Until very recently I was unemployed. 12 months ago, after graduating form uni, I flew the parental nest and, like a naive little magpie, was drawn to the bright lights of London.
What followed was nearly a year of scrimping, saving, work experience, and government handouts. I lived the unemployed life; going to the job center, signing on, and anxiously waiting for £56 per week to magic its way into my bank account.
But I didn’t let it get me down. ‘It’s this bloody recession, the downturn, the crunch’. This was my mantra, it kept my chin up and my upper lip stiff as CVs were met with rejection letters and uncomfortable silences.
The Guardian have written about a ‘lost generation‘ of kids leaving uni to find doors closed and hundreds of other graduates ahead of them in the job queue, and I took some comfort form this - it wasn’t me but the situation, I wasn’t unemployable just unlucky.
Going from reading Derrida, swanning around campus, and discussing theories of cultural interaction to watching The Wright Stuff and applying for ‘assistant’, ‘trainee’, and ‘junior’ positions on Guardian Jobs was an interesting change of pace. As a former student, I can say that students are lazy without it being an ill-informed generalisation - students are lazy. Although most of us do pull our collective finger’s out in the third year, no one could seriously call 11am to 4pm (with an hour and a half for lunch, naturally) a full working day.
But when unemployment hits, you begin to realise that student life was actually quite productive. At least you were surrounded by people in the same lazy boat - you adrift on the sea of sloth together and it didn’t seem all that bad. Unemployment on the other hand is normally a solitary pursuit - like masturbation, but with none of the pay off and all the self-loathing. Day after day you sit there on your own, tugging away at your flaccid cock, and nothing… no reward… (that is a metaphor by the way).
When you’re unemployed you’ll be amazed with how little you can do in a day. The most menial job can be stretched and elongated to fill a day. Going to the post office became a day’s worth of activity which requires planning and a nice long rest afterward.
My typical day went a bit like this…
11.20AM: Wow, I’ve slept for 10 hours but I still feel tired, how can that be? Oh well, I’ll get up now, have a cup of tea and watch QI on iPlayer to help me wake up.
11.55AM: Well you can’t just stop at one episode of QI, and watching Stephen Fry is better than any education, I’m definitely learning here.
12.30PM: Ok let’s get on with it, hit all the job sites and get a few applications sent off.
12.31PM: Hmm… not much there. I’ll just quickly see who’s on Facebook chat and check my notifications.
*much facebooking ensues, I also check ebay, have a browse on You Tube, and read a few posts on the Guardian*
01.30PM: Hungry again now. But there’s no food in the flat. I’ll have to trek over to Tesco - best get showered and changed, can’t go out like this.
*shower, change, and listen to some music*
02.45PM: Hang on, doesn’t Fran have some beans in the cupboard, I can just eat those. I’ll (probably) replace them tomorrow.
03.12PM: Jeez, those beans have made me sleepy. I’ll just quickly watch an episode of Flight of the Conchords, I’ve not seen the one where Murray is a millionaire in ages, then I’ll get back to searching…
06.10PM: Oh, Hi Fran. Are you back form work already? I think I dropped off there.
This was the pattern I fell into day in, day out for months. I slept a lot, watched comedy shows by the series not the episode, and stole a lot of beans (sorry Fran).
But that was just me. I dealt with being unemployed in my own very specific and personal way, what about everyone else? Are we really part of The Guardian’s lost generation? I was intrigued, so a few weeks ago I made an open call to all Platform readers who were are also job seekers to come forward and share, and share they did.
Over the next few weeks I will bring to you the results of my search, starting with Angela, an adorable job-seeker from rural Dorset.
Stay tuned.
