Something interesting happened today while I was at the job placement agency. I was sitting across from the desk of a representative, filling out some paperwork and a young man came in. He sat in the chair across from me so that our backs were facing each other, black padded chair backs providing a thin barrier of privacy. I could not help but overhear his conversation. He was a recent graduate of the same university that I graduated from two years ago. He wanted to get a job in administration, and his representative was explaining to him that he had no experience. It would be extremely difficult for them to find him anything, and he may not be able to find what he was looking for through their agency. It was a brutal truth, and I shielded my ears to the young man's reply. My own representative was asking me questions again. By the time I left the agency, that young man was no longer there, so I'm assuming he left to find help elsewhere.
It was interesting to me because two years ago the exact same thing happened to me. I finished school and went to a job agency downtown, hopeful that they would find me something. I expected an assignment to be handed to me right away. I thought that because I was smart and educated, and had held steady jobs ever since age 16, that was enough to set me apart from other people. It was enough to qualify me for almost anything, so long as it wasn't a highly specialized job. Those were the thoughts of a naive person. My god, I felt old today as I watched a younger version of myself experience the same realization about how difficult the working world really is.
The reason I went to the agency was to find work in a warehouse environment. It is what I've been doing part-time to support my educational pursuits, therefore that is the kind of work that I am going to get most easily. I'm trying to break into a new field of study after finishing a college program earlier this year. It's not easy, and I'm not having any luck, at least not yet. So here I am going after the same sort of job that I have been doing since before I finished school, even though the point of school was to not have to do this type of work anymore. It's sort of depressing. I feel as though every damn log I write is depressing lately, but this is where I am right now.
Believe it or not, every other thing in my life is actually going really well. I feel better about myself than I have in a very long time. I work on my gardening, and invent new recipes to cook up in the kitchen, and lately my SO and I have become more involved in the community. So far, we have attended a poetry slam competition, an animation festival, and tonight we attended our local independent writer's organization. I used to be too obsessed with studying and working and saving money to do any of those things. I used to sit at home and watch TV instead of "wasting" my money on local entertainment. I was saving my life for after I graduated and got a career. Well, not anymore. There is more to life than having the best job ever and making lots of money, though I'll admit I still want those things too. Life is really fucking hard but it's going to get better, and
there are plenty of things to make life liveable even when things aren't going my way.
It only took me two years to figure this out. That's less than half the amount of time that I have spent in college/university. I guess experience is still the best teacher after all.