It's been a while since I posted, but that's mainly been a time thing I'm afraid. It got to a point where I was doing my contracted 35 hours/week at work, plus 10 hours overtime, plus 16 hours unpaid, and it was just all getting a bit silly. I also spent a lot of time worrying and stressing about what I should do when my tenancy ended on the house at the end of June.
My housemates were all moving back home with their parents to save money, and I didn't know whether it would be best for me to do the same, or to try and find somewhere on my own. I stressed about this for months, until I forced myself to make a snap decision, and now I'm back home living with my Mum. This is fine, apart from the fact that my Mum lives in the middle of nowhere, so it's very difficult or very expensive to go anywhere - apart from that it's all good, and I'm grateful to my parents for letting me move back. (There's something good about there always being food in the cupboards and money for heating bills!)
The upshot of that however, is the fact that I had to quit my job, and I am unemployed once more. You might all think I'm mad in this day and age, to lose a perfectly good job when the chances are I'm going to struggle to find another one. To be honest, the job was dire - not only in the way that it was a crappy retail job, when that's not what I want to do in the long-term, as I can deal with that to some extent - but to the point where I was so tired, and so stressed it was becoming detrimental to my health. I'm not a crier, but I burst into tears at work several times in the last few weeks, and made silly mistakes that were gradually getting more serious in nature because I was stressed, and quitting is probably one of the best decisions I have made.
My idea now, is to volunteer to get the skills that most of the travel or charity jobs seem to think I'm lacking, and to build up a network of contacts. I'll hopefully get a part-time retail job to keep me going at the same time, and that should be that. Except of course, that it's never as easy as that. Even retail is struggling at the moment; there are no jobs in places that I've asked round where I live, and I'm being rejected from pretty much everything else.
I have made a spreadsheet of jobs that I'm applying for, and have applied conditional formatting depending on the result of the application; at the minute, it's all red. Red for rejection. I've had some good feedback from some places, suggesting that I'm only a couple of points away from getting an interview, and it's not my skills or experience that are stopping me, but rather the fact that I'm not quite focused in the specific area that they're wanting, but in a way that's worse.
That's not something I can change. I'm not sure what else I can do; I have five different CVs depending on what I'm applying for (some with my degree on, some not); I have written millions of cover letters; I have spent hours on the internet and walking around the local area looking for jobs, and I'm still struggling. Fortunately I've been unemployed for less than a week so far, and hopefully I'll find something soon. I just hope I don't get to the point where I regret leaving my last job.
I also plan to broaden my horizons a bit, and get loads of experience doing as much as possible. I'm determined to be really proactive; keep writing on here, and up my social media presence a bit more (I've had some amazing things happen through Twitter!) I'm going to be blogging much more now, and hopefully I'll have a bit more to blog about if I can make life more exciting!
Other than that, I'm still dreaming of travelling the world. If anyone can recommend any good travelling books to add to my repertoire, they will be very gratefully received (I seem to have a lot of time on my hands at the moment). I'm getting fit again, running 7km several times a week, and I have bitten the bullet and have dyed the ends of my hair pink! I will be spending a lot of time walking my dog, so expect lots of pictures of hills, and in the meantime wish me luck!!
