Gizzajob

So I’m job hunting. I found out late last week and I quite sure that if I blogged about it before now you would have seen visible tear drops on the web page blurring out a word or two.

My contract is up and funding does not stretch to its renewal. I was really hoping it would but it wasn’t to be. There were a lot of things I had hoped, worked for but they weren’t to be.

Some of you know what I do in the real world already and for those who don’t I have been working with the Labour Party. I never blogged about it before now because when I started up the blog it had nothing to do with work, it still doesn’t really. But as time went by I pushed and pushed the idea of blogging to people in the party. And more and more the lines blurred.

However I have still tried hard to keep work off my personal blog. I never intended and still don’t intend this to be a space where people debate the Labour Party - there are more than enough sites out there for that without my own personal space turning into another one.

As well as being a press officer for the party, I have also maintained the website (along with our brilliant webmaster Tom); take many/most of the party’s photographs that you may have seen in our literature and have developed the party’s Flickr account which has become a valuable working resource for the party. My images have appeared in local papers all over the country, on the RTE website, many other websites and on our own literature, leaflets, policy documents, manifesto, etc. I’ve done the party’s YouTube account and made the ‘this is…’ internet ad-campaign series which Labour released over the election.

And I’ve loved it all. I have loved working somewhere where you have the opportunity to develop other talents and put them to use. I have found things in myself I never knew where there and that has been amazing.

Now I find myself as one of the other casualties of the election. When I was reading articles after the election particularly the accounts from journalists of the sadness accompanying TDs packing up their desks I couldn’t help thinking about the staff behind them losing their jobs. Now I am one of them. This isn’t completely out of the blue. My main role was to work with candidates on the press side, now that isn’t there anymore and there isn’t a job there now. I had just hoped that something would come up.

Job uncertainty is not something that I have ever gotten used to. But then who in that position does get used to it? When I took the job originally three and a half years ago it was for a six-month contract. But I felt that moving from a full-time job to a six-month contract with Labour was an opportunity I couldn’t pass by.

For me part of the horror of job uncertainty is the worry of money. At this stage in my life I feel the money worry monster is part and parcel of me, part of my personality even. I have never been an adult and not seriously worried about money. If it is not something you worry about you cannot underestimate how deep and gnawing it is. It affects everything, absolutely everything.

Sometimes people talk about spending obscene amounts of money on clothes or whatever and I don’t get it. I never have. Probably because I have never been in a position where I can spend €300 on a pair of shoes and think nothing of it. I have never spent that amount of money on shoes or clothes. In fact I recently (well its not recently it was in the last two years) spent €100 on a coat and had to have the decision on spending that amount of money validated by my Mum who of course said ‘yes buy it’.

I’ve been bringing up my daughter on my own and financially its been more than tough at times. When she was a toddler I managed to put myself through college and that was difficult. Life after college was also hard, having to work my way up through low-paid jobs to prove myself and get experience behind me. Money has always been tight and hasn’t really gotten any easier. And it is something I have always worried about. I have always looked forward to the day where that isn't the case and here I am, 36 years old and still worrying.

I cannot be without work for a week, I suppose who can. All I know is my own situation, living in Dublin, bills to pay, rent to cover and teenager to bring up, oh yeah and the debts incurred because of living in Dublin.

So now I need to decide what I am going to do next. Time to dust off the CV, update it and get it out there. Then I’ll put on a big smile and pretend that I am not worried to be looking for work because I have to.I have a lot of decisions to make. Do I go for another 9-5 job? Will another job I want to do come up in the time I have to find one? Do I try and go out on my own, be my own boss? What would I do? Can I earn enough to allow me to do whatever that may be? Why oh why have I never been in a position to save money. Cos I could do with having a stash of savings right now. Right now it is time for days of action.

Anyway that’s my tale of woe. Wish me luck. Oh yeah and gizzajob.