Job Search

This job search lark is a bind eh? I knew it would not be easy, especially with the leg limiting the work I can do, but even though the internet is a great help it remains a slog! I have just looked through several sites listing a wide variety of work vacancies, few which I could fill I may add, and now I am worn out! Maybe it is just because I am one of natures lazy folks, or maybe I have worn myself out just too much doing the last job I am not sure but this work search is hard work! So, I have searched the web, got the papers, asked all and sundry, and here I am, nowhere! Some things never change eh?

Soon I must report to the Employment folks, sign on and explain myself to the little corporals who infest those places. Then I will be free from their attention for another fortnight. Unless the disability man calls of course.
This disability thing is a laugh right enough. Throughout the nation there are folks who claim disability benefit while they have nothing whatsoever wrong with them! The benefit folks have been active though. Secret cameras have filmed 'injured' men with 'bad backs' working quite happily carrying heavy loads. Successful prosecutions have ended their benefits and made them pay large amounts back to the Benefit Agency. Quite right too! However, many who are on benefit now carry walking sticks, even though they do not need them! Just in case a camera is around when they are out! In some parts of the country I think such sticks must be a big seller for the local shops!
I am not that disabled though, just limited by the arthritis. No more lugging things for me!
Not that I am in a hurry to return to work I must say. This rest is great for me. How I needed it! I really need another two months of this before I go on a real thorough search for work. But for the moment I am content, as long as I have enough to keep me going. But it must be a new way off life. Something constructive and worthwhile. After all, at 55 this is my last chance to do something now!

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First Week of Unemployment Nearly Over

I am so glad I had this week. The pressure is off and I have had some rest. Never realised how tired I had become. The bug still lingers but another week will remove that. The job seeking begins in earnest today when I (at last) get to speak to someone in the job shop! I spoke on the phone to a central office on Monday, was called again the next day and asked more or less the same questions, and received the paperwork yesterday to check it over. Today I speak to what may be a human being. I suspect it will be a bored functionary with an agenda to remove me from their little list and fulfil their main object of paper pushing! If it looks good on paper folks upstairs will be happy, the effect on me means little! The numbers game matters more!
The questions, what can you do? Nothing. What skills? None. Hindrances? Bad leg, dumb, old. Have you considered becoming a suicide case maybe? This will be asked with official blank look.

In truth the future looks bleak but I am too dumb to realise it yet! So I plod along. Once the food runs out, the bills fail to be paid and I am dumped on the street then I may begin to think things are not going well. So while I collect together the vast quantities of paperwork I need for this heartless interrogation you sit back and enjoy the weight increasing as you stuff your fat mouth with foodstuffs you don't need. Don't worry about me, I can survive malnutrition.........

Unemployed

Adullamite


So now begins a new life. Searching for a new job
But in truth I don't want one just now. I just want to sleep for two months and rest my knees. Then I want something worth doing!

Work

I have to give up work. The doctor informed me that there is a touch of arthritis under the knee. Therefore I must give up the job. Being a postman with a lot of walking and short term cycling is doing the knee no good. Mind you, the state of the knees are not very good anyway. The climbing six story flats has left the knees aching. Since then things have got worse. Too many hills, steps, and strain on the knee have left it sore and now it is time to move on. So I have applied for the early retirement opportunity,but nothing seems to happen there. Maybe I ought to apply for medical retirement. It is important I get one or the other, otherwise I have no money to pay off the debts. I was smiling smugly a few weeks ago as I thought it would go through easily, but I was wrong. Now I fear I may get nothing, and leave soon I must! There are problems of course. I have no money, and debts to pay. At fifty five I have little chance of any other job in this small town. I am trained in things that need a strong knee! Hmmmmm, not looking good for an unemployable idiot eh? I am aware Jesus does not leave us, but am I following him? The things I am doing, are they what he wants? Am I really trusting him, or doing it myself?

Tired

How come I am always tired?
I thought it was just work, it's too physical, and being on my feet or using a bike all day is wearing me out. But add to that the virus (or is it 'virii?) that seem never ending and I think I have the reason!
I hoped this week off would help but so far no good. The thing is the brain is more tired than the body. This makes me more irritable than normal, and that is normal, and I just have not got the energy to bother or care any more.
What is the answer? Change jobs, well, with the condition of my knee that may happen anyway, but to what? I am getting old, I know nothing, and am discovering just how dumb I have always been! This has not been good for me I can tell you!
Still, I had better go and eat some foul concoction and see if it gives any sign of revival, fish maybe, but I doubt it.
Gloomy? Me? No, this is me positive mate!

A Day Off

Great! What can be better than having a day off? And what can be better than having a day off when the snow is falling and the wind is blowing! Great!
There again, when one has sorted the mess in the cupboard, hoovered up the mess, ironed the shirts, been round Sainsburys, completed a limited (very!) exercise routine, made a mess of fixing the laptop, and had an e-mail form someone not seen for twenty years, the idea of enjoying the time seems far fetched! For a start I have failed to sleep since five thirty this morning, I have done little reading of the dozen books I am attempting to complete, and when it came to time to relax I had to cook dinner!

On my next day off, I am doing NOTHING!

Work

The problem with work, is work! I can cope with all sorts of interesting stuff, but having to spend a day in drudgery and effort is not what I feel made for. I am much more of a 'Let's do it later/ let them do it' type. Still, it brings in the cash, and today I met friendly kind people who appreciate what I am doing for them. That's nice, makes it worthwhile.