1624: False Start

Hello. How was your day? Mine was almost entirely wasted, unfortunately.

I was all set to have a second interview for a job I’ve been pursuing recently. I took a shower, got suited and booted, went to the toilet several times as my stomach became increasingly agitated thanks to the nervousness that comes with a job interview situation, left the house, caught the bus, caught the train, had a sandwich, took a taxi to my place of prospective employment… and then waited.

And waited some more. And then a bit more still for good measure. (Rolf Harris was declared guilty of indecent assault while I was waiting. I knew because the place I was at had the TV on in the reception area, and also Twitter was all over it before the Americans woke up and started complaining about whatever “Hobby Lobby” is.)

The time of my interview came. I asked where my contact was. No-one seemed to know, and it appeared that my contact didn’t even normally work on that site. A call was put in; my contact’s voicemail was reached, a message was left.

The time of my interview went. Still nothing. Rolf Harris was still guilty. Oscar Pistorius was declared free of mental illness, so his trial would continue. (News again. Twitter didn’t appear to notice this one.)

Nearly an hour passed, but I patiently waited. I didn’t want to be the guy who obliterated his chances by walking out of the door when in fact there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the fact my contact had apparently vanished off the face of the Earth.

And indeed there was; they were sick. A member of the recruitment team came down and found me, spewed a string of apologies made from seemingly pure guilt — I didn’t mind, really; there’s nothing much that can be done if someone is ill — and assured me that the interview would be rearranged for another day. I politely thanked them for letting me know, reassured them that I wasn’t angry or upset at the fact I’d travelled quite a way and had been waiting quite a while — I really wasn’t — and indicated that I looked forward to the true main event, whenever it would actually happen.

Then I walked back to the station — I didn’t know a taxi number, and it was only about a half-hour walk, caught a train, grabbed a coffee and a slice of cake, caught a bus and returned home. Now here I am. (Actually, I’ve been here quite a while; I wasn’t out until 11 in the evening.)

Oh well. A wasted day, then, but not one that I feel particularly embittered by. It could be a blessing in disguise, anyway; now I have more time to prepare for the interview. Though I’m sure that even with this blessing, I’ll still wake up on the day of the new interview, take a shower, get suited and booted, go to the toilet several times as my stomach becomes increasingly agitated thanks to the nervousness that comes with a job interview situation, leave the house and proceed much as things unfolded today.

At least things are happening, I guess. Let’s hope they lead to something a little more… conclusive soon.

1596: Efforts

Trying to stay positive. Got up early today, went for a swim before doing anything else (only 25 lengths, alternating crawl and my laughable excuse for a breast stroke, but you have to start somewhere) and then took the bus (the bus!) back. (I managed to find all the Obsidian Mushrooms in Demon Gaze during the bus journey back, which treated me to some enjoyable scenes with catgirl maid Pinay, so it was very much worth it.)

Got back. Applied for two jobs, nearly applied for a third before I realised I’d already applied for it last week, took delivery of our new table (it’s humongous, and it has metallic animal feet, because it clearly belonged to an old lady before ending up in the British Heart Foundation shop), attempted to assemble new table, was mostly successful, did some work, played some Game and Wario (the freebie game I got with Mario Kart 8, which I will almost certainly write more about tomorrow evening after a night of multiplayer fun) and… that’s about it, really.

I feel like I’ve got quite a bit done today, and, as usual, it can be attributed at least partly to getting up reasonably early and getting started on things before I have to do stuff. I think this every time I get up early, then I go and get all depressed and find it hard to get out of bed until immediately before I have to start work. (Also our new bed is really comfy.)

As I say, trying very hard to stay positive right now, but it’s a challenge. Too much is unknown. Several of the jobs I’ve applied for won’t be letting me know one way or another for two or three weeks, and by then that’s the time I will really need to have a new job sorted and ready for me. But I guess there’s not a lot I can do about that. As time ticks on, it becomes more and more likely there’ll be a gap between my current job ending and my new one starting. I just hope it isn’t too long.

In the meantime, I just have to keep doing what I can in order to stay as positive as it is possible to stay under the circumstances. I have to be grateful for the things I do have, rather than upset about the things that I don’t have — even if the things that I don’t have could cause potential difficulties. I can’t think about that, though. I have to assume that things are going to work out all right. I have to assume that things are going to be fine, and that by this time next month, I’ll be wondering what on Earth I was panicking about.

Hmm. Well, it’s going to be a challenge, but I guess I have no option but to try right now, huh?

#oneaday, Day 53: Mr Motivation

Motivation is a curious beast. And it’s not a case of either “having it” or “not having it”, there are many complex factors involved. And sometimes, apparently, blind chance.

Take today. I got my ass soundly kicked by a boss in Final Fantasy XIII (which I am enjoying a lot so a big middle finger to all of you who hate it) so instead of swearing profusely and trying again, I swore profusely, turned off the PS3, said to myself (silently, because saying it out loud with no-one else nearby would just be weird) “I’m going to go and run 10km now,” and then went and ran 10km. I’d say “just like that” but it took over an hour and a half, and anything over a couple of minutes is automatically disqualified from “just like that” status.

Anyway, casual bragging that I’ve achieved my goal of running 10K aside, I find that sudden bursts of motivation like that happen at the strangest of times… and it’s very difficult to force them. Impossible, in fact. They’re a spur-of-the-moment, impulsive sort of thing… which makes it rather inconvenient when you actually need some motivation to do something.

Part of the issue is, of course, prior successes. My running has been a slow but sure upward slope of little victories, one step at a time, and so that has provided ample motivation to continue and keep pushing myself to the next milestone, no pun intended. Contrast this with the jobhunting, on the other hand, which has been a string of ignorance, incompetence and idiocy—none of which was my fault—and it’s understandable how I may be feeling a little disheartened on that particular front. Still, I am cracking on with it and have yet another bunch of applications in now. It remains to be seen if anything will come of these ones. Some of them, again, are even relevant to what I want to do, though the pay is all over the place. I’m kind of taking the opinion now that any money coming in is better than no money, particularly if the job in the question offers a potentially good “foot in the door” for other Good Things. Which at least one of the things I’ve applied for does.

So we shall see. But it has been a long time since I’ve felt that same surge of motivation for the jobhunting than I have for the running. Perhaps it’s because of the difference between something I want to do and something I have to do. No-one likes feeling obliged to do things—given the opportunity, most people would rather be able to stay in bed as long as they like and then spend their days doing any combination of eating pies, playing video games, watching TV, staring at the Internet, wandering through fields of flowers, driving expensive cars very fast, wanking, listening to music, smashing Justin Bieber albums over the heads of people they don’t like very much, giving and/or receiving oral sex, smoking weed, drawing pictures and eating Lindor chocolates—and so anything that you need to do that gets in the way of doing those things that you want is automatically parsed by your brain as being an inconvenience.

Perhaps I just need to want to find a job more. For that to happen, though, I need to spot the Awesomest Job Ever That Is A Complete Shoe-In For My Appointment And That No-One Else Will Ever Apply For.

What’s that? AwesomeTech are looking for a “Playing Final Fantasy In Bed Technician Called Pete” for £50,000 a year? I’m so there.

Sigh. A man can dream, huh?

#oneaday, Day 154: Person Specification

I applied for eleven jobs today. Most of them were in similar fields and required similar skills, but irritatingly, most of them were different enough from one another to demand a different cover letter focusing on different aspects of the “person specification”. By the end of the whole miserable experience I felt like I’d said absolutely everything about myself in every possible way it is possible to say it. Or at least every possible way it’s possible to say it in a way appropriate for a job application. There’s something of an expectation for more “formal” language when applying for jobs, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of babbling on about being “passionate” and “dedicated” without actually really meaning either of those things. I believe I avoided that particular problem, but it’s still a pain to have to “hold back” at times.

So tonight’s #oneaday, then, is my unedited personal statement that isn’t for any employers. It’s for me, and no-one else. Except the last bit. Which is for anyone who wants to hire an awesome person.

I’m Pete. I’m a computer geek, writer and musician, and I also like video games. I stay up late in the evening to work on things that other people wouldn’t bother with because I’m that sort of person. I like working on new projects, particularly creative ones, as the last 154 days of this blog will clearly demonstrate. While working on something that demands consistency rather than quality doesn’t always produce the best results, I think that my dedication to the project as a whole, even when through suffering what I firmly believe is the absolute worst time of my life ever, has been a stand-out example of how great I really am.

I love to write. I can spell, I can punctuate and I can write in lots of different styles. The style I use on my blog here is a conversational one. I sometimes break the rules a bit in the name of humour or characterisation. But I know how to use English properly, too. The other sites I’ve written for in the past each demand very different styles due to their different audiences. Over the years, I’ve written for teenage console gamers (the Official Nintendo Magazine), twentysomething PC gamers (PC Zone), parents with child gamers (WhatTheyPlay), older gamers with a fondness for older games (Good Old Games) and current games enthusiasts who like to stay abreast of what the industry is up to (Kombo). And numerous others besides. I’ve found it pretty easy to adapt my style to each of these sites, and believe that’s another example of me being pretty great, really.

I can play the piano, too. I may not be a proper bonafide virtuoso like some people I know, but I can play things well, with expression and emotion. I can channel the things I’m feeling into what I’m playing, so I can really get the emotions of the music across, with a personal twist. I’m a great sight-reader, too, and can pick up a lot of piano pieces very quickly without having to practice a lot. Okay, if they’re difficult, they might not sound great right away, but they will at least be recognisable.

I can type at 85 words per minute. This means I can churn out writing incredibly quickly, and accurately too. This skill was very helpful during E3 week, when we had to get stories up on Kombo in a matter of minutes in many cases. I managed to hammer out some good quality articles just a few minutes after they happened. This, too, is pretty awesome.

I’m also a great friend. I’m patient, calm and understanding in most cases, but I’ll defend the people I love and the things I care about to the death. I’m a great listener and will always empathise with someone else’s plight, even if I don’t really like them, or even if they’ve wronged me in the past. I’ll never deliberately cause someone hurt or upset because doing so makes me feel bad too. I believe that this is one of my best qualities, and I’d hope that my friends agree.

Generally speaking, then, I’m a pretty good person who has a lot to offer the world. So, basically, if you’re reading this and you need someone awesome on your team, whatever you might be doing (so long as it’s not something pointless and boring) you should definitely hire me and pay me a generous salary and benefits package. And give me a company car.

Because, frankly, I think I deserve all that stuff after everything that I’ve had to put up with. I know my problems pale in comparison to some people – everyone has an example of someone who’s worse off – but speaking purely selfishly, I think, no, I know that I deserve some things to go well. So why don’t you help me out a bit?