Employed & Dangerous

What’s this? A job? Don't mind if I do. And what do you do once you finally find the hole in your pocket sewn up again? You put down your teacup, elevate yourself from the crevice in your couch and head out until the threads begin to pull again.

Welcome to a recharged what-red-said. Adventuring around the music and culture scene of London the only way I know how.

Naively.  

Write about what you know

That is the advice given to you on any writing course. The problem being that all I know at the moment is this desk, this computer and the bottom of my tea cup.

My days have become a a groundhog day of little routines to busy myself. High on the list is my daily visit to Tesco's to scrutinize the contents of the reduce to clear section for food void of any signs of life. On my way out the door I give a friendly nod to Steve the Tramp (self named) who is usually too rapt in conversation with the pigeons to notice me at all, and on to a whistle and air kiss from Builder on Corner which satisfies my need for daily flirtation. We are going to name our kids Aiden and Tristan.

When I get home I spend a little time answering e-mails, chasing contacts and preparing for my next interviews (of which I have had two very promising ones of late with some lovely contacts at Iris and iProspect... yes that was officially a suck up. I'm not proud) followed by some deep contemplation about the benefits of day time drinking. Medicinal, thought provoking or other.

Once I have successfully created a crater in my sofa and have made a card tower of tea cups I begin to be productive, starting with some applications and ending in a day dream of the small cafe-come-music venue I will open one day with my unrivaled  knowledge in marketing.

For now though I will settle with booking myself on an evening course in social media marketing to help me out along the way/ a productive use of my time/ to get me out of the house.

How to make friends

I was having a discussion with my friend Vince about making friendships at uni the other day. He had recently decided to go back to the very beginning of our wall posts on Facebook. "You let me say some terrible things to you Clancy. I mean, like, really horrific stuff and you just rolled with it." I had a look myself. They were pretty grim. I won't repost any of them here for fear of offending anyone/ my mum seeing but let's just say that I copied one of them onto his wall and he swiftly deleted it. Five years on and we now have a reputation to uphold on our social media accounts.

Vince had made himself known around the block quite quickly and I had bonded with his flat mate Mike over a drunken discussion of women and the Sunshine Underground in the first few weeks.

One night I was working on my first essay (that is to say I was drinking and smoking in front of my laptop) when I got a text from an unknown number. "What are you wearing? Love, Vince"
I thought for a minute, I could be one of two girls here.
"Lacy black lingerie and a sombrero" went my reply.
"Great, well put some clothes on you dirty slag and come up to Mike's room and watch Star Wars with us. Leave the sombrero on."
He is now one of my closest friends.

Clancy your soul is deep and mysterious. Much like your eyes. And your vagina

          -Chris Vincent, September 08

Day something or other

Three weeks in and I am already struggling to find time to write. How ridiculous. It might help if I were to stop using my unemployment as an excuse to travel around the country seeing people that regular work got in the way of. Who am I kidding, I love it. I would happily sit in this cafe writing for the rest of my life if someone were to pay me for it.

This weekend I travelled up North to see my friend Ali from the magical town of Bolton. In the Bolton countryside the chav's run free and drink from the fountain of Strongbow, laced with the powers of indistinguishable speech and unbeatable ability to spit. Once we tore ourselves away from those wonders though we hopped across to Manchester for shopping and Liverpool for sightseeing and music.
All in all a very busy and lovely weekend.

Back home it is a wee bit more grim. The power's of denial have helped me put off my packing to move back home until today when I should be moving out, well, today. It's a mess. Burning all my clothes sounds like a very convenient packing method at the moment, as well as an excuse to buy an entire new wardrobe. I was saved before I could even get through the first draw by a phone call from one of my recruiters...

Week three
Interviews: two
Packing: shoes so far, thought I'd work from the bottom up
Interview prep: Book buying as a reason to leave the chaos of my room even though I am perfectly aware I can probably find the same information on the Internet? Done.

Day Eleven

Thursday last week was a mad rush to buy everything needed to survive a festival. Outlook said rain, so on went the wellies. Outlook said sunny, so sunglasses and a hat were added to the equation. Two packs of cleansing wipes were packed (suitable for the removal of make-up, mud and grime), tent, sleeping bag, cider and airbed. “Um, Shiv?” I queried, rolling up the airbed with skills from years of crafting origami birds. Unfortunately the bird shaped airbed wasn’t fitting into the bag. “Yeah-huh” 

“How do we pump up the airbed once we’re there?” 

“There’s a pump in the box” 

“Yes” I said, unravelling the pump “Do the tree’s in Cambridge come with electrical sockets?” waving the plug of our very electrical looking pump. 

“Shit.”

An hour later I was standing in a queue in Argos in wellies complete with their own mud from last years festival antics, my hat, sunglasses and bag big enough for me to wonder why I had packed a tent at all and not just decided to zip myself into the bag each night when my phone started to buzz. Unknown number. “Hello?”
 “Hi Clancy, thanks for sending us the answers to the questions we e-mailed you. I was wondering if you were free to come in for an interview?”

Two weeks, one interview. Take that unemployment!

So I am back from the festival. Soul rested (definitely not body) and ready to prepare for my first interview.

Please Sir, can I have a Google+ ?

I nearly forgot! I either don't know you or you are one of my close friends who have already been subject to my puppy dog stares, but will someone please send me a Google+ invite?

I can hardly claim to be a social media mastermind when I lack the new toys.

Day Eight: The keyword is "networking"

Day eight?  You say. But you have been going on about this for nearly two weeks now. Yes. The thing about that is that I don't count weekends. Everyone needs a little down time to re-charge for another packed week of unemployment. To tell you the truth unemployment is a lot busier than I thought it would be. There are applications with deadlines, recruiters to meet, networking to be done.

This morning I had a meeting with Dominic Proctor of Mindshare. Dom is a lovely gentleman and an old friend of my Dad who was kind enough to give me some advice when I first left uni two years ago with naive aspirations of walking into a copywriting role with no experience but a trendy handbag full of dreams. Today, taking time out of a very busy schedule, we talked about all the experience I have gained, my love of social media ("Old fart's like me know nothing about that stuff") and generally where I should go next and who he might know to help me. A networking success.

I hardly had time to get over that caffeine buzz before I was off to a cafe around the corner to meet Max, a friend of a friend and current account executive at Dare Digital. Again the chat was only informal, with some sound job hunting advice taken on but probably most importantly, and e-mail address to send my CV where it might just get a little further than HR's over flowing inbox.

Talk about taking advantage of my spare time. I haven't even started on the new cushions I was going to hand sew.

Impressed by my own productivity, I'm going to give it to you in stats

Recruiters signed with:                                 4

Applications sent through recruiters:         5

Applications sent through job sites:            3

Industry professionals met for coffee:        3

Not bad for a week and a half I think.