Pet hate of the day....applying for a job you know you are perfect for, but losing motivation as you copy and paste your qualifications into the fuckingly complicated application, knowing they probably wont even read the bit of paper that has your life so pathetically laid out before them.

I have lost my motivation to be a functioning member of the work force and probably will soon lose the will to be a member of the human race. today is not a good day.

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There is no point being a damn fool about it. W C Fields


Ive had enough.

I have worked at the charity call center for over a month now, and I have been soul destroyed, run to the ground, demotivated and emotionally drained. Never before have I worked in such a harsh, joy barren environment before and I have worked in many dead end and depressing jobs in my short time on this earth.

They pull the thin, moth eaten veil of 'Charity' over a heartless, sales driven role so that you are conned into believing that you are 'saving the world' (a term bandied around by the 'motivational' staff inbetween them swearing and screeching about how much more money they earn than you) I didnt beleive I was saving the world, I merely hoped I would be able to keep the wolf from the door and pay my rent. I'm definitely paying for something, but it feels like I'm paying off all my wrong doings for this life and the last.

I am selling nothing. I'm not selling insulation, or solar panels. Something useful that people might want or need. I'm selling a warm feeling of 'goodwill' a chance for someone to feel like they are making a difference. They may as well keep their money in their pockets because its a cold, dark world of charity corporations which are as bad as businesses that sell sex to children. (Justin Beiber corporation) Somebody gets fat on the donations, but its not the starving children in Ethiopia.

I am disillusioned. After being verbally abused by the poor members of society that are constantly bombarded by cold calls in the privacy of their own home, and robotically droning the same generic script for more than a month, I am tired. I am tired of struggling to keep a job I dont even want, but need. I am tired of being so very disposable in a hive of feverish mindless activity. If I dropped out there would be ten more drones to take my place.

And I am frustrated at having so little say in my own future. On Tuesdays we have 'going home targets' a small compensation where we work towards an unbelievably unrealistic call target, and then we are released early. We worked our butts off today. And suddenly the target became achievable and I felt a push and a drive that gave purpose and meaning to my day. Excited, I realized we actually, amazingly, might be able to go home early (although 8pm isn't that early by anyone's standards). We were almost at our target when the team leaders realized we might slip under the net. They moved our campaign and gave us a new target that was once again completely unrealistic. I was actually shattered, crushed! Such a small thing like going home early had become everything to me that day - something I had fought towards and strived for had been snatched away from me at the last minute. I almost cried! That was definitely a low point in my life.

But struggling to find alternative work is becoming difficult. I have to keep sending out applications and keep going to work in Hell. Even though I would rather inject my eyeballs with vinegar than go in tomorrow. Arrrgh!

Adults with Attitude

Ive just finished watching a documentary on channel 4od about teenagers;

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/teen-trouble/4od

I fully agreed with the presenter, who looked like a younger, balding (?!) Danny Dyer, when it came to highlighting the fear that the media have instilled about teenagers, through articles like ASBO teens, teen riots, teens out of control and knife crime in school. While he was not denying that there were teenagers who were involved in serious misconduct, it was disproportionate to what was being represented in the media. It sold newspapers (the News of the World and The Sun yet again being the main culprits) while hoodies and the 'Vicky pollards' of the generation were shunned and feared as a result.

In a badly conducted convention during the documentary, some of the teenagers and the adults of one community were asked to 'discuss' some of the issues. One woman, who was bitter and obviously distressed, mainly due to the fact that her chrysanthemums were routinely dug up and tipex had been graffittied on her pristine front door, shouted "why cant you all just go somewhere where you are not in the way of houses, shops or playgrounds?!" after looks of confusion from the teens, one of them retorted (very politely I thought) that why should they be moved when all they were doing was standing around with their mates and chatting. Which is what the majority of teens want, and do. Just because it is intimidating for single adults to walk by a group of young, boisterous teens, they want them off the streets.

I found this interesting mainly because it stuck a cord with my street. I am definitely far from being a delinquent teen, but I am still a young adult, living what may be seem as an unconventional life in a small bedsit with my boyfriend and dog, and yes - we do have parties every now and then, we do play music and I do walk my dog down the road (with doggie bags of course, I'm not that much of a rebel) but I feel ostracised by the other families, especially the female women of the street. I feel looked down on, get dirty looks from the lady next door if my music is playing, and I get shouted at by the fat woman down the road for walking my dog. It has got to the point where I am nervous about walking Jack in case I get verbal abuse, and I turn the bass down so low on the speakers that barely a dribble of sound comes out. It's not me who has the attitude, its the people who don't like to see anyone under the age of 40 on the street, or living next door.

It was interesting when the presenter went to Brighton to interview an aged Mod, who had been involved in the Mods and Rockers Riots in the 60's. The term moral panic, was coined by the sociologist Stanley Cohaninwhich who examined media coverage of the mod and rocker riots. "Although Cohen admits that mods and rockers had some fights in the mid-1960s, he argues that they were no different to the evening brawls that occurred between youths throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, both at seaside resorts and after football games. He claims that the UK media turned the mod subculture into a negative symbol of delinquent and deviant status." (Wikipedia)

If its not the mods and the rockers, its hippies or skinheads. Or hoodies.

The conclusion to the documentary was a complete letdown however. The documentary wrapped up with the enlightening idea that the generation gap could be narrowed by the adults and the teens 'talking' more.....Trying to make a teenager talk about anything is like getting a blood out of a stone! Always has been, always will be - and that basically concludes my point, if there was one in the first place, that there will always be mistrust and friction between the generations. This is because we are constantly evolving to the point that every generation is different, and as we are also suspicious beings, we hate anything different and new. I can't understand the younger generation, and their new fads, and I don't relate to the older generation with their snide looks and their constant mutterings about loud music, hairstyles and flip flops.

We just have to take it as it comes and embrace the differences. I look forward to muttering about how loud the music is through my walls when I'm a 60 year old woman, while I try and listen to my tunes on the ancient ipod.

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/

Riot in my Garden

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkCvka1uwuo

There was a bit of a commotion last Thursday! We were first alerted to the start of the trouble, when we heard the police helicopters flying over head as we were eating our Thursday meal of stir fry and noodles... plus a cup of cider from my newly chipped best mug.

We went to investigate and found about six riot vans parked around the new, controversial Tesco that had opened up in stokes croft. There had been much debate on the subject of the new Tesco, as there had been a fair amount of protesting when it was first discovered that there was to be a new Tesco opening up in the Stokes Croft area.

Stokes Croft prides itself on having a collective community spirit, and encourages local buying and produce. Despite the opposition, Tesco still had the arrogance to go ahead with the build and so therefore there should have been little surprise that protesting continued after the opening of the shop. I personally shop at Tesco when needed, mainly due to being very skint and being able to pay by card when I have only 8 quid in the bank and can't take out any more cash - HOWEVER, I don't think that stokes croft itself needed another Tesco....especially when there was already one on Jamaica street and a newly opened Sainsbury up Gloucester road. Plus its the principle that counts, meaning that a big corporation as well as the local council should care enough to listen to the local people and restrain their money grabbing and pushy ways, and give the area enough space to breathe instead of shoving another Tesco down our throats.

Anyway, at about 8pm there were more police than anything else, including riot vans from south wales believe it or not. A crowd had begun to mill about out of curiosity, but we decided that there wasn't much else happening, so we went to the pub.

After about two hours we had had enough of sitting in a pub where we couldn't afford any alcohol, so started to make our way back to the house. I was exhausted and just wanted to curl up and watch some 'Come dine with me ' on 4od by that time. We by-passed what we thought was the hub of the protest, and ducked down into our lane on Hepburn Road. Suddenly, as we turned the corner of the bend in the road, we heard the roar of people and saw the flicker of flames at the end of the small road, where I lived half way down. We decided to check it out, as its hard to say no to the curiosity that is woken up at the sight of mayhem.

The police/bailiff/bouncer types, had kettled everybody down towards City road and in defiance of the aggressive police presence, people had started throwing bottles, burning cares and shouting and bawling. It was a nightmare scene, that drew an even more curious crowd, which escalated in more aggressive tactics from the police lines.

At one point, the police line surged forward and I got swept along with the panicked crowd, which is a terrifying experience when you are surrounded by drunken, angry people with bottles - but even more terrifying was the fact we were being herded by the intimidating force of the police, blank behind their riot equipment and their unpredictable kettling of the general public. We were being forced down through the main Stokes Croft area at pub kicking out time, where young people and old were suddenly caught up in the riots after spending an innocent Bank Holiday night at the local pub! I believe the violence was also out of frustrating of being pushed around, when a lot of people just wanted to get home IE, me. The intimidating tactics were used towards the general public and not just the protesters, as it was herded into the very busy public area of Stokes Croft. When it gets that dangerous I think the police should have lessened their force, as none of the violence would have started or even continued, if the police had lessened their presence or had let people actually go home!

I really believe that if the police had packed up and left it would never have happened. The anger and the rioting was aimed at the police for pushing us and herding us around - and without that incitement it would never have happened. I've got to say that I have never felt like I am living in a Big Brother state as much as I did last night - all because we as the stokes croft residents were against ANOTHER Tesco! It was very intimidating and they used bullying tactics to deal with the situation. People don't like being herded like animals, and will attack if backed into a corner.

Big Brother does not always know best.