I have just Googled 'What am I going to do with the rest of my life?" I kid you not! As if a computer choc full of html and binary code could answer that one for me. Only God can answer that question. What am I talking about? There is no God. I'm on my own with this one. I'm in South Wales and there's a recession on and I'm 47. Why the Job Centre and the Department of Work and Pensions won't allow me to carry on with my career of fantasist, wannabe playwright and very part time volunteer, God Knows! I think they are losing patience now. I've talked to people about setting up a business, I've talked to a Careers advisor about doing an M.A and I am cultivating the thousand yard stare from poring through the Universal Jobmatch for Jobseekers. I just don't know what to do about earning money! I know what I don't want: Stress. I don't want to turn up to the same place of work every day. Variety is the spice of life. I don't want to be around negative people for too long in case I lapse back into being one. I have been fighting that battle a long time. I better do something soon because I will be swopping my Jobseekers Allowance for an Old Age Pension. I am trying not to be bitter but I am pretty fucked off with the situation. I am just not motivated enough to put myself in shitty circumstances to earn a crust. I don't want to sell things to people over the phone or otherwise. I don't mind people but I don't want to be paid for working with them. I am re-hashing old searches like Teacher, Further Education Lecturer but my heart isn't in it. I would have to move which I thought I really wanted to do but I don't know if I want to start again somewhere else. I mean I am one of the select few who speak Welsh! I should be able to jump on the gravy train somewhere but appears you need more than that these days, you need talent as well. One thing I value more than anything is my freedom. My freedom was taken away from me, literally, after my Mental Health deteriorated in 2005, a lot of that was work related, so you can understand my reluctance about compromising both my freedom and my mental health. I associate work with oppression and indentured labour and wage slavery and doing things you don't want to do. It appears that we are all economic commodities without even realising it. We are meant to be contributing to the 'whole' but they never asked our permission. We were just press ganged into it! That's why so many people get off their faces on the weekends to forget their working week and to anaesthetise the pain of the forthcoming one. If you are in a job or career that you really enjoy and can't wait to get into work in the morning then your a lucky one especially if you live in Wales. We have been conditioned to see ourselves in terms of what we do for a living! A living? It's an existence. I know we have to do something but it's vital that it is the right thing! These positive affirmations keep banging on about 'you only get one life' and 'this is not a dress rehearsal' . If so then why do so many of us spend much of our lives in work that does not satisfy our souls? Lack of Imagination, self hate, lack of confidence. The work I ended up doing in the past was challenging but stressful and made me ill, mentally and physically. The fact that now I am faced with earning less bucks because I am unable to do a stressful job, really pisses me off and makes me not want to work at all. I have lost interest and I have lost motivation. I have no references. I don't want a Job!
.jfif)
