I Suck At Life

I suck at life. I know that’s a really dramatic thing to say, and let me be clear and say that I’m not looking for sympathy. I just need to express what I’m going through and maybe some other people out there also feel like they suck at life and this post will help them in some way. But then again it might just turn out to be a rant, so you might not want to read this if you’re not into rants.

So I suck at life. I feel like I’ve done everything wrong in my life and that now I’ve messed up I can’t really fix it. I’ve never had a job. I never tried really hard to get a job when I was younger because I wanted to write in the summers. I did try to get a job for a while during the summers but I always applied too late for summer employment. Then I just stopped trying. Then I didn’t write as much as I could have in the summers. I was stupid. An idiot. That’s harsh but now I’m 22, finished four years of university, and have no experience. So if you’re young and you’re reading this, thinking I’ll just write a best seller in the summer and I don’t need a job, go get a job. Start looking in February and March. You don’t want to get to 22 and then have to explain to people why you’ve never worked before when there are ten other people ahead of you who all have experience. You can still find time to work on your novel when you’re not working at your job. Odds are it will only be part time anyway if you’re just doing it for the summer.

Not only do I not have work experience but I have no volunteer experience, and I never did any sort of extracurricular in school. I was a junior leader for a pathfinder unit but I don’t think most people see that as volunteer work, as it’s a bit different as it’s a program like the next step up from pathfinders, and not volunteering at a homeless shelter or something like that. Also, pathfinders is the next step up from girl guides (or girl scouts in the US) if you don’t know. Anyway I never joined any clubs or sports teams in high school or university because I always focused too much on school work and it made me miserable. I liked learning in university but I didn’t like not having time for anything else and not having a social life. I should have joined a club or tried to get a job or done something, but it’s too late for that now. Then it’s weird when I go for interviews and tell people I went to school for four years and didn’t have a job, and the jobs that I’m applying for are minimum wage. The person who interviewed me yesterday said it was a luxury that I went to school without having to get a job. A luxury. I guess maybe it was, but I wish now that I hadn’t. I wish that I had of gotten a job so that I would have something to put on my resume. Oh, and that luxury wasn’t free. That luxury cost $21 000 that I now owe to OSAP. (I did get a lot of scholarships from high school going into university and pretty much got my first year paid for, so I can’t be too upset about the price. I’m just saying it’s not like my parent are super rich and they paid my tuition for me). So if you’re in university or college right now and you don’t think you could handle a job or an extracurricular, find a way to do it. You’ll thank yourself later when you can actually talk about your experience when you apply for jobs. Even if the jobs aren’t in the current field you’re going to school for.

On top of having no experience there aren’t that many jobs in my area that are related to what I went to school for. I majored in English Literature, and wanted to go into some kind of writing related job, like journalism, or even just writing for a business or whatever, you get the point, but those kinds of jobs are not prominent where I live. I don’t live in really small town, but there’s not a lot of creative work being done. So I’d have to move. I don’t really have a problem with moving but the problem is finding a job when you have no experience and going to interviews in another city when I have no car. I can apply online pretty easily but then it costs money to get to the interviews. And if they go anything like the ones in my hometown have been going it’s going to take quite a few interviews and money to get anywhere. That’s why I wanted to just get a minimum wage job for now so that I could pay bills and plan how to best move forward. But I can’t even get a minimum wage job. I don’t have a little tidbit of wisdom for the end of this paragraph, except live in a big city if you can. They might cost more but there’s more opportunity. Unfortunately, you can’t really choose where you’re born.

I know this post sounds a lot like I’m complaining and I sort of am, but I don’t want you to feel sorry for me or anything like that. I’m also aware that I am being overdramatic. I just really needed to express myself and apparently I choose to write a post about it. I had another post planned for today, but I couldn’t concentrate on putting it out so I wrote this instead. I know that I am young and that there are a lot of people out there in the same situation as me and that we just have to keep trying. But it’s hard, you know? It’s easy to just send off job applications and then if I don’t hear back from them to just ignore them, because I never really know why they didn’t pick me, and I just sort of forget about it. But every time I get an interview, even though I know there are other people all going for the same interview, and that none of the other interviews I’ve been on have worked out, there’s that little blossom of hope. There’s the hope that this one will be it. This company will be the one to hire me. Then, when I don’t get the job, that hopes gets crushed harder and harder every time. And I wonder what the hell I’m going to do with my life if I can’t even get a minimum wage job, and it gets harder to keep going back to the computer and apply for more jobs, because each time I get rejected it feels like my future is getting bleaker and bleaker. Again, dramatic, but that’s how I feel. Oddly enough I don’t have this problem with writing. I haven’t sent that many things off, but I expect with writing that most people will say no and that’s it’s not necessarily the writing. But with job hunting, it hurts more. I think it’s because I expect building a career with writing to take a while, but I thought finding a job might be a little easier. There’s also the stress that comes with not having a job and worrying about bills. But I have taken up too much of your time already. Have you ever felt like you suck at life?

Photo Credit: Xdmag  Bridge to nowhere via photopin (license)