Bored to the Bone

59 weeks, 414 days, 9936 hours, 596160 seconds (give a take a few). That’s how long I have been unemployed for. And for 59 weeks, 413 days, 9912 hours and 594720 seconds I have been content, delighted in fact, by this. Last week in my new Edinburgh excitemen,t I enthusiastically searched and applied for several jobs. At the weekend, my eldest brother came to stay and we painted the town red by searching for house coats in all the charity shops (for more information on housecoats see his blog at http://nev360.blogspot.com/ and see the posting entitled ‘Updates’). We met a variety of cousins and their partners (well 2 cousins and 2 partners) for a drink and generally frivolity. I educated my youngest cousin on the delights of Tanqueray gin, my own personal favourite. I also met up with an old school friend, Laura the Artist and felt very liberal and sophisticated.

Yes, perfectly happy until yesterday when I spent yet another Monday (okay a 2nd Monday) glued to my laptop scrolling through countless jobs and applying for things I don’t particular want to do. But worse than that, after completing my fill of that for the day, I then realised I have nothing to do. I’m trying to save money so I can’t purchase books or DVDs, go to the cinema. All my friends here have jobs so I can’t play with them until the weekend. My room for the first time in my life is actually already tidy, the dishes were already done and there was nothing good on TV. So I went food shopping. Not that exciting and came home. Unpacked, rearranged a shelf. Sarah the flatmate is on nights and thus untalkable to as she is either out or sleeping.

Yes for the first time since my unemployment began, I am bored. Bored, bored, bored! Mind numbingly, finger strummingly, eye-ball grindingly bored. I mean how can there be joy in watching 3 episodes back to back of a TV series recently purchased if you could do that all day and in fact watch 4 or 5 or 6! How can there be joy in reading a book in the evening when in theory you can read all day? How can there be joy in going for a walk in the afternoon if you can walk all you bloody like to because you can’t afford a car.

Yes, dear readers, boredom and for the first ever, a true desire to get a job.

Unfortunately, job seeking is also very boring. At first I was intrigued. How do these websites work? How do I fill in an application form? Yes, the first time is interesting, but subsequent times is quite, quite dull, I assure you. Constantly re-editing and sending off your CV and having to continually remember and articulate how wonderful you are is quite tedious. So to allieve the unremitting repetition, I went to the Careers Scotland website and filled out this achingly long questionnaire to try and match me up to the prefect profession. It consists of a series of monotonous questions about whether or not you like kittens, children and fluffy bunnies. Whether or not you like filing or photocopying and laminating (I mean who doesn’t enjoy laminating, that should be a given). Questions, questions, questions. And you’ll never guess what my prefect job was?

Yep, you got it. A doctor.