Jobhunting - Capturing the elusive animal

I am unemployable. I admit it, I don't know why I am, but time has proven this to me. The last time someone hired me for a job was in my teens - no, I was 22 and at uni. A bar hired me to do some shifts, but then again, I did know the owner, so...

I've been actively looking for a job for over a year and haven't had a single interview in that time/ The only potential job offer came from an agency who had seen my CV (resume) on another site, and thought I might be perfect for her client in Paris (dream job & salary!) but after discussion, I felt I wouldn't be up to the position, as it was more tech-based than I am used to. When I work in studios, I'm using the equipment, but to produce sound, and their job was fixing mixing desks etc. That's just not my area.

So anyhoo, aside from that near-miss, I'm just sitting here, looking like this, as my friend Peter used to say. All my life, I've been self-employed, so it's only in the past few years - since the smoking ban - that I've been actively searching. Don't get me started on the government crippling my business beyond repair, and all the pubs and clubs that shut because of loss of revenue, aaaargh!!!!

I printed off my CV and trotted into town the other day. Every employment agency knocked me back. I didn't even think they could do that! People go in there with no skills whatsoever, and they get help creating a CV and finding a job, so I guess my face didn't fit. At worst, they could have said, "Well, we need to re-work your CV," not "Sorry, I think you're better going elsewhere. What is this?

I have so much experience through being a musician - I've contracted for TV companies, schools, record labels, worked with vulnerable groups (disabled, addicts, and ex-cons), and I can learn ANY task (I'm super intelligent! Not that it helps!) but I'm not worth dealing with, wtf?

What put me in a really pissy mood was how the woman who walked in behind me at one place pretty much said the same thing as me, and they booked HER an interview. Sometimes, one is right to be paranoid. Clearly, that company wasn't being objective.

So, I'm sitting here, ever-spiralling into more and more debt, with more skills than I know what to do with, and no idea how to get out of this eddy. My new online store is starting to make sales, but not fast enough or high enough for me to rely on as a source of income. I feel like banging my head against a brick wall.

Whoops, there goes another rubber tree plant!

High Hopes - Frank Sinatra (Cahn/Van Heusen)



Next time you're found, with your chin on the ground
There a lot to be learned, so look around

Just what makes that little old ant
Think he'll move that rubber tree plant
Anyone knows an ant, can't
Move a rubber tree plant

But he's got high hopes, he's got high hopes
He's got high apple pie, in the sky hopes

So any time you're gettin' low
'stead of lettin' go
Just remember that ant
Oops there goes another rubber tree plant

When troubles call, and your back's to the wall
There a lot to be learned, that wall could fall

Once there was a silly old ram
Thought he'd punch a hole in a dam
No one could make that ram, scram
He kept buttin' that dam

but he's got high hopes, he's got high hopes
He's got high apple pie, in the sky hopes

So any time you're feelin' bad
'stead of feelin' sad
Just remember that ram
Oops there goes a billion kilowatt dam

All problems just a toy balloon
They'll be bursted soon
They're just bound to go pop

Oops there goes another problem kerplop
Oops, there goes another problem kerplop
Oops, there goes another problem kerplop
Kerplop!

Snarky? Moi?

It took ages to find a blog name I could jive with. Thanks, all you horrible people who took the best urls, wrote one blog post (if that) and then never returned. There should be a time limit on dormant blogs, and then the urls get released for new people to use. That's what I think, anyway.

Yeah, I'm snarky. Not all the time, but often. Sometimes, I'm just plain miserable, sometimes, manic. I like being high as a kite. It's interesting how uncomfortable it makes others when I'm being vibrant (and I'm never horrible or inappropriate, just...I dunno, people don't like talking about anything other than the weather or EastEnders. They don't admit they have feelings or desires. When I am overtired or super-stressed, I get into the manic zone. I can't really explain it.

Mostly, I try to find the happy moments in any given situation, as I crave happiness and life is much easier without the dark overbearing clouds of reality. Denial is awesome. I also get through the day by playing out little movies in my head of how my life could be. Daydreamer, that's me.

Anyway, the amount of snarkiness bound to seep through my words here will undoubtedly outweigh my daily behaviour. I'm saving it all up to vent here. Usually, I save it up and feel my insides churning. But us performers have to please our audiences! It isn't about our needs. As soon as we make it about us, we're not playing the game.

Sometimes, I just want to step away from the game for a while.

Where to start

I've been wanting to start a blog for a while now.

I actually have lots of blogs and online bases, but my job - I say job, but I'm unemployed at the moment, so perhaps I should call it my vocation or my shackles - as a musician very much impedes on my ability to authentically and publicly ruminate over my innermost thoughts.

There have been times I have wanted and needed to share experiences, but because the others involved are in the public eye, it would be professional suicide. Although I am out of work now, talking about my peers would ensure I stay out of work for good. But what people don't realise when they turn on the TV, or pick up a newspaper, is that those people are real, and have real friends, and real issues. And when they crash and burn, their friends are left to pick up the pieces of their own lives. It's very hard to do when you can't talk about it.

I'm also constrained by the necessity to keep up a public image, to say the right thing, to constantly be in a state of self-promotion. People don't want to hear about the gnarly stuff, they want to read the next press release, attend the next gig, watch the next video. They don't want to discover you're fallible, or that you're having as much trouble staying afloat as the next person - actually, strike that, they DO. But purely for scandal value, not because they care. And once you're out of the game, off they go, trampling over you in their race to witness the next public meltdown.

The constant keeping up with one's own image, or that which is projected onto you by others is very hard. And when I do show signs of weakness, it's easy to see how true friends are few and far between. I appear to be a confident extrovert, but in truth, I'm very introverted - and happy to be so - and seeking my own private refuge, both in terms of location and self. I'm hoping that blogging will help me to come up with resolutions. My biggest problem is financing change, and I really need a change in my life right now. If money were no object, the first thing I'd do is get the hell out of Broken Britain. I'm not talking about the head-in-the-clouds dream of living on a yacht, dining at the best restaurants every night, schmoozing with the in-crowd. I just want to get a new start, and be able to put down deposit and advance rent. Pff, I can't even pay my rent here in England. At least I could crash on my mother's sofa if need be. I'd be up shit creek if things went wrong abroad and I had nothing to fall back on

I've just highlighted another issue: fear. Feel the fear and do it anyway? Is it okay if I just stay behind the sofa for a while? I've been brave all my life and I'm tired of striking out alone...though I know it has to be done. I just need to catch a break.

Another issue I continue to wrangle with is my inability to type as fast as my thoughts allow. My mind could give any F1 car a race for its money. And don't get me started on procrastination.

Anyway, I'm going to give it a whirl. And in order to be fully authentic, to be ME, I will stay anonymous. It is imperative I vent everything in order to stay sane, and perhaps in creating some sort of order to my thoughts, I can come up with resolutions to problems whacking me in the face.

Time will tell.

Look into the mirror. Do you recognise someone?

Del Amitri - When You Were Young

Look at the fool you have been
They drained the pool while you drowned in the dream
They bought your beauty and your soul
Then softly sold you back what they stole

So look into the mirror do you recognise someone
Is it who you always hoped you would become
When you were young?

The disappointment of success
Hangs from your shoulders like a hand-me down dress
And down nostalgia's rocky road
You watch your former lovers growing old

So look into the mirror do you recognise someone
Is it who you always hoped you would become
When you were young?

Sometimes your lack of sympathy gets hard to explain
So on your mask of make up just paint
A little parody of pain

So I look into the mirror and I recognise someone
It is who you always hoped you would become
When you were young.

(Del Amitri)