah McLachlan dirge that truly unoriginal people have pencilled in for their funerals. The one about the angels with arms. There’s an unhinged article about how much I hate that dreadful song somewhere, but that’s for another day.
My circumstances are such that not having an income for a short period is not the end of my world. There are those out there for whom it would be such a disaster and their stores are more important than mine because of it. Again, the details are mundane and private, but all that is necessary to know is that my lifestyle can remain uninterrupted for a while before anything like panic sets in. I will need to earn again; but it doesn’t have to be next week, is my point.
I am an optimist by nature. This may be why my current situation feels like being kicked into a room full of doors of various sizes and colours, all leading somewhere different, rather than into some kind of despairing pit.
When tried, some of the many doors don’t open, those would be the applications to which I receive either no response or no progress beyond the initial stage.
Others have nothing behind them, representing the sad phenomenon of internet scam job postings that are designed purely to steal the data of some desperate people. The installers of this kind of door ought to be most ashamed of themselves.
Meanwhile, other doors are guarded by burly bouncers, the individuals with whom the applicant competes for the role. Some of them appear of reasonable size and challenge, others as unconquerable titans. It’s all a matter of perspective and spurred by desperation, desire, and demand.
The many entranceways don’t all lead to new jobs either. Some lead to other possibilities that don’t result in earning immediately but to progress of another kind.
Some could lead back to university, others to vocational qualifications, a few go to more time off, while others lead to freelancing, self-employment, or casual, informal earnings of some kind or other.
If anything is proving difficult in the weeks since I stopped having something to do Monday to Friday, it’s that the sheer amount of choices, options, and possibilities is a lot to deal with.
Being forced to confront the question, “What do I want to do with the rest of my professional life?” is a bit like being asked, on the spot, to tell a joke or a funny story.
The minute the query enters the ear, the brain suddenly cannot find even the most basic pun or rudimentary anecdote. This same blanking, like an old analogue television turning off, occurs when one is asked how one plans to proceed under these circumstances.
Instead of an embarrassingly mumbled “I don’t know yet,”, I’ve preferred to take refuge in how American judge Potter Stuart attempted to define hardcore pornography in Jacobellis v Ohio, and say I’ll “know it when I see it.”
There are almost too many doors to consider and going through one represents a huge number, the other side of which will be closed off, obscured, or, in some cases, hidden forever. Possibilities are exciting, too many can be daunting.
This concept, called “analysis paralysis” by psychologists and present in everything from Aesop’s fable of The Fox and the Cat to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is the only real unnerving element of this period of joblessness, in my subjective experience.
Other aspects are annoying or frustrating, there’s no denying it. Not hearing back from a potential employer after a seemingly great application, receiving a lovely yet conclusive rejection email, or realising that the qualifications needed for a particular position don’t line up with my own are all irritating, sure, but they’re not in the least bit frightening. It is merely a case of continuing to pull and push at doors until one leads to a new job; if that is the immediate goal.
But the possibility of missing out on an educational opportunity, a more suitable role, or time to be creative by choosing a suboptimal option? That is the stuff that keeps the head tossing and turning on the pillow well into the early hours of the morning.
Of the two kinds of paralysis I’ve experienced in my life, I think I’d prefer the one where it feels like there’s a demon in the corner and I can’t move - at least that ends when consciousness returns and there’s a rush of relief. For analysis paralysis, there’s no such treatment, only the perpetual question of, “What if?”
For now, all I can do is make the best choices I can with the information available to me. This means I will continue to apply for roles that seem suitable and that interest me, I will continue to write both professionally and for its own sake, and I will take the time that my circumstances generously afford me to take stock, think, and make, hopefully, a good decision about what comes next.
Will I stumble across my next compelling and rewarding communications role during my next Google search or whip around the S1 jobs board?
Will I finally get on with getting my NCTJ qualification and pivot into journalism full-time?
Will I use the time and space to work both on myself and the competing ideas for novels currently sprawling across my desktop?
It could be any of these or something that won't have come to mind until tomorrow.
No matter what’s next, I’m choosing to look at it as exciting. I don’t know any other way.
Currently, I’m working my way through the excellent reimagining of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four on Audible, starring Andrew Garfield and Andrew Scott. It’s an immersive, provocative, and deeply moving audio experience that I recommend wholeheartedly.
So, paraphrasing the great man by way of a conclusion, “To the future, or to the past, to a time when I know what I’m doing, when possible outcomes don’t seem infinite and do not overwhelm - to a time when certainty exists and what is done is done for the love of it: From the age of unease, from the age of ‘what next?’, from the age of the job hunt, from the age of analysis paralysis - greetings!”