Very Shitness...

The notion of a forward moving career trajectory right now feels as pointless and non-existent as a vigorously sandpapered unicorn horn. I only bring this up again because of recent events relating to the actions of others in the world of Facebook and because working in retail over the Christmas period is enough to send even the most optimistic person on a ride in a one-horse open sleigh off a cliff made of discounted spirits, pigs in blankets and mass avarice.

Let's go back to Facebook for a moment and leave the clumsy, rambling, overly-elaborate similes to one side. My own personal ventures into 'the book' lately have resulted in shared YouTube videos and anecdotal asides that could only be collectively described as "shit my 4-year-old nephew says". Meanwhile, others have used the medium to point out good things that have occurred in their respective existences. Okay people post bad stuff too, but screw the bad stuff. It's not that time of year. It should more "Merry Christmas" and less Very Shitness.

People post the positive developments in love, career and wealth; that's the Tarot card holy trinity right there. Anyway, as is human nature, when I become aware of someone else's good news, I feel something akin to happiness for their cause. Unfortunately, such a feeling lasts for much less time than an ice cube does in an oven, before it's taken over by a mix of jealousy, selfishness and the need to continually come up with rubbish bits of rhetorical extravagance like a vomiting dictionary. I start to examine my own current state of being and compare my relatively crap lifestyle to that of those others who actually have exciting news to share.

As it stands, I live away from family, with a select few friends in a fairly dilapidated portion of the country. My current financial stature has me now in a position where I'm earning enough to live comfortably, but still dealing with the spectre of outstanding, backdated rent, thus forcing me to stay in a co-dependent situation without the freedom to go it alone. Regarding freedom, I lack mobility in terms of long distances. I'm unable to drive an actual vehicle and thus rely on others to move me across vast spaces, namely railway companies. The full-time retail work I'm currently associated with seems to hold a kind of monopoly on my life since it's my only source of steady income but restricts me to one particular place. The problem here is that any future career prospects are most likely going to require me to relocate, which is something I simply can't afford to do since without my current job and steady income, I'm kind of screwed.

Back in the virtual realm, my escapades in the written word - mostly coming from this perpetually stagnating blog - have attracted the attention of a former college tutor of mine from way back. When I say "way back" I really mean 2008, but a fair bit's happened to me over the last five years, meaning that a sudden inbox message from someone I knew for one term and have kept on the periphery of my digital contacts ever since actually took me by surprise.

"Hey," said he. Well probably not really, I'm just paraphrasing to give you the general impression of the message I received. "How's it going? I see you've graduated. I see you write a fair bit. What kind of forward moving career trajectory have you got going on now?" It was as if he knew misery and wanted to caption it for me. However, he works in the field of creative arts where work is never easy to get into and never stable enough to cling onto. I felt the warmth of his sympathetic sentiments as he offered a few words of encouragement in the form of handy job-recruitment websites. I told him I'd have a look at them and then went and did the exact opposite.

I suppose I have to cling onto the hope that time will solve everything and I'll get to a more comfortable career-wise position eventually. The only problem I'm facing right now is that time seems to be moving so slowly, yet it's constantly racing away; every day that I'm not thinking about where I'm going to end up or how I'm going to get there is just another day wasted in the grand scheme of things. Part of the problem is I don't even know exactly what kind of career I want to pursue and haven't quite taken the time, courage or initiative to consider it. That's why, after typing all of this, I'm going to dig out that list of handy websites, take comfort in the fact that figures from my past still have some shred of faith in me, and start exploring where and how that career trajectory can actually start hurtling forwards for once.

To put it in simpler, and more seasonally appropriate terms:

Dear Santa, I have been a good boy this year getting my degree and not murdering anyone, so pretty please can I have a new job for Christmas? Well, not a new job for Christmas, but can you at least give me the strength and encouragement and enlightenment as to what it is I want to do with the rest of my life, because I sometimes worry that if I stay working in retail over festive periods, I'll turn even more and more bitter towards life and all its human inhabitants and I'll end up on the naughty list. Oh, and a clockwork train too. Cheers mate.

P.S. Forget the train. Even though it's clockwork, it probably won't run according to schedule anyway.