How do I dig myself out of this hole?

I tell you something, I'm pissed off that I missed the party then, my advisor is pretty chill but the rest of the job centre is filled with arseholes.

That's fucking saddening, and more-so because I know a Bio-medic who lost his job and couldn't find another one who they've corn holed into getting a minimum wage box packing job working 6am starts at risk of losing his benefits.

My advisor said (with a bit of a grimace on her face, as in a "this is bullshit" tone) that I should be looking to travel 90 miles to work. What the fuck? I don't drive. Are you gonna pay my train fares to travel 90 miles to this minimum wage job you're trying to push me into considering it's like £22 for a return ticket to a place 90 miles away from here. What a bunch of wankers.

I managed to talk her into a 3 month period of looking solely for IT jobs (apprenticeships we figured may be best) and after that we have to broaden my searches. Fare play to my advisor, she's not like some of the other dickheads at the job centre.

 

Well a bit of an update.

After a bit of counselling I started to turn things around a bit. I sold my Hackintosh, laptop and TV in a bid to get myself out of the house more. I put the money towards a new iPhone and a gym membership. I realised I couldn't just sit idle waiting for life to come and find me, it was hard breaking the routine but it was totally worth it.

Although the job situation hasn't improved greatly, I managed to get in contact with an old boss of mine, she runs a new pub and she was kind enough to give me some shifts. I now work about 10-16 hours a week, annoyingly because the hours fluctuate so often, I can't receive benefits so I'm often struggling in the weeks where I get less hours than usual, £90-100 a week is hard to get by on especially seeing as it costs me about £7 a trip in fuel to get to work HOWEVER, it has made life so much better because I'm actually doing something and interacting with people. My mood has improved greatly. Although I am poor, I'm finding it's better to be slightly happy and poor than slightly more well off and miserable.

Lastly, I took the plunge into dating again, although it felt a bit soon, I've met the most amazing girl and the best thing is she lives really close to me which makes such a huge difference to my ex who was 35 miles away. She's kind and considerate and I've been 100% upfront with her about my living and financial situation and she flat out doesn't care and likes me for who I am, so that's a positive thing right now and I'm taking it really slow this time and just enjoying it one day at a time without getting too heavily involved.

My plans from now are to continue looking for full time employment, and just this morning my application to study teaching at Bristol university next year, went in the mailbox. As I may have mentioned, I was planning to do it at open university from home, but I think it would be too much to take on right now and seeing as the course now doesn't start until September, it gives me time to relax and hopefully save some money, safe in the knowledge that what ever happens between now and then, I have that course and hopefully the start of a new career, set in stone and waiting for me.

Anyway I just want to say thanks to all of those who have listened to me, offered advice on this thread and in private. It all made a huge difference. All I can say to those who are in similar situations is...push yourself out of your comfort zone and break a few habits, it's hard but it can make a big difference.

I don't feel like I'm fully recovered, but I recently bought myself a second hand iMac as I felt ready to step back into my old life just a little bit (plus I missed hanging out on these forums...which isn't easy on a phone). I know it might sound weird that owning a computer could have such a big impact on someone and surely will power alone should be enough to get out and do other things, but for me it was a big deal.

So yeah, I'm back and I owe a lot of that to a lot of you here.

- Tim.

 

Cool, congrats. I'm glad things are starting to look better for you!

 

Good to know things are getting better! You deserve it!

 

For me it is an addiction. Maybe not a super serious one (like a substance I have to have) but it derails my plans a lot. One day I realized (about 3 months ago) that I wasn't even doing anything on my computer. I was literally sitting in my chair watching a game in one windows (which I couldn't do any thing more with) and looking around here to see if any one had responded to a thread I was interested in. That was it. For me one of the worst things I can do is come home from work decide that I need to unwind and jump on my computer. 30 minutes turns into an hour one hour turns into two hours and eventually it is time to go to bed and I've wasted my precious evening hours when I had planned to do some cleaning and read a book to improve my skills. One thing that has helped in the past if I really do need to unwind or reboot my brain is to set an alarm. The more obvious solution is to get the the things done first but as you know that can get difficult especially if you are all ready doing enough to survive. (I do enough to survive the goal is to thrive next)


In any case glad to hear you are doing well. Keep up the momentum.

 

Your girlfriend such a bitch! She could have support you. Hope it wasn't a long term relationship.
Anyway not much me to say since plenty member's here to support you, which is good You will eventually see a light the end of the dark tunnels.

Merry Christmas!

 

Merry Christmas to you too!

Have to say, the GF situation is going well again but I'm having issues with work again. Despite being fully booked for xmas lunches and parties etc they've been cutting my hours down massively to save money and I'm now only working around 6-9 hours a week which is really tough.

To add insult to injury there was an accident with a barrel of beer a couple of weeks ago where after I'd set it up, it allegedly leaked out its entire contents over night. It's something I've done before 1000's of times and never had any issues and yet this time something went wrong, even though I checked it before I left that night and it seemed fine. Either way they're taking £25 a week from my wages for 3 weeks to cover the cost of the barrel, I'm pretty pissed off, I'm sure they can't legally do that, so at the moment I'm practically working for free but I'm off to the department of work and pensions tomorrow to see what they have to say about it. I was better off claiming benefits and I'm wondering if I can go back on them and leave this job without any penalties.

 

they cant do that

the pub insurance should cover that under the £5million public liability insurance, they basically don't want to make a claim so they docking you for it. Trust me your better off signing on again, and if you work less that 16 hours and declare it every week with your manager signing it off you can carry on signing on with full payments.

 

yeah pretty much this, i'd tell them to get stuffed, go and get some advice, take no shit if they aint giving you the hours it aint worth it.