Four Things To Know Whilst You’re Waiting…

My fingers hover over the keyboard and there is a silence in my room that wills me to write.. something, anything. But I simply do not know what to type. I could write about postgraduate depression I think. No, not yet (although I do think it’s a topic I should touch on – especially given the outpouring of messages and emails I’ve received from people who are struggling after finishing their various degrees.) I don’t think it’s quite yet the time and I want to write about it fairly objectively and with some form of a happy ending (which is coming… that I have faith in). It’s quite hard to find something to write about lately, there’s only so many times I can say ‘hey! I’m still applying for jobs’ and it’s even harder not to allow it to be the foci of my life right now, but it is, so I must make lemonade out of these lemons and hope that this post helps someone. So here are four things to know whilst you’re waiting, in this case, the focus is more so on a job/career/ big break more than anything else.

1. Do SOMETHING…. Anything.

If I stay in the house for more than two days in a row, I guarantee that I will feel awful. Staring at my laptop or phone in bed for hours is counterproductive and for the most part, I’ll be scrolling through Instagram and twitter comparing myself to other bloggers when I could be using that time to create content or think of topics to write on. A few times a week I will usually try and meet up with friends who also work from home and we’ll encourage each other over coffee whilst making sure we do all the work we need to do for the day. If everyone is busy then I’ll carry my laptop to my local Starbucks for a few hours and work there, there is something in getting some fresh air into my lungs and seeing other people – even strangers, that makes me feel that little bit better about how things are. Get out of the house if you can, I know money is obviously an issue whilst job hunting, but even if it’s walking to your local park once a week – Do it. Staying cooped up indoors is THE WORST – At least for me, it is (even as an introvert!).

2. Take Care Of Yourself.

Self-care is paramount in these waiting stages. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve received is to treat myself how I would if I were a small child. I would be kind, forgiving, warm and loving to myself if that were the case, so why not now as an adult? We can be so harsh on ourselves sometimes, and a good thing to remember is that by guarantee, you only have yourself in this world, so we should make ourselves our number one priority and take care of both our physical and mental health. I sometimes have Mental Health days where I allow myself to just ‘be’. I usually put my phone on do not disturb, turn my lights low and do whatever is it that I need to recuperate which is usually just sleeping off whatever bad feelings I’m feeling and for me this is the best way to cope with bad MH days. Make a habit of focusing on doing whatever you need to do to keep yourself happy, sane and in a good place mentally. It’ll help so much in the long term.

3. Hard Work Isn’t Everything My Friend…

I really neglected my MH in the summer and I kept burning out day in day out, I’d end up in frustrated tears on a weekly basis. I’d work late into the night sending off application after application, obsessively amending my CV, redoing my portfolio over and over again, watching youtube videos on how to ‘get the job’ and not understanding why my hard work wasn’t showing any results. Coming to terms with the fact that it’s just how things are was one of the hardest, but best things I could have ever understood. One of the biggest things untruths I learned in university was that hard work is all you’d need to get to the top in life, maybe I’ll expand on this in another post but once I understood that some parts of this process will, unfortunately, be beyond me, I started to take each rejection with a grain of salt. Things just *are* sometimes, and as hard as it is not to take things personally, I’d say it’s important to work on how you take rejection, if not the road ahead may be quite painful. I look back on some of the companies I’ve been rejected from and realized that it would not have been a good fit at all for the both of us and now I’m much more picky with the practices I apply to making sure that their ethos’ aligns with mine and they’re much more than a practice that focuses on £££.

4. Consider Alternatives.

A few weeks ago after what seemed like intense interest in my CV and portfolio from a practice I’d have really loved to have worked for, there was as always is the case… Silence. I slurped my lukewarm coffee, wiped the remnants from my lips and with a loud sigh I closed my MacBook, jumped into bed and watched episode 31 of Bleach. Hours later I awoke from my nap, opened my laptop once again and this time I typed in ‘volunteer abroad’, driven by a mixture of extreme frustration with my situation and at the world, I knew that there had to be somewhere I could put my skills to good use. I didn’t quite muster up the courage to continue with my volunteering abroad applications, however, I did find some charities I could lend my interior design and social media expertise to which felt great! The most difficult aspect of being out of a job for me is not having things to do, by nature I am a woman who loves structure, I love having clear tasks that I need to do and I enjoy the feeling of doing things for others in a professional capacity, so, for now, volunteering fills that void, and it also allows me to get out of the house and meet new people whilst doing something good. Although this isn’t a long-term alternative, it is something to do for the time being whilst I slowly continue my job search.

“Wildflower; pick up your pretty little head, It will get easier, your dreams are not dead.”  – Nikki Rowe

What I Wore…

COAT c/o boden | ROLL NECK c/o boden | SKIRT | c/o boden | BOOTS c/o boden

x