As if it was not enough to move house and double the size of my mortgage in the middle of the biggest recession the country has experienced in living memory, I have also been made redundant. Usually when redundancy strikes it is not unexpected – profits are down, there’s a recruitment freeze, your workload is drying up. For me it was the biggest shock of my life – even bigger than Joe McElderry coming out (you could have knocked me down with a (pink) feather (boa) when I read that, I thought he just hadn’t met the right girl. Next thing you’ll be telling me that nice lady with the buzz cut and DMs who invited me to join her at the Candy Bar is a lesbian).
But, redundant I am. In the middle of the biggest recession the country has experienced in living memory and a couple of weeks after doubling the size of my mortgage and blowing the rest of my meagre savings on having a new bathroom fitted. Apparently there is no longer a need for my job. I wish I’d been told that a bit sooner – would have saved me a lot of 14 hour days and working at weekends if none of it was needed. Anyway, I now find myself in the unenviable position of looking for a job in an economic climate so bad that I’d probably be better off looking to buy a dinosaur at the pet shop.
There are jobs out there. Unfortunately 99% of these jobs are in banks and other financial services type places and they all want people with financial services experience. I worked on the pitch for the Woolwich account when I was an Account Exec and I know that the pay off I got as my redundancy package is not going to last forever – that’s about as far as my experience goes. One of these financial institutions has decided to interview me – probably out of curiosity to see how much of a mess somebody with a media background can make of an interview for a serious professional organisation – and today I should be preparing and finding out what an Accountant does. Instead I am finding lots of new ways to avoid doing what I should be doing
– watching last night’s Big Brother on Sky+
– binge eating ice pops from the new freezer (another £400 I should probably have saved rather than spent)
– playing Farmville
– putting the recycling out
– learning words for a show at the end of September
– going through my wardrobe to find a “modern evening dress” for the Abba section of September’s show
– updating my fantasy football team
– looking for embarrassing old photos to scan on my new scanner (more expense)
– playing Angry Birds
– updating my ipod
– writing this blog
I think this apathy is probably down to the fact that I don’t think I have a hope in hell of getting the job – and am not sure I would even want it as I really can’t see myself working in the City (for a start, I don’t have the wardrobe for it as city workers don’t wear jeans and leggings). It’s a bit like going to audition for a part that you are physically wrong for, that has songs that are completely out of your vocal range, needs advanced ballet when you gave up lessons after being told you had no sense of music or rhythm (I’m quite proud of that one) and for which you’re going up against the Director’s wife who is also bankrolling the production. But you still persevere, learn the dance audition even though your version looks like a hippo on acid, starve yourself for 2 weeks in a vain attempt to lose the 3 stone that will make you look right and find a way of faking the dodgy low notes (this is another challenge I am dealing with at the moment – trying to get my operatic high soprano voice to belt out loooooooooooooow diva fabulousness, in fact that is something else I can do to avoid interview preparation, excellent!) and start slipping viagra in the Director’s tea in the hopes he’ll impregnante the wife and get her out of the picture. And in the same way I am taking tomorrow seriously – perhaps a job in the City is exactly what I need to make me grow up. Perhaps writing newsletters for accountants on tax law will be the challenge that I need. Perhaps it wont but, even if this isn’t right for me, I have to be vaguely impressive so that the nice recruitment lady doesn’t start to hate me – I missed the last interview she set up for me by having my purse stolen at the station just before I bought a train ticket. If I mess tomorrow up, I think I’ll find myself archived.
And this mortgage is not going to pay itself.
Right, I’m going to go and sort out my shoe cupboard.
Don't Write It Down 