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.

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.