'Shit - Scented Spectacles'
Unemployed.

What a horrible word. I have been unemployed. It was only for a few months but it was completely dehabilitating. I ceased to have a purpose. I was pitied and scolded in equal measures by smug family members and friends alike. Did I deserve to be brutally admonished? Probably yes.

However, I think that being unemployed tempered my soul in the very fires of ‘lifehood’. It forced me to harshly view my life through shit-scented spectacles (the opposite of rose tinted glasses of course)

I am reasonably successful now (i.e. I have enough money to douche regularly) but I know that in an instant it can all be undone and everything could be levelled. My elation at life now is viewed via forced perspective from my lowest point. Without the contrast of life’s perverse extremes you cannot enjoy life fully. Black needs its white, and vice versa. So if you are unemployed now then when your life turns around it will seem absurd that you were ever worried. If you are gainfully employed now, well, enjoy it, and remember that life is cyclical.

Abject apologies for the maudlin and mawkish sentimentality but I have had a few glasses of wine but not enough to render me incapable of typing.
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Sat 4 Apr 2009, 21:06, 6 replies)

^This
I've been poor and unemployed and well off and working and you don't relish the good without experiencing the bad.
( girlinthehole, Sat 4 Apr 2009, 21:48, closed)

me too
i remember one time, cashing my giro, and by the time i reached the door of the post office, i had precisely 34p left of it.

To do me another 14 days.

I bought a greggs sausage roll.
(Cancer Joy was short lived, Sat 4 Apr 2009, 22:25, closed)

you poor bastard
that piss-poor excuse for a bakery...
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Sun 5 Apr 2009, 19:44, closed)

tell me about it.
grease and gristle special
(Cancer Joy was short lived, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 1:01, closed)

"You don't relish the good without experiencing the bad"
I have to agree here. I've been working in some capacity constantly since I was 12, (My dad is self employed running a computer repair company so I’ve helped out, paper round, part time shelf stacker all that bollocks) I was in education full time until I finished college at 18, then I worked just over 2 years full time, 9-5 - 5 and a bit days a week (It involved 1 Saturday a month also) I enjoyed it; it was a job that I found fulfilling, enjoyable and worthwhile, and the pay wasn’t bad at all for my age.

Then I went to University.

It’s also been fun; I've met new, like-minded, good, people. I’ve been pretty busy discovering who I am, what I like and what I actually like to do rather than just going along with the crowd, but I've had my moments where I felt I was accomplishing nothing worthwhile (Lets face it, the first year is worthless) But on the whole it's been a fantastic and liberating year. (Although I regret not having the balls to turn up at any London meets)

Now the first year is over, I'm back home, with nothing to do for the first time, associating with all the people that made me want to leave this crappy town in the first place.

In reality, I am far happier when I am busy than when I have time to dwell on my shortcomings… no matter how hard you try, you can’t be out drinking and having fun every minute of every day

The idea of living all summer off my last bit of loan and pissing it up the wall on the beach sounded so promising in the middle of winter....

I'm going job hunting for ANYTHING on Monday!

I think the moral of the story is that an idle brain finds any way it can to fuck itself up.

(Apologies for emo)
(The_Mighty_Spleen, Sun 5 Apr 2009, 3:59, closed)

Oh, too true!
You need to experience bad times in order to appreciate the good ones.

I've been despressed, living in a squalid little room with dirty housemates and cockroaches in the kitchen - in an unrewarding, low-paid job, with a bitch of a pseudo-girlfriend who was only pretending that she loved me in order to siphon what little money I had by acting as if she needed pity (we never even had sex: she pretended that she's been through a bad experience, so I was "understanding" for 3½ years).

Now I have a reasonably-paid, interesting job, have a lovely clean spacious place of my own, and an amazing girlfriend who loves me to bits.

But if I had had it all along, then I would not appreciate how lucky I am to have it all now. Therefore I am glad for the bad times: it has put things into perspective.
(EuroSong I love horse meat: best of all the animals, Sun 5 Apr 2009, 14:25, closed)