Well, November is almost gone, and I haven't posted anything in a while. Mainly because I didn't know what to talk about. I still haven't found a job here, which is strange... I have never had a problem finding a job before, but this time? I don't even understand why. And despite it all, I am still convinced I will have a job very soon. But I've been convinced for a while now...
Another surprising thing is how little it depresses me. This jobhunting is stressful, it is frustrating, all those applications I spend hours or days preparing and then I don't even get a reply, yes, it is very very frustrating. But I usually keep in good spirits, and focus on things to balance out the application stress, like yoga, or books, or my volunteering in the charity shop. And that in the face of me not being able to pay my rent anymore next month. I have applied for benefits, but it's been 2 months and they still haven't made a decision, which means I am still unsure how it will go on. But luckily my friends here in the flat are so lovely and let me pay whenever I do get money again. Another thing to be glad about.
But then the black clouds swoop in, rarely, but if they do they rain down on me with force. Which is why I am sitting here, at 2am, writing. Writing just to get it out. Get what out exactly? I am not even sure.
It's the frustration about the jobhunt that hardly even brings a response, after something like 140 applications; it's insecurity about what might be if the benefits still haven't come through when the last money runs out; it's a sudden feeling of loneliness, which is kind of normal when you sit cooped up with your laptop working hours on end, day and night, on ways to convince some unknown entity at the end of an email address or website, who you hope is actually real, or even human, that you are the right person for the job, but at the cost of human contact. It's the disappointment that my boyfriend, who really has been a rock for me in all of this, even if he doesn't realise it because he doesn't understand all this feelings stuff, needs time to do things on his own, alone or with his friends, and it's my paranoia reading things into this which I will probably laugh about in a couple of days. It's the frustration about having agreed to let a friend of my flatmates stay in my room with me the last nights that I will have it to myself, out of some misplaced sense of guilt towards them because I can't pay the rent next month, even though I don't even particularly like their friend...
Tonight will be my last night alone in here for quite a while, since I have my Japanese dad come and visit, for at least a month and a bit, but that is something I am very much looking forward to. Yes, it may be that I will wish for a room to myself at some point during his stay, but I am looking forward to having someone around whose company I enjoy, and who will make sure, just by being here, that I won't have time to worry about black clouds in a while. And my Japanese sister and her nephew will follow at Christmas, so it will be a bit like camping in here I suppose, but I like camping with people I love.
So here they are, the clouds, and keep me awake. Tomorrow is a new day, I have an appointment again at the jobcentre, not that they help with getting a job, after all, what can they do that I am not already doing anyway? No, they need to check that I am still looking, even if I don't know what has become of my benefit claim yet that requires me to check in with them. I fail to see the logic in that, but there you go...
Maybe tomorrow somebody will know what has happened to my claim. Maybe tomorrow I will receive a reply that at least invites me to an interview, I've had far to few of those. Maybe tomorrow the clouds will have rained all they had and vanished to let me see the blue sky again. I will do all I can to chase them away. Tomorrow.
