I’ve been in a major funk all day long; not really feeling sad or depressed, just a bit off. The kind of funk that makes you fly off the handle because there’s very little margarine left in the tub or your day is ruined because your eggs don’t taste as yummy as when you made them last week; that kind of mood.
I couldn’t understand it; I went to bed last night feeling okay and went straight to sleep without much trouble (this has been a common recurrence the past couple of nights due to exhaustion). But when I woke up to find the text message from my landlord stating that my rent is all paid up for this month, I suddenly didn’t want to get out of bed.
It wasn’t the text message that had put me in that mood, as it was a good thing, it meant that I didn’t have to bother about it for another two weeks…but there was something that was putting me in a bad mood; I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
I finally got up, after lounging in bed for hours, squealed about margarine and eggs, complained that they’d made me feel sick and generally starting acting like a bit of a child.
I just couldn’t understand why I’d begun to feel like this.
I’ve been unemployed since early November, and doing work here and there for people ever since, with no real pay (beer doesn’t count), and I’d finally gotten a job interview yesterday with an estate agents. The interview seemed to go well and I started to feel much better about my status as an unemployed benefits scrounger – it was almost like a kick from karma saying ‘sorry for all the crap I’ve put you through in the past few years, here’s something to keep you going’.
So with this little burst of employment hope, why was I in such a bad mood?
Around five pm today I got a phone call from the rather nice guy who interviewed me, saying that I’d sadly not gotten the job as someone else had more experience in my specific job area. This didn’t even really upset me all that much, as I knew that this was a possibility – no matter how well I interviewed.
A few minutes later my phone rang again, it was a woman from an employment agency I joined with some details of a job for me – sadly it was not a part time position (which is what I’m looking for due to health reasons) and I had to turn it down. But it made me go and search for more available jobs – of which I found three with potential.
As you can see, it wasn’t really like I was having a particularly bad day, it was up and down sure but it wasn’t like there was nothing good coming from today…I’d finally paid up my rent in full!
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It was only about two hours ago that I realised what had put me in such a bad mood today, it wasn’t anything significant, and I was surprised by my realisation…
The first thing that I did that day was look at my phone, my lovely little iPhone, which told me that today was February 1st. Now there’s nothing significant about that date at all; no birthdays, anniversaries or appointments…until I thought back to my thoughts in November of last year…I wanted to be back on my feet by February. I naively thought that three months would be a decent amount of time to get my ass into gear and get a job.
With this realisation in hand; that I’m no better off than when I first left work in November, and am in fact worse off, after three whole months of trying to get myself back up and running; I did the only thing I could do…
…I danced…
…shook my hips…
…flicked my hair around…
…pulled muscles I didn’t realise I had…
…laughed when I caught myself in the mirror…
…sang outrageously loud whilst the child next door slept…
…and I felt alive.
