The Waiting Man

From today's Seek.com e-mail with job opportunities matching my keywords...

Job 6: Sales Assistant
Location: Sydney - West
Salary: $30,000 - $40,000 including super
Classification: Sales & Marketing > Assistant/Co-ordinator
Description: Immediate start with a rapidly growing group of companies. Aggressive business plan. Most advanced solar systems and products.

Hmmm... they forgot to mention I must be prepared to travel long distances for work, have universal appeal, be a 'star' performer' & go the extra mile... or light year... to achieve results.

I'd be over the moon to land a job like that!! Except the salary doesn't look that great, especially since I'd need a new suit for it...

Any more puns? Leave 'em in the comments section, I'm outa space here...

And so my sentence at Debtor's Prison #2 looks set to be commuted to more soul-crushing hours at the local Centrelink Office, due to its not-entirely-unexpected undercrowding & underfunding ~ or more simply ~ the place can't afford to keep me any more & since the Warden Manager & I haven't really seen eye-to-eye since Day One, she has (most likely gleefully) arranged for my release in a fortnight's time from the shackles of Appliance Retail barely six months into my sentence tenure.

As an unreformed & as-yet-uncrushed optimist, I choose to see this as a blessing in disguise. Ask me again in two weeks when none of the jobs I've applied for have even bothered to get back to me...

On the plus side, the refinancing has borne fruit in the form of a new bed for us & the totally indulgent purchase of new albums by Peter Gabriel & Sting... How very 'Adult-Contemporary' of me!!

But just to show I'm down with this new-fangled technology, I also downloaded the new Massive Attack album tonight & it's soundtracking this post rather nicely.

Enough... time to construct some semblance of dinner from the cupboard contents.

Probably the last post for the year, given what the next 24 hours holds... more on that next year.

In summary:~ ( A year of losses & gains, both intentional & not so. )

This is how I feel at the moment:~...



There is a light in the distance, but I'm in a dark place & there are stormclouds between me & brighter times

The new job is, as pretty much expected, a no-brainer occupation. The trouble with this is, you work with people who have no brains, ruled over by a control-freak with an over-developed mothering complex. This authority figure sends out more mixed messages than an MPD afflicted teenager with ADHD... the kind of person who as good as tells you to find another job one minute, tells you who to contact to get one, then gives you dirty looks & attempts at sarcasm when you do exactly that.

Boy, do I know how to pick 'em! At least this job isn't as downright physically perilous as the last. We don't sell anywhere near enough plasma or LCD screens for me to get any kind of back injury carrying them around... although I did manage to cut my hand yesterday & I have no idea how or when. Didn't even know 'til I happened to notice blood on a piece of paper, then discovered it was mine. But their OHS officer can't be accused of shirking her job. She just happened to walk in when I was standing on an office swivel-chair moving screens & cables (In an extremely cautious fashion I must add... I know the risks, consequences & my limitations!!) & was told in no uncertain terms to get off the chair & find a ladder. After my last job, I'm not used to that... danger was the only part of the business that was good ~ as some long-time readers will recall.

Discussions continue with the friend who assures me the 'perfect job' pie is still in the sky & will soon be available for nourishment, as soon as his half-baked MD can tear himself away from Melbourne for a day or two... I can understand the reluctance to leave there, but dammit!!!... it's been nearly two months since this 'possibility' reared its head... Man can't live on the retail award wage alone. Lately I've been living the punchline to the old joke ~ "If you think nobody cares whether you live or die, try missing a couple of repayments."

Still, if money is the only thing I have to worry about, I'm better off than some. But that doesn't stop me worrying...

After six months of promising I'd shout it from the rooftops when/if I found another job, I find I can only whisper to the wind...

"... I have a new job..."

Mostly because it's not the job I want, nor the money/salary package I want, nor the industry I want, nor the... you get the idea. But it pays a damn sight more per week than Centrelink does ~ then again, begging on a city streetcorner pays better than Centrelink... & the hours are better, you get an open-plan office, nice view, meet new people every day... damn, why haven't I been doing that for all this time...

In the absence of a promised-yet-non-forthcoming better offer, it's back to retail work in an electrical appliance store. Pray, for my sake & theirs, that I don't have to wear a nametag.

Haven't had a lot to say these last few months... The short story is that I've been unemployed since March & suitable work has been elusive. Hell, even unsuitable work is hard to come by at the moment, unless I fancy flipping burgers. Which I don't.

The longer I'm out of work, the less I know what I want to do when/if I'm employed again... the more reasons I can find to not apply for some things because I don't feel like I can/could do them any more.

Meanwhile the cost of living arrives daily in the mail & the old saying 'If you think nobody cares whether you live or die, try missing a couple of payments' has never been more insistently true.

Thank Providence then, for my loving partner who keeps me from withdrawing completely into my shell & bricking up the entrance. And to a select, small circle of friends whose words, empathy & practical advice, as well as pro-active help, keep the wind in my sails & my eyes on the horizon.

There are rants & raves & fuming vitriolic tirades I could post almost daily, interspersed with contemplations of the yawning void I feel within, but I feel that it wouldn't make for entertaining reading for too long... even for me. I've been toying with the idea of keeping a journal off-line ~ maybe even in a real diary, just to provide a vent for the grind & pressure, as I've fallen into the classic on-line journal conundrum ~ you start out writing about your life & feelings, but as you gather a readership you begin to treat each entry as a performance, wondering if your Friends will like the entry or not. And you start leaving out your innermost thoughts & feelings because you don't know how they'll be received or, in some more unpleasant cases, there are people you'd rather didn't know what you've been up to or going through. Eventually you reach the point of wondering what you have this LJ thing for anyway?!

I haven't succumbed or defected to MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter... or any of these other entities because I have no use for them &, in two cases, I find them shallow, facile & occasionally puerile. I have, however, been spending a lot of time over on Flickr, as photography has become my latest enthusiastic hobby ~ my guitars sit on their stands in mute anguish.

So ~ there you have it.

To celebrate... or commiserate the fact that today I officially joined the Welfare State & have become, to quote My Chemical Romance... "Another cog in the Murder Machine", here's a version of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' done on old-school computer hardware & accessories.

Enjoy...

Thanks to SG for the link...

Today was meant to be my third last day at Debtor's Prison ~ as in the third time it was meant to be my last day.

But no. Finish as you started seems to be the motto of the family business owners & they are proving to be haplessly unorganised right to the end... then past the end... then a bit more...

Not much else happening on the job front & inspiration for my next career move is equally elusive. Oh... & I hab a code. How de hell did I ged a code ib de middw ob subber??!!

Hack. Cough. Sniff. Atishooaarrgghh!!

I really should be finishing starting my Gov't job application, but am having an attack of CBF syndrome.

So have some photos:


Playing with my food...


Raindrops

( Same same, but different )

They do things differently there." Leslie Poles Hartley

Summary & Resolution in one badge-size quote.

On NYE I was informed by "MD"/CN that I'm to be released from Debtor's Prison in late January/early February because they're closing it. Meaning my resolution to look for a new job this year is also redundant... now I have to find one.

Probably no bad thing.