Where have I been?

I don't know, you tell me. I've been away. Been lost. Been uninspired. Been lazy. You choose. I'll take it. I'm back now for a while and would like to start a journal on what it's like to be unemployed in this world we live in and how I panic about how to support my daughter who is the most important person in my life.

I was laid off from my previous employment in March. I have a gravitational pull to really put down the company and the person who runs it because it was a horrible thing to let me go, given my circumstances and bitterness is pretty much all I feel; but I'll take the high, excuse me, higher road and not mention names. I might change my mind at some point. Being unemployed has turned me a bit unforgiving, I guess.

It's been four months, 75 sent-out resumes, and a four interviews later and nothing. I even had an employment agency leave me a voice message and say they simply could not help me. I'm basically unemployable. The thoughts that rack my mind are overwhelming and devastating. I feel desperate, hopeless and obviously un-marketable. I just want to work for a living. It's obviously too much to ask. Not only did I not get the jobs I interviewed for; they each wasted at least two weeks of my life interviewing me several times, taking my precious time and giving me the obligatory compliments and then leave me an email with that stupid template of "thanks for applying but we've hired someone else" garbage. I should bill them for the hours they've wasted.

I have doubted in my 36 years of life on this earth, what I've been doing. I don't come from money. I don't have a networking system. I'm alone, with a child. No back up in case I drown in this economy. I have no family that can "save" me. I am completely on my own and want nothing more than to 100% support my daughter and me. I can't even get a job serving coffee. I've never been a waitress, barista or any other title in that line of work. They'd laugh their asses off to see my resume. They'd know I just need a paycheck and wouldn't give me the time of day.

Maybe, when I lose my apartment and am homeless because unemployment will quit assisting me, I can go ask for money from the community in Greenwood, in front of my old employment. It's a free country, right?

I thought, ten years ago now, that going to college might give me a leg up on the ol' strugglin' lifestyle business. I went to the UW for four and a half years, without a single quarter off and got my Bachelor's Degree. Struggled as a single parent with a toddler and now owe up to my ears in student loans. For what? I still don't know because I can't even get a receptionist job for $8.50 an hour. I wonder what our society is really telling people. I wonder why in the hell do I even try when I'm part of the many who slip through the cracks of society because I'm "average."

I'm not a quitter though. I don't intend on feeling sorry for myself. I'm only trying to impart what a struggle it is to just make it day to day. To only be able to eat eggs, bread, a bit of beef and canned goods because I don't get enough from the state to even support one person? To try and maintain a 9-5 schedule even when I'm not working. To tell my daughter I can't do anything special for her birthday because we are "poor" as far as government standards go. I have severe sinus problems and need my teeth worked on because they're going to fall out of my head, but do I get to go to the doctor's office? No, I'm a leper because I don't have insurance. Great country we're living in.

So, day to day, I get up, shower, get dressed, look for work on-line because no one wants to see your face these days or hear your voice. I get computers looking at my resume, not people anymore. Maintaining a positive attitude is proving to be tough. I'm even avoiding my friends for fear I start resenting them because they have work and when they say, "It's all going to be okay," I reply, "How do you know?" It might not; and they don't know. When you have a job and tell someone like me it's going to be okay, you might as well just laugh and point, because that's about how good it feels. Learn to say something else, will you?

So, I read, I knit, I intend on drawing more. My apartment is so clean, you can eat off the floors because I feel my worth slipping away with each passing day. I feel like I'm being wiped away little by little. A stain that won't go away, so one scrubs and scrubs until the surface is raw. Hopefully, from this point on, things will be better and more positive. My heart sincerely goes out to everyone else out there in my "boat." Good thoughts your way and hang in there. At least I'm getting a lot of knitting done and I thank you to all of my knitting buddies out there for the enormous altruistic support you've given and shown and to all my friends who have given to me as well. I thank you...you know who you are over there at my previous employment :-)