Day 10: Dream On

Today has been a frustrating one at best.  On any given Monday and despite usually feeling the after effects of an over-excessive weekend, one nevertheless feels ready for the challenges of the week ahead.  Monday’s are all about hitting the ground running and ‘getting stuck in’ from the off.  But,   somehow, I seem to have hit a bit of a brick wall and I’m feeling really dispirited today.

The day started with an airport run, as I dropped off my girlfriend’s parents at Manchester Airport.  Having celebrated 25 years of marriage, they’re now off for a Caribbean cruise to renew their wedding vows.  It was good to break what’s already becoming a tedious routine and I used the journey home to plan the day ahead.

As my laptop's been hugely over-worked and has started to run a little slow over recent weeks, my first job was to ‘treat myself’ to a new external hard-drive.   Upon returning home, I set about relieving the memory of my laptop by transferring thousands of photos, hundreds of documents and an ever-increasing folder full of job applications.  Simultaneously, I defragmented the machine and during this time, set about today’s main priority of finding myself a job.

As the day progresed, frustration has occasionally manifested in to anger.  I look at a job title. I momentarily get excited.  I look at the small print.  I begin to shout expletives at the screen.   

It feels that the ‘best’ of my ideas are already exhausted and I would say this has been the most unconstructive day of my job search so far.  Having said that, I have signed up to the ‘Jobsite’, ‘Jobserve’ and ‘Rockfmjobs’ websites, which will supposedly bring prospective employers to me!  I followed this by applying for seven positions with the latter website, including positions for two Cover Supervisors, a Sales Administrator, an Account Manager, a Senior Support Development Worker, a job in Advertising Sales and a PA to Director.

In many ways, applying for jobs via these mediums does give you an overwhelming feeling that you’re ‘going through the motions’.  Sure, it’s a simple case of adding basic contact details, uploading a CV and pasting in a cover letter - but I already know that I don’t have the required experience, nor qualifications for most of these jobs.  Even more crucially, none of them ‘excite’ me.  None are my ‘passion’ and none are my ‘dream job’.  So in this scenario, how could I ever convey my excitement and passion for such a post, should the unlikely invite to interview arrive?

Many of the positions are also sponsored links, which gives you a feeling that you’re being conned or that the roles exist only as standardised Job Descriptions, in order to entice you to sign up to yet another employment agency.  

So, that’s the nitty gritty of thoroughly uninspiring job-search in the real world today.  To compound the situation, I even found out that the past seven days were traditionally the busiest of the year in terms of people looking for new employment. 

But as I’ve led in bed over recent nights, a very different picture has formed in my minds eye.  Excess energy, unused creativity and imagination-to-spare has left me lying awake in bed until the small hours, plotting all sorts of ways to make myself a quick buck or to land myself a job.

Last night for example, the last thing I watched before going to bed was Match of the Day 2.  Within the crowd at the Spurs v Man U, sat one Mr. Beckham, watching the match with his son.   “David Beckham’s got plenty of cash” I thought…”wonder if he needs any staff?”.  I then wrote him a letter, offering my services as anything from a shirt-ironer and grocery-shopper to a baby-sitter.  "International travel too" I thought.  Maybe with all the spare endorsements hanging around, there’d even be a few perks too!

Seriously …this was all a very plausible idea.  In my head at 2am.

Other idiotic ‘light-bulb’ moments over the last few nights include writing a classic Christmas song (the royalties alone would keep a shiny 911 on the mansion driveway!), scripting a Lancashire-based mill-town movie and writing to Channel 4 to volunteer myself for a documentary; Something along the lines of “I’m so desperate for a job, I’ll do anything!”, “100 jobs in 100 days” or “An Idiot At Home”.

I’ve even gone as far as writing e-mails and letters to Chris Evans and Theo Paphitis having been inspired by their rise-to-success autobiographies.

It’s back to the sensible ideas tomorrow though, where I’ll be completing my UCAS application and applying for some rather more modest positions.

Until next time, many blessings

Jason