a failure at 23: job-searching for this dummy.

No one told me job-searching was going to crush your spirit like this. In fact, everyday that I was involuntarily unemployed, I felt absolutely useless. “Involuntarily” meant that my break was up. After I finished uni, I just wanted time off. I submitted my last assessment in November of 2022; I had no money but I wanted a break, I couldn’t afford to travel so I just went home. For four months. Four months back in my childhood bedroom (now mancave). Four months not doing anything — for the first time in my life, ever, not committing myself to anything. I called it my sabbatical, or better yet, my Gabbatical. 

I needed a period of doing nothing, since I spent the last twenty-three years of my life doing everything, all at once. It started in grade school. Once I got into competitive swimming, it was non-stop for six years. I trained five times a week, after school, and even more during summer. I was pretty good at it, but honestly, I don’t know if I really liked it. I just liked the fact that I had something to fall back on, that if I failed a test at school (even if I had great grades), at least my swimming cancelled out ‘my failure’— and vice versa. Once I quit swimming, I tried being a normal teen and it didn’t work out well. I hated sitting still. The idea of “free time” felt like the dumbest idea ever, why would anyone want time to do nothing? So I devoted myself to the gym, and whatever committees the school had. In the following year, I did IB, and since the programme wanted you to be well-rounded, so I was. I was trying different sports, having a part-time job, volunteering to charities, etc. I was practically a circle, and this method of having a failure-fall-back was foolproof. Even if I didn’t like doing things, if I was good at it, it meant that I had more chances of succeeding, so we kept going. It was similar to investing, you don’t put your eggs all in one basket, or all the money in the bank or all in one stock… Whatever, I don’t have enough money to be talking like I know enough about money, but you get the gist of the metaphor. 

The four months back at home, doing nothing, turned into absolute bliss. I spent my time not worrying about money, because I didn’t have to pay rent. I was just eating whatever food was there, I didn’t have to worry about what to prepare (I hate cooking). The domestic life of not doing anything, was so peaceful. My skin even improved a lot, since I was only sleeping, crocheting, reading, eating, doing pilates, or going for walks; the best was that I did it all for no reason. No purpose, just for pleasure. Not to monetise it, just to enjoy it. It's crazy! No one ever talks about the great things peace can bring… I learned more about what it felt like to just do things because you like doing them. What pure pleasure-without-purpose felt like, and I even felt it for simple things, like eating food and bathing in sunlight. That rest gave me a lust for life, and I didn’t even realise it ever left my body.

But now, I’m stepping into reality. My parents left five weeks ago; since then, I’ve been on the hunt for a job and have only recently found one. I start next week… but the journey? I can summarise it for you: Soul-crushing. Self-Esteem is diminished. You’re not smart enough. You don’t have enough experience. Pure Shit.

I mean, I’ve also got to hand it to myself, part of it is the economy’s fault. We’re in a global recession. Everywhere I turn, the recession is visible; just buy bread, eggs, and cheese, their prices all scream “RECESSION!”. So, it’s not purely my fault, but everytime I send out applications, I only get a response rate of 20%. In this 20%, only half of them actually want to meet you for an interview, other people just choose to view your application on Seek and then say that they’re not interested. Yes, rejection through a template. So sweet. Aside from this, everything on my TikTok feed seems to be about how tech, entertainment, and even news companies are laying off people left and right. I saw a TikTok of a Disney employee being laid off, and I was genuinely confused, since they just recently partnered with Apple for the ugliest pair of goggles. All in all, it was real. There really is no job that’s secure, especially in a recession. There’s also been videos of health professionals quitting their job as well, since they felt overworked and underpaid, and honestly, with what Covid did to our global health system, who wouldn’t burnout even if money and livelihood was a guarantee? I couldn’t do what they did. I can’t even stand blood!

Alas, the lack of response to my array of cover letters and the time I spent making multiple CVs — one customised for each field I was applying to — brought me to the floor, crying. What’s new? Well, it’s safe to say, I couldn’t stop crying for a bit, I’ve still been crying. I know I was the one who didn’t want to work right after finishing uni, but it’s a different thing when the job market is the one dictating that you’re not good enough to be in it. “It’s just business, it’s not personal”, it gets personal. Especially, after you leave an interview with a job wanting you to start immediately, and telling you you’re a “stellar candidate”, then they send you an axing email with merely twenty-one words: 

“Hello Gabbie,

We hope this email finds you well. We decided to go with someone else. Good luck on the search.”

I felt like I got dumped, and not even in a good way. It was not amicable. It was not mutual! But that’s fine, we have to pick ourselves up and keep going. The worst part was, as this was all unravelling within my job-searching era, I also found out that Graphic Designers and Writers can now be replaced by AI. With the new AI update on Photoshop, a job that used to take me three hours, takes a robot one minute. I studied art for four years, and as soon as I got my degree, I’m practically obsolete. Even my back-up experience in writing and publication was a waste. When I saw the news of companies like Buzzfeed and other production houses switching to AI writing instead of actual writers, I realised my failure-fall-back method has failed me too. Double-whammy.

So, here I am again, I’m a failure at twenty-three. I didn’t even get the job I wanted, but it’s okay we’re all making it through this recession, and I’m lucky I even have a job; at least that’s what I told myself this morning. The thing is, when I applied for Fine Arts, I had a lot of people saying I’d graduate with no money and no job opportunity. My Teacher, my mean classmate, my grandmother, my mum, all the relatives that make that face when I tell them what I study… I can’t blame them, it is the stereotype after all. When I was seventeen, I knew I could’ve taken another course, but I hated everything. I wasn’t bad at everything, I was just not happy; but art and design made me feel that lust for life for the first time, and at seventeen, I knew it’s what I wanted to do. So whenever someone said I was making a mistake, I’d just affirm myself in the mirror, before I’d go to bed: “you’ll prove all these motherfuckers wrong. You, Gabbie De Baron!”. I really did do that, I didn’t hold a grudge constantly, but whenever I did get an opportunity for an art show or when I became Visual Arts Editor, this thing inside me felt good! As if seventeen year old Gabbie was right: I am proving these motherfuckers wrong… but now, I cry, knowing that they were right. Fresh out of uni, and I’ve never felt so unwanted and so unskilled. I had a head full of hopes! A girl full of promise and grit! Crushed by the demand in the job market. And the words of all those people who said I wouldn’t know success, deemed true: I left uni without money and without a job opportunity — for my specific field of study anyway.

At the moment, I’m at that point, where I haven’t hit a resolution yet. I don’t even know If I’m arching the plotline just yet, but today is the first day I didn’t cry or get an anxiety attack, so that’s cool. After I ate breakfast, I just got up. I watched Modern Family, and laughed. I have this sitcom on repeat, all the time. I know each line, but today, I found it in myself to genuinely laugh. It was a really odd feeling. Remember that ‘lust for life’ I was talking about? I felt it again for a split second, within that laugh, and I want it to last for a bit. I thought about how I felt during that break; when I started living because I was happy, not because I had to live up to my potential, life was better, and I was so much more carefree. This piece may not have a happy ending, not all pieces of writing should, but I can reassure you, the plotline could be arching, because from today onwards, I don’t want to see myself as a failure at twenty-three. I just want to be happy, and accept that I am twenty-three, and that I’m still learning — I need to know I’m not alone. Does anyone else feel like this? Or am I the only one? How long does this period of feeling like shit last? And does it get better? … But I guess, if I can find that lust for life in a split-second of laughing I can find it in the next thirty years of working in the job force… right?