Unemployment Part Four: Settling

I think this is a really important issue when you’re job hunting. How much should I like the job to take it, or when am I just getting too picky? Am I fortunate enough to even be offered a job, so should therefore be grateful and just do it, or should I wait it out for something that fits? That is, something I want to do?

Fortunately there aren’t any offers on the table at the minute, so I don’t have to worry about this pesky problem, but in looking at endless job postings and deciding where to send my resume I can’t help but wonder, would I want to bludgeon my eyes out with a spoon instead of doing this all day five days a week? Would I hate my life every night before bed knowing I have to spend the entire next day doing this job? In the mornings, would I contemplate just disappearing instead of showing up to work?

I’m certain there has to be a line somewhere, but I have no doubt that every person on the job hunt has - at one point - said to themselves, “I mean, I guess I COULD do this. I mean, at least it would be income. I mean, I don’t HATE the job description.” It just seems like a really messed up way to organize society, though it seems equally impossible to create a world where everyone “loves” what they do. Why? Because we can’t all be movie stars and professional athletes and royalty and insurance adjusters. Oops. Scratch the last one.

If we were all blissfully happy, then we’d have no insecurities driving us to obsess over the beautiful few grazing the cover of magazines telling us why they’re so happy or how their life is “just so hard, what with all the fame and money and everything,” driving us to shop so we can be more like them. It just starts to feel like this enormous, “pending doom” scenario where no one is really all that content with life. Needless to say, I’m going to be slightly picky and go ahead and say no to jobs that described as “hard slog work.” I’m thinking that’s okay.

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Kyle Taylor