The job hunt

My darling mother has been living here for around 3 years. The majority of which she has spent trying to convince me to move here. She found her way here through a series of work related circumstances and has an ongoing (not terribly amusing) joke that she's the only person who moved here to earn less money. One of the key themes of her nagging was that I could easily find well paying work, really do well for myself etc. I think she forgets that Arts degrees and discarded teaching diplomas aren't of the 'job-getting' variety...

My search for work is really only in it's infancy. I only officially ceased being employed yesterday and I have a nice little severence packing coming to me, so I've not felt any urgency yet. There have been a few administration jobs advertised and I've dutifully applied for them, of course, and with only one 'thanks but no thanks' email it's still all fairly positive.

Despite this sensible and reasonable approach, I seem to have shifted all my anxiety about being here onto my employment situation. I mope around the house like any unemployed 30 year old living with her mother, moaning about my dismal job prospects. I fret about the perception of my former employee, I punish myself by blaming any potential rejection on being too fat and not having the right wardrobe, I've fashioned my unemployment into a water tight excuse not to pay rent of any sort (quite handy that one, really).

Here the employment market operates out of the front bar of any one of the myriad pubs. It really isn't what you know, it's who you know. Last night I ventured out of my misery and went to the pub. On my second beer a woman who works at the local campus of a University sidled up to me and said - 'I'd love to give you a job right now but there will be a restructure and new contracts issued in December if you can wait till then.'

Thank you very much sister of my mother's ex boyfriend that I've met once...

Kalgoorlie

Most sensible people who feel like a change will get a haircut, or look for a new job. You might even move house if you feel like torturing yourself. I decided to move to the other side of the country.

My life wasn't bad. I had a nice solid job as a staffer to a federal politician, earning enough to rent a one bedroom apartment in a decent part of Sydney's east. My social life was definitely lacking, but I'd get out for breakfast on Saturdays, or dinner in Surry Hills regularly enough that I didn't feel like a shut in. I had a devoted ex boyfriend (a truly lovely man) wanting to marry me and make me the mother of his children.

But I was stuck. Anxiously, tearfully, hideously stuck. And I didn't want any of it anymore.

So I moved to Kalgoorlie.

Kalgoorlie, in all her red dirted glory

To be honest, I didn't quite know what else to do.

I'm writing this as an outlet, a way to try and make sense of what I'm doing and where I am and what I'm experiencing. I'm going to need all the help I can get!