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She deserves better. I lost my job recently and my girlfriend has been paying the rent since we moved out and will be paying for it until I find a full-time job, but it seems to hard to find one. I’ve applied to so many places with only two contacting me back. She treats me so well and while I’d like to think I treat her well too I know she deserves better than me. I’m an awful person with no prospects and no future. I’ve been starving myself because I’m so poor and what money I have is going towards bills like Internet and tenants’ insurance and my ridiculous student loan debt. I’m afraid she will kick me out, which she should to be honest. I hope she doesn’t but if she does what will I do? Drive as far west as I can and when I can’t drive any further walk as far as I can? But what then? Where will I end up? I know there are people worse off than I am and I should be happy with what I have but it’s just so damned hard to be happy. —Where am I going
This article appears in Feb 12-18, 2015.
Alberta, where you’ll find work and avoid the local lynch mobs.
Geez dude. You’re not a terrible person, you are trying to find work. You might just have to take something a little less enticing in the mean time before you find a job you don’t mind, though.
Your GF is supporting you at this time and apparently without complaint. A time may come when she will require your support (emotional and financial) and you will be there for her as well. Would you kick her out?
To all the shacked-up / whacked-up couples/friends out there who are planning to live with a partner/roommate is to never take on obligations that are shared unless you are able to manage the entire thing on your own. People think getting into an agreement with someone who will ”pay half” and should things go bad then you are permitting another person to make you miserable because neither of you can move because you can’t afford it on your own. ~ Really? This never makes sense nor is it healthy.
Both parties should live within their means. Internet? Time to cut those extra expenses.
You should take some time and go over your resume and maybe have some other people look at it too. You can never underestimate a good resume and sometimes people think their resume looks fantastic but it may need some sprucing up. When I was younger looking for work I couldn’t get any interviews, but a friend’s wife who was very successful in her career helped me redo my resume and I couldn’t believe the difference. It was still accurate and didn’t embellish, but it just captured my experience better, and it was like a switch going on when my phone started ringing for interviews.
Also, I’m not sure I see internet as an extra expense. Despite people who complain about it, it’s important to keep on top of technology and not getting left behind. The whole planet is on the internet. If you can’t afford it look into places you can get access to it a few times a week.
OB, im sorry but i just got my buddy a job making 14.50/hr even after he was fired from his previous job a month earlier. my buddy sat on his ass while his family suffered and risked being put into foreclosure on his house for a second time in 3 years. If he can get a job with no effort(i did his job hunting and set up his contacts) then you can as well. on the jobs.ca website there are plenty of jobs making over 12/hr with little to no experience required. Either man up and get a job to support yourself and girlfriend, or dont and be the waste of skin and breath you seem to be at this moment in time. I havent been unemployed since i was 12 years old. to pay my way through college and university i had 3 jobs on top of my schooling, i wasnt given student loan or scholarships because my folks made too much money but refused to assist with post secondary education. get some spine..find your guts and WORK. no more excuses.
Are you REALLY trying to get a job, OB? Are you actually OUT there everyday, talking to managers/owners and personally giving them your resume and cover letter? Or are you sitting on your ass at home in your pyjamas, and going online and applying?
You sound pathetic, OB. Big fucking pity party for one. Go to a career resource centre and have them give you some tips. Maybe your resume is full of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors that you hadn’t noticed.
“I’ve been starving myself because I’m so poor and what money I have is going towards bills like Internet”
#Priorities
well op, you are not a horrible person for losing your job, but it you stay mired in despair you will become horrible.
its better to work at anything to keep your self esteem up. you will have a routine, a schedule, a reason to get out of bed and get dressed, get out and deal with people in a work environment, whatever it may be.
work may not ‘make you free’ but it can keep you from the slavery of depression.
regarding the girlfriend paying the rent. that’s a big so what. 10 years down the road it might be you carrying that load while she is between jobs.
I would suggest you stump the pavement on your job search in addition to emailing out resumes and applications. walk in the door. frightful weather out there and your determination would go a long way to impressing any employer.
and while you are not working at a paying job, do the housework. all of it. enthusiastically and without expecting praise. anyone who is ‘at home’ should do all that. you should be able to do it in an hour a day – leaving lots of time for job searching.
it is not possible to live your entire life without periods of sadness, despair, grief, regrets, discontent. its part of life. happiness is not some smooth road through life you never veer from. happiness should be hills with bursts of sunshine, valleys of blessed shade, evenings of stars and moonlight, glimpses of the sea, pastures and glades. happiness is not the journey, its what you find while making your way through life.
get out, get moving.
take a job at a local mcdonalds even part time. Literally always hiring i’ve used it a few times inbetween jobs at least you are making income. Keep hitting the other places, you’ll eventually get something above minimum wage, or even if not work hard at mcdonalds, get promoted, and within 5 years you can be up to making a better wage there. Just keep your head up and get at it, your girlfriend doesn’t seem to have any problem with it, thats what a real relationship is, making it through the tough times.
THE EXISTENTIAL PREDICAMENT
“I know there are people worse off than I am and I should be happy with what I have but it’s just so hard to be happy.” Where am I going
“Where am I going” wants to know why he finds it is so hard to be happy. He knows that it is not a matter of material possessions – he knows that there are others who are worse off than him – but he doesn’t know where he is going. This is a common current malaise – the absence of meaning in one’s life. It’s called “the existential predicament.” Is there some egress from the predicament?
Without exception the comments on his predicament assumed it was a matter of finding a job. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is just a pragmatic/materialist construction which bears no relationship whatsoever to the existential predicament. Any egress from the predicament requires more than just a pragmatic/materialist solution. It requires a little conceptual analysis.
“Where am I going” wants to know, um, where he is going but is the travelling analogy appropriate? While some may speak of life as a “journey” the term is vacuous without any substantive content at least for the departure and arrival points. Birth and death are inadequate since they are simply biological events without any more meaning than jobs. The existential predicament requires more than empty analogies.
The question comes down to that of “happiness.” The existential predicament requires some conception of the meaning of happiness. One cannot pursue that in respect to which one is ignorant. In Greek philosophy, of course, this was called “eudamonia.” There can be only one answer. Happiness is not some sort of constant steady state but rather the accompaniment of creative activity where “creative activity” is to be understood not in terms of some mindless job or journey but rather the activity definitive of what it means to be human, the activity of reflective, sustained thought on matters of the first importance. In other words, to attain eudamonia is to come and live in the house of philosophy.
A pleasure as always,
Cheerio!
Being out of work is unfortunate, but it hardly makes a person “horrible”– if it did, almost everyone in the world would be “horrible” at some point in our lives–we’ve all been unemployed at one time or another.
There is some good advice on here this morning. I will add my standard 3 tips:
1. Find any kind of paid work that will bring cash rolling in again, even if it’s a low-paying short term gig. Just make sure that the job pays YOU for every hour, and you don’t get scammed by any of those “pay to work” internet schemes.
2. Every spare moment is to be devoted to finding your next steady, better-paying job. Tell everyone you know that you are looking for work.
3. Start looking at ways to upgrade your skills so that you are more in demand–esp. in the trades or technologies. I know you mentioned student debt, and that’s a killer, but if you get a skill that people need you won’t be unemployed for long–and with a higher income, the student loan payments will become more managable.
Good luck–I really mean it. You can do this.
I think there is a lot of wisdom in montrealman’s commentary. One of the reasons people fall into an existential ennui and have difficulty with everyday things (like making a living) is that they lack a sense of purpose.
Some people create a sense of purpose by having children and devoting themselves to the task, some find meaning through service to others, some run businesses and create employment for others, some have an intrinsic sense of purpose (artists, musicians, writers), but many people have yet to find their “thing”.
I think one of the things OB needs to do is to put some thought into his direction in life (what will make him happy?) and start heading in that direction. It may change later on but at least there will be some movement and the current situation (stagnation) is to be avoided.
THE FACT-VALUE DICHOTOMY
RSVP The Cat (10:59AM)
“I think there is a lot of wisdom in montrealman’s commentary.”
Thank you for your kind thoughts but I couldn’t help recalling our exchange on “Science!” where you supported what is known in philosophy as “The Fact-Value Dichotomy.” You claimed that “Facts” – they are of course to be understood as “objective” scientific facts – are what count (what constitutes meaningful knowledge) while everything else was just a matter of subjective and fleeting Opinion. But the difficulty becomes obvious in your present post where you proceed to advocate not “objective” scientific facts but subjective Opinion, albeit here in the form of personally-held values.
Your lobotomized vision in “Science!” was of two distinct heaps – one heap of Facts and another heap of Opinions – without any connection between them. That it why the vision was lobotomized. In effect, it severed the human element which exists equally in “objective” facts as it does in subjective or personal values. Nothing could be more personal, for example, than the activity of scientific discovery which involves the intense projection of the scientist’s mind into that activity itself. In effect, discovery in science is the result of the scientist’s committed belief – yes belief – that his discovery embodies a true reflection of how things really are.
However, I see evidence that you have not entirely abandoned The Fact-Value Dichotomy. You write that the OB needs to put some thought into “what will make him happy.” What will make him happy does not result from pondering on “happiness” viewed as some separate object but rather it is the by-product or the accompaniment of meaningful and even devoted personal activity. In other words, one cannot sever the object “happiness” from the activity of which it is the product. This is but to perpetuate The Fact-Value Dichotomy.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
Montrealman, you must cultivate the art of letting go. Only then will you have peace.
If your girlfriend really loves, she will stick with you through the hard times. You need to find any job at this point OP. Even if it involves serving at a drive-thru. No shame in that. You can strategize your career options while earning some income towards your household. Good luck and learn to love that guy in the mirror.
^^^Good advice. I have respect for someone who will take a job that is far less than their dream job and still try to do it with a some dignity.
Fuck that, OB, ride that gravy train with biscuit wheels. Weeeeeeeeeee!!!!
RSVP
Angel of the Tarsands (02/19, 7:47PM)
But I HAVE cultivated the art of letting go except, of course, of delightful creatures like you.
But you’re right in the case of The Cat. I may as well let go now that I’ve finished spanking him again. (Wasn’t it good to hear that he has respect for someone who will take a job that is far less than their dream job and still try to do it with some dignity? The important point to take note of here, of course, is not so much the person taking the job but rather the fact that The Cat respects him. What a man!)
A pleasure as always,
Cheerio!
I thought that’s what we have bridges for
http://i1.trekearth.com/photos/78379/jumpi…