I dont have time for a breakdown.

I think I'm hitting a quarter -life crisis.

At the grand old age of 25, I have realized that unlike my parents and the generation before, I (and a lot of my peers) don't have any life security.

I don't have career security (....or even a job?) or house security (the rental prices are rising higher than the expected change in university fees) and despite trying to get better accommodation, I get shot down at the credit checks. By which time we have already paid the extortionate agency fees of excess 200 quid.

I am feeling deflated by my expectations in life, and I can assure you that those expectations were not very high to begin with. All I wanted was to leave university, get a job that paid more than minimum wage and live somewhere I felt safe. I would have liked to have learnt to drive as well, but turns out it will cost an arm and a leg to get on the road, and once on the road you will have to sell your soul to stay on it.

But more than that, I think it the shadow cast by the high social security and mobility of the previous generation, or at least my parents - where they had slotted into solid careers of teaching and electrician/mechanics, they had bought thier first house at aged 22, had already traveled and given birth to me by the age I am now! And went on to continue to travel, give birth and produce fantastic life experiences that I find completely out of my grasp due to debt and frustrating high costs of living in one piece in the UK.

But I am bitter. And I am tainted by my still confused lack of where my ambitions and goals lie.
I have been seduced by the endless possibilities portrayed in college and university, then stunned into cowering submission when I realized that not only had I left university with such a vague idea of what I wanted to achieve, but I was unqualified to fight in the savage employment arena.

I feel like I'm running out of time, in a race I am not sure I want to be running in.... maybe I should teach.

Moving on up?

I want to move. After a weekend of police sirens, kids smashing bottles and cars outside the window, plus a domestic violence incident two doors down, I don't want to live on Hepburn Road anymore. I love the little bedsit, but its not doing much for my mental state. Plus there is a woman/she devil, who keeps shouting at me from her window down the road whenever I walk Jack, letting me know in her terms that I am not allowed to walk dogs on her street. She now has me cornered as she seems to live at two properties at either end of Hepburn road and makes it known that I am not welcome "round these here parts".

So, I started looking on gumtree for a new house for myself, my boyfriend and my dog. Its very exciting imagining what your future home could be, where it could be and how many potted plants you could fit on the windowsill - plus how many people you could fit into the living room for a house warming party.

However, the pleasant dream of new carpets and an actual kitchen turned to grey dawn reality when I realized that the prices seem to have gone up as the job market has gone down - and I was looking at a hefty increase in rent if I want to move out of the bedsit. I had to scrape the idea of getting a garden along with a flat (a garden would make life so much easier, as walking Jack every three times a day in the pouring rain is not the best way to spend the winter) and focus on a one bedroom place. Hopefully with a washing machine...

We also had to scape moving out of stokes croft. Anywhere else on the Bristol map becomes doubly expensive the minute you step out of the invisible boundaries of stokes croft/Easton and St Pauls, and so even before I could consider leaving my station and inching towards the grand banks of Clifton I was shot down. So we decided to look at a few flats around Stokes Croft (but away from the fat woman who lives in two houses) and looked at two properties, one down City road and one above a kebab place on the main stokes croft road. The first one was 475 pcm, and I didn't have a very good feeling about it. It was further down city road and it felt run down and tired. If a road could be given medication, it would be on anti-depressants. The flat was very big, and came with a real kitchen PLUS a dish washer (Josh's eyes lite up like a child at Christmas when he saw it) but I just didn't like the look of it. The next flat was much better, even though it was almost half the size of the one on City road.....but it was that much closer to the Centre, and for that reason it felt that much safer for some reason. Plus it was that much closer to the 24 hour boozer.

It is also 475 pcm, but I think between us we can afford it....and it has two rooms, so I can get away from the Jack and Josh every so often and watch 'Lily Allen - from Rags to Riches' on 4od, without contempt from the boys.

I have handed in my guarantor and paperwork - but they are asking me to earn 14,500 per year which is crazy! Surely most people on minimum wage cant afford that, and I'm sure that people who do earn that wont want to live above 'chicken lickin' on Stokes Croft High street.

I'm just waiting for the call to let me know if I've passed the rent agreement test, if not, I'm out of pocket 200 quid for agency fees. Its a cruel world for the poor and needy!

Bird In a Rusty Cage

Trapped By Poverty:

Once you are on the dole, there is less chance of finding work than if you are already employed... I did know this before my last contract ended, and so I gave myself a comfortable two months to find work and started off with a very selectable few job offers which I thought would be good enough for me - ie, a step up the golden career escalator, that would speed me up to the heavenly gates of job status and steady income. However, after two miserable interview fails and countless rejection letters, I suddenly realized that my contract was speeding to a rather abrupt end and I was going to have to seriously consider signing my life over to the benefit system once again. And once I had signed on the dotted line, my job opportunities were going to plummet to a skeleton crew of agency work/no skills required/night shift at Asda. Not that there is anything wrong with jobs such as those, but to me it felt like I had take one step forward and twenty million steps back into the gloom of stacking shelves in Tesco.

Not only does signing onto benefits limit your job search, but you slowly get used to the days of doing nothing, and it breeds low self esteem (when asked "what do you do?" its not easy to mutter back "I'm in between jobs") but also a lack of motivation and ambition. You watch the days go by, and as each rejection letter (or deadline) goes by with a big No, you start to think "is it me? can they smell the sense of despair and failure on the application form?! Eau de Dole or Perfume of the Penniless.

Photo courtesy of pinterest.com/lightwading/bird-cages/