never thought i’d be here

when I lost my job back in October i never thought i’d still be looking six months later. we made jokes, the wife and i. ‘if i don’t have a job by january you can shoot me’. luckily for me my wife is not a typical american. january came and went. february it is, i can feel it, people were still not sure about budgets in january.

february came and went. then march. new fiscal year. this is it. nope. April, surely? nah. so here we are. May. Six months in, nothing to show for.

am i being picky? not at all. i went from ‘head of’ roles to ‘manager’ roles to ‘anything’ roles. last week I applied for a job as baggage handling customer service assistant because for some reason it asked for portuguese speakers. am I being too proud? nope, I am already on my second month of getting unemployment benefits, complete with a visit to the job centre every two weeks to update them and get a sign off on the next couple weeks money.

this is the longest i’ve been unemployed, and i was born and raised in brazil, where long stretches of joblessness are not uncommon. I have done it all - multiple reviews of my CV using external platforms, AI and friends/family. I have used linkedin extensively, which by the way is a complete waste of everyone’s time, particularly the premium version, but we’ll get to that at some point. I registered with job searching websites. I contacted my contacts. I networked, asked and in some occasions, mildly begged. so far I got 2.5 interviews.

I decided to start these short entries so i have an outlet for my very mixed emotions, and hopefully you’ll find it amusing too. something to do, i guess.

watch out for them, i’ll try to do a couple of week.