Sitting at the bottom

Here I sit, at the bottom.

Its not a cry for help or a woe is me thread, I am simply sitting at the bottom.

I appear to missing that spark, the spark that gets you smiling and into a job, opens doors and creates opportunities.

The cold wind of 'at his age he should really have settled down and got his career sorted by now' chills the neck.

Two jobs and to complete failures in two years has kind of taken the edge off. Self confidence has ebbed to nothing - the fear of failure lurks in every corner.

How do you get out of that?

I am not by nature a lazy person but I can only take so much. I've worked since the age of 16 but at nothing that can give someone a skill or career - a sort of butterfly flitting from one thing to the next, never being able to concentrate on anything specific.

How do you tap in to that and make a living these days?

The quietly snoring elephant in the room is what happens to you in your childhood is imprinted and can never really go away - I thought it had but clearly its hasn't and is starting to impact on day to day life - think I will have to seek professorial help with that one - I was warned it might happen but when you are told something at 17, you feel indestructible and simply dismiss it.

I'm definitely going to have to suck it up and go into our dreaded local job centre regardless - I dont want to claim for anything, just need the guidance. Will certainly see if some sort of re-training is available.

So, car-less, job-less, income-less, talent-less no-mark

Would invite him round to dinner to meet your parents?

It spookily seems like you have read my mind

MUSIC, it solves everyting.

Fresh air too.

I had this a couple of years ago and found it hard to be productive then viewed as that's it your finished...Not wishing to sit at home and add to the downward spiral I did go to the jobcentre and asked for a one to one with my "advisor" in regards to training, from that i got fork lift licence, a basic building site cscs card and well as a sia security/doorman licence, between those three I'm pretty much able to keep my mojo going and bills paid until something better comes on

When i recently had to go into the job centre to sign on, i found it the most soul destroying place ever. I got to the point that i was like the SAS, in and out as quick as possible. No eye contact and mininal talking.

I always had to go to the bakers or sweet shop straight after for a fix

I've not worked since September, but not been to the job centre to sign on. Maybe I should. I feel in the same boat Mark. I found counseling helped me a lot last year with my problems, despite spending 10 years making excuses as to why I didn't need it

Kickboxing/martial arts quite literally saved me

Though not recomending it for everyone

+1 for that, speaking to someone impartial who you can say anything to can be quite cathartic, especially in view of this -



I have had many friends who I considered to be capable and confident who were bitten later on in life by things that happened in their childhood undermining them. It always shocked me how they had managed to suppress their demons for so many years, some things just don't go away.

I would guess there are a lot people feeling the same as you in the current troubled financial times. I'm lucky enough to have ridden it out so far, but the reason I have managed it is just that, luck. You shouldn't blame yourself for your current circumstances, given the right conditions anybody can be brought low. I'm sure there are many people who consider themselves strong, maybe even invincible, as I used to but life experience has taught me otherwise, it's just a matter of having the right buttons pressed.

Try and get some help, what have you got to lose?

What happened to the shop idea?

This ^^^ - your demons can return at any time of life with a vengeance, for no apparent reason, and seriously mess you up. I totally understand the reluctance to get help, but sometimes it's necessary.

Also, unless you're living in a junkie squat, or mugging people for cash, it's totally wrong to describe yourself as having "failed" in life.

Been there, done that, got T-shirt etc...

I was in the same boat as you many years ago. I sold up my stuff and did a ski season in Austria to escape the winter blues. I was trained as a graphic designer and I had worked in television and photography, but there were no jobs unless I moved to London, which I didn't want to do.

I was grafting on building sites and packing boxes. The skills I had were worthless and the media industry will gladly have you work for nowt for forever and a day. The yoof of today think "internships" are a new thing, but I remember them from years ago and they didn't work even then.

I can't really say that the recession is worse this time round, as back in the day there wasn't even the internet (that has created a lot of jobs, but then again it has changed careers too!) but the country will soon sink if any more visitors come here for a long holiday. Employers will choose the cheapest solution. Talent and skill has nothing to do with it.

I soon found out whom my real friends were when I had no money. No one calls, no one is interested in you, you get all melancholy and it seems worse in the winter.

The doc offered me anti-depresants. I said I would rather have a job. The job centre couldn't give me a job. The only one whom can help you - is YOU!

Screw anti-depresants. They mask the illness, they are not a cure. Some people use them and get on OK, that's your choice, but as I said, I went to Austria doing the ski season stuff. Then Italy, then France, then Spain. I worked for a couple of camping companies after that. I eventually returned to Blighty when I had no money and slept at friend's houses. On returning home I looked at all my old "friends" and saw them all sat in the same pose with cobwebs hanging off their nose and they all looked like the living dead. Fatter, mortgaged and taxed to the hilt, more kids, the list goes on. One of my ol' "friends" was now bunked up with my ex. I laughed so hard when I found out because I knew what a bunny boiler she was! I saw him a few months later and he had lost about three stone and looked as if she had sucked the life out of him. Literally!

I had been skiing, snowboarding, drinking, paragliding, microlighting, riding in the Alps on my bike, seeing the Tour on Alpe d'Huez, running naked in the forest, tasted many a foreign woman (I seem to get on with them better than the home crowd of leggings/tattoos/stillettos brigade that GB knocks out) and the worst thing I ever did was coming home to this tax draining dump called Great Britain.

I've been back a few years and I've had very good and dismal times. I see these whipersnappers that are young, dumb and full of cum, stabbing each other in the back, just to get a meaningless promotion with no pay rise attached. I blame the likes of The Apprentice on the Beeb for creating these prats. I recently watched the version with the teenagers in it and it horrified me how they copied the adult characters with the way they spoke to each other. It was like Mini-Sugar-Frankenstien's morphing into our future bosses, talking to people like something on the bottom of the their shoe and thinking that is how you should behave in business. Frightening! I doubt I'll ever work for a company again.

As other's have said, don't blame yourself.

I sold myself and my classic Scalextric collection to the devil to get a job. People will still drop dung from you from a great height even when you reach your goal. You are not alone and you will come out of this mess and you will be better and wiser for it.

I am now a freelance graphic designer with a multitude of skills in the bag and little work. Ten years on I have a mortgage, a loving girlfriend and I'm selling my possessions on ebay to get by. I can see I am turning into an old fart with no get up and go. Hence I am now doing my own art and I am looking to hold an exhibition next year and get back to France (not to return) as soon as I can.

The moral of my story is: KEEP MOVING.

Chin up matey. You'll laugh about it one day

+1. To quote Churchill, "if you're going through hell, keep going". Having had my fair share of unemployment (3 university degrees notwithstanding), all you can really do is plug away until you land something. The job centre isn't the nicest - nor, IME, always the most helpful - environment, but the more channels you explore, the better. Given the current rather aggressive stance the welfare state seems to have adopted with IDS at the helm, even if finding work is proving a struggle, demonstrating a pro-active approach and being seen to at least be doing something to land a job - regardless of success rate - is all-important.

David