I've got a job!

I'm in complete shock at the moment. I finally have a job! It almost doesn't feel real. I can't wait to start though. From the website and the tour I had today it looks like a really great place to work. Although now that the interview nerves and shock of the job offer have worn off I'm getting a little bit nervous about my first day and my very first proper job.

I have to say it was a real good buzz being able to ring people up and tell them the good news. Especially my parents. I've had to wait until 8pm to tell my mum as she's been at work all day and I swore my dad to secrecy. When I said hello I think she thought I'd not got it and so she was gearing up to keep me bolstered for the interview I was due to have on Thursday. But then I shouted "I got it!" and I think she was genuinely shocked, surprised and happy for me.

Speaking of the interview on Thursday. I rang them up before my interview this afternoon to say that I would be attending and then had to phone them back and apologise and say that I was now unable to attend.

All those hours of filling in boxes have finally paid off and I'm glad because it was starting to grind me down. I know that the positions I had gone for before weren't entirely ideal for my set of experience so I'm glad to know that when I finally did get a go at one that fitted the bill that I got it. So if anyone out there wants some encouragement that you can get a job then I'm in a good mood to give some uplifting advice. Keep chipping away and you'll get there eventually.

Secretly I think my job success was down to practicing my teacher voice on OH last night! ;). Oh and the wonderful reference one of my previous employers/friends wrote for me (I think she was beginning to wonder if she'd ever get asked for one).

I've had some celebratory Krispy Kreme Donuts and a bunch of flowers from my OH (isn't he sweet :) ) but I plan on something a little bigger at the weekend.

Gone but not forgotten

Today has been a pretty fraught day today. I awoke feeling gloomy remembering  yesterday's interview and not having gotten the job. I mustered some spirit to switch on the laptop and check for more jobs and to think about filling out the application forms I'd still got to fill in for another job and the interview I have on Tuesday.

I'd just about perked myself up when I got a phone call. It was from one of the school's I'd assumed that the boat had sailed on when it came to interviews. They rang and said that it was really short notice but could I make an interview tomorrow. I paused for a second and said would it be O.k. to phone back only I had to check transportation arrangements. They said yes and said "oh and we'd like you to read a 30 minute story to a group of children you can use your own resources like puppets and things". Flashes of panic went through me and I could feel my blood pressure rising. I should be happy I had another interview right? Well I would be if they'd asked me any other day than today and if they'd given me more time.

I've spent the rest of today stressing over whether or not to say yes to it or not because I felt so under pressure and ill-prepared for it. I ended up saying no because it was hiking my stress levels practically to the same levels that they'd been before I'd had to defer my course. I tried to get myself back on track again by filling out the medical forms so I could get them in the post but that just depressed me further because I have to somehow explain I've been depressed without sounding like I could fall apart at any moment.

As if today couldn't be any more depressing, it marks the date 4 years ago that my granddad passed away.  It's true what some people say about not realising what you've got till it's gone. He's left such a big hole in my life that I just don't know how to fill it. He died the day before I started university. I was packed off on my own to uni where I spent a week trying to cope with grief on my own with no friends. Making friends is hard to do when you're grieving and feel so alone and all you wish is that you could be at home with your family. I don't think I've ever properly had time to grief for him and I never will. Everyone else in my family seems to have moved past where I am and I can't talk to them about it. Especially my Nan. She has a new man now and she seems to be trying to rid her life of all things related to my grandad. What feels worse is that I used to be able to talk to her because she was alone too. We held each other together. But now she seems to have given herself permission not to do that. She told me when I visited her last that I'd told her that she had him now so she didn't need to talk to me as much. I don't ever remember saying that and if I did I never meant it I just wanted her to feel O.k.

I want to know when life is going to be good to me. There were two things that made me feel slightly happier today. My OH because he always makes me smile no matter what and a Post Secret card I found on an archive site that said something along the lines of "every story has a happy ending. If you're not happy yet then it's not the end". I'm keeping my fingers crossed that what they said is true.

On the dole again

Again today's blog is incredibly topical. I'm probably beginning to sound like a broken record talking about unemployment but when you've got no money and no job it's hard to positive about the job market.

I had another interview today. It was for a teaching assistant's post. The school was nice and I was feeling rather positive about my interview. I'd asked questions while I was given a tour and I think I asked meaningful ones whilst I was being interviewed. This time round I got to meet the competition. We were given a group tour. I was up against 2 women both of whom were older than me in their late 30's and early to mid 40's. One was the mother of one of the boys at the school and the other already a TA at another school. A real mixed bag. I felt a little like the experienced TA was favoured a little more on our tour. The person giving us the tour focused most of her dialogue towards her. I was the only one to ask questions on the tour.

Unfortunately I wasn't successful which made me rather down. This was mainly because they gave me feedback and part of that was about how I'd handled questions about me leaving a course I was on. That's a bit of an open wound subject with me still as the reasons surrounding it were the reasons for my stress and depression. Getting a job is supposed to be helping me to mend and to conquer it but at the moment it feels like the depression is what's holding me back from getting a job because it's putting employers off of me.

Having been crumpled by the discovery that I'd failed to get the job I decided to try and cheer myself up by popping my laptop on a looking for something to distract myself only to discover from the news feed on my OH's website¹ that unemployment has risen again in the U.K.² Just what I need. More people going after the jobs I want. It's hard enough loosing out to the few people I have come up against. Although apparently I have a very good application to interview ratio. It's practically 1/2. All I need to do now is work on the interview to job offer ratio.

Apparently the number of people claiming job seeker's has gone up 32,500 to 904,900². It's 904,901 in actuality at least as I'm unemployed but I've not claimed job seeker's yet. I bet there are tons more people out there like me as well. Maybe they should give jobs out on a first come first serve basis. I've got to be further up the queue than the 32,500 who've just joined. Although I don't fancy being number 872,401 in the queue!

 

Oh and happy birthday OH ;)

 

 

1. He has his own little portal site which is very useful indeed. Add it to your favourites if you like and if you spot a site that's not up on there give us a bell and I'll get him to add it!http://homepage.ntlworld.com/r.acton4/
2. BBC NEWS | Business | UK unemployment total rises again

Back to black

I'm having a rough weekend this week. Maybe it's the thought of another impending interview and the looming fear that yet again I'll be rejected. I feel like this year has been one big train wreck. My confidence (what little I had) has gone, my dreams are in tatters and I've lost the one thing I thought I was good at ¹. If I can't get a job then what am I going to do. It would be the ultimate rejection. 'Never mind' said everyone when I had my meltdown and ruined my chances at getting my PGCE. 'You have a degree and a 2:1 is an excellent mark'. What good is a degree if I can't do anything with it though. It's a degree in education and even the education establishments don't seem to want me. Especially the ones I was training to teach in (primary schools).

I've been feeling lately like my life is so empty and like I'm running on auto-pilot. I do the same thing every day, I go the same places every weekend and soon I'll not even be able to afford to do that I'll just have to sit at home because that's free. The only thing good in my life and that's keeping me clinging on is my OH and I'm worried that I'm going to loose him because I can't tell him what's going on in my head. I want to but the words just won't form themselves and I just can't answer. I don't know myself what's happening. All I do know is I feel like I'm drifting back into the black abyss that I was in 6 months ago when my life fell apart and I have no way out because this was my way out. Getting a job and having something to distract me was meant to help but it isn't and I don't know what to do.

I'm frightened. I don't like where I'm heading but I feel powerless to stop it. I can't just smile and everything will feel better. I can't tell people what's wrong because they just don't understand. 'Everything' it seems is not a suitable answer. It's like witnessing an all-out massacre in front of you and someone asking 'what's wrong' and you just see so much that you just don't know where to start. Worst still there is no where to escape. You just think you've conquered it and then Wham there goes another wave and you don't know why or where it came from. You were happy to minutes ago why now.

When that wave does it, so unexpectedly you're left dazed and confused and with people asking all sorts expecting you to have the answer and you can't look them in the eye and tell them because you have no answer and the look of fear that you see in their eyes is so gut wrenching that you just can't bring yourself to look at them. No matter how bad you feel inside you dread to make them feel the way you do and though you try and you want to tell them what's going on inside. You know that if you do speak it out loud and let those words go there's no going back, no way to undo them. You're scared that once let loose that things will never be the same and that you'll make them just as unhappy as you.

What crushes me most is the doubts it creates in others. Most of all my OH because I love him so much and I want to spend the rest of my life with him. He understands me like no other person, he has the patience of a saint and puts up with all the crap I throw at him and still he's by my side. Yet every time I'm down there's that little niggle. 'Do you still want to be with me?' and it puts doubts in my mind too not about whether I do want to be with him but because I wonder if he still wants to be with me. Am I still what he wants? How much more of this can he stand because I couldn't stand to loose him.

1. Which everyone says is temporary and once I believed them but I'm not so sure any more.

Weathering storms, applications and.... daddy long legs (eek!)

Today the small part of the U.K. in which I reside must have been through the complete cycle of weather excluding that of a hurricane. The day started off perfectly nicely with a few rays of sunshine to brighten my mood. I cheerfully begun work on the mound of job adverts that had suddenly appeared in the papers yesterday (so much for my thoughts of an impending drought in work opportunities). I wasn't really in the mood to tackle this mountain after yesterday's frenzied attack on the application form that the interviewing school had sent ¹. Chin up I thought. Once you've sorted it all out you can go for a little walk to the corner shop and replenish the M&M² and polo stock.

So I settled down to work and I'm thinking brilliant I've not got long to go I'll be done in no time. Stopped for a spot of lunch. Took a quick look online to see if it was possible to have my loved ones present delivered to me via online in time for his birthday. Then just as I'm thinking I could go out on my little sweetie trip now. I hear rumbling and the wind picks up. Two minutes later it's lashing it down with rain and there is scary lightening and thunderbolts. Eeek! I think. I hate lightening storms they freak me out, I'm convinced I'll get fried. If there's a lightening storm going on you'll usually find me cowering behind something and staying as far away from light switches, windows and plug sockets as possible. I unplugged the laptop (very gingerly I might add) in case that got fried and tried my best to distract myself.

It thundered none stop for about 45 minutes or so. Then it stopped and I think finally I'll have some peace so I can chill but no. Then I hear this weird fluttering noise and I look up at the window which I'd had open because it was stuffy and there was the hugest daddy long legs I've ever seen. I panicked and tried in vain to flap it out the window with a very floppy piece of newspaper no such luck. The damn thing clung on with two of it's legs. I wimped out and closed the blinds so I couldn't see and hoped it wouldn't escape.

I'm now sat here waiting for my night in shining armor to come home from work and rescue me. He'd better be quick because it's sounding vicious!

 
1. I really ticked me off. I'd already sent them my CV and a letter of application and it was enough to get me an interview why do I need to fill in the application they have all the information in what I already sent them!
2. It wasn't me who ate them all it was the little ladybird's I promise 

Filling the voids

I finally got the details through for a job interview that was supposed to be happening next week. I was beginning to think that I had dreamed getting the phone call asking if I was still available.

I emailed the other day to check the progress on the information I was supposed to be getting and it was apparently been typed as I read and that I would get the letter, job description and application form in the post shortly.... but hang on a minute. I thought I'd already applied? Oh well I thought, they've left it an awfully long time to reply to my initial application (I applied way back in July) they might have been re-offering the job and were sending out application forms to new applicants as well as informing me of when my interview was.

Sadly today I discovered that was not the case. After all that work I put in writing a letter of application and sending it in with my CV I now have to go through the whole process again only I have to write the details in boxes! Not only that but I discovered that I'm going to be interviewed twice by these people (as if once wasn't torture enough). It's also got me worried because I apparently get told the results of my interview on the day as part of the interview process. I've only ever had one job offer and it was from someone I knew so it was more informal. I have no idea how to go about accepting a job. I'm shy and retiring and don't like being put on the spot.

I phoned my mum up for support and just ended up coming back feeling worse than when I'd rang. She had another moan at me about getting income support. I'm feeling a little isolated at the moment. It feels that everything I want to do boils down to having money. I want my own space where I can flit from room to room without feeling like I'm intruding and where I can sulk, laugh or cry if I want to and have a key so I can come and go as I please; I want to have something to do in the day other than looking for work (i.e. a job); I want to learn to drive and buy a car. Sadly it feels like none of this is going to happen soon if at all.

I tried to cheer myself up by blogging but I don't think it's working. I have this new gadget for windows live writer (the program I use to write this blog). It puts up handy pictures and articles as I type my blog so that you can add them in if they fit what you're talking about.

I found this cartoon in blog article on there and it's the only thing that's made me crack even the faintest of smiles today.