The rain falls, trickles down her face
She forgot her umbrella
She walks through the city
Pushing through the crowds
She reaches the train station
her train is delayed
100 words to say how she feels, is not enough
She’s on her way home
the rain keeps falling
She gets sneezed on
and coughed on
The train brings her closer and closer
the light leaves the sky, the landscape is washed out
At Greensborough station she runs
craving the warmth of her car
Her car gets her there, to that house.
She’s home. And there’s everywhere else she’d rather be.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
The life of an unemployed
To Whom It May Concern:
My name is Christie Anthony and I am very excited about the opportunity to work for your company. I am recently unemployed (well if you can still call 3 months recent, to me it seems like it has been a lifetime) but I assure you I have a great work ethic and a strong determination to learn. I suppose if I had such a strong determination I would have found myself a job by now, but please don’t hold that against me. I get along well with people but am fully capable of being in a store by myself, I have practise, considering that since I lost my last job I haven’t had much enthusiasm for being social with the people I used to call my friends. I am available to start early or work late, as long as it’s not before midday because I don’t really wake up in the mornings anymore. I’m great with late nights though; I don’t usually sleep anytime before 2am anyway. I’m looking for work in a position that hopefully doesn’t require much effort, another thing I’ve gotten really good at is procrastination and putting things off, because frankly I’m now just too lazy.
I think the above points should prove to you that I would be perfect for this position and I look forward to your response.
This is the calling card of the unemployed. Cover letters, resumes, online applications, they’re all just as equally depressing; they all get you nowhere. However this story is not meant to be depressing, I don’t want to make my readers feel depressed or make them read a story that may or may not put them to sleep. So believe me, it does get better. I say this on the basis that every story has to have a beginning. Without a start somewhere there would be no story to follow it. Well my story starts on the day I quit my job. I was sick of all the harassment and bullying and negativity, however ask my previous employers what happened and I’m sure they’d have something completely different to say on the subject. I had a plan. So things weren’t working out where I was. Just because it was good money and good hours and generally speaking I liked the people I was working with. So what. Right? The plan was this. I’d had enough. I’d secured a casual job that would tide me over until I found something more permanent. I was going to quit and it wouldn’t even effect me because I’d be moving onto other things. So I quit. It was terrible and hard and I almost wished they had fired me instead. But I did it. The next day, I heard that the guy who was going to hire me had been retrenched. His successor decided that there was no chance he’d give me a job. This is when things started to go bad. I knew what would happen when I started filling out job applications. I would sit for hours finding open positions, tweaking my resume and cover letter, thinking of clever things to say on the application forms, and then I’d send it away into cyberspace where I couldn’t get it back, and I’d wait. And nothing would happen. A very negative view on things, but sadly, the truth. So this is what happened. And I started to drown. I was drowning in my own misery, my own self-pity and worst of all my own laziness. It got to the point that I just wouldn’t try anymore. What was the point? But this wasn’t even the worst of it. It was my own head that became my worst enemy. I wanted to talk to someone I wanted someone to listen how I felt and give me advice, at the very least tell me that it would be ok. But no one did. Who wants to listen to the sob story of a girl without a job? So, the more no one listened, the more I wanted to talk. I started staying up later and sleeping in longer. I couldn’t stand to go to bed at night and be left alone with my thoughts, almost as much as I didn’t want to get up in the morning and face another day of nothing. I procrastinated all my homework, all my chores and even put off going out with my friends. All in all, I was a completely worthless (in my own mind anyway).
I did promise that this was all going to get better though, so if you’re still reading this, keep reading because here it comes.
So here I am. No job, practically no friends, and no motivation whatsoever. Now what? What does someone do when they feel like they’ve hot rock bottom? What is the appropriate period for feeling sorry for yourself? These are the questions I started asking myself, and this is the answer I gave myself:
I came up empty.
I’m still not over the feeling of worthlessness, that no one wants me and that I’ll never be good at anything, but I’m not obsessed anymore. That’s a positive step right? I’ve started putting it behind me and moving on. What is the point of moping and self-pity? What does it get you? This is my happy ending. I wish I could say that everything has worked out fine, that I have a bigger and better job, that I’m making loads of money and can’t even remember what it felt like to be at the bottom. I wish that I could say that all of my dreams have come true, as corny as that may sound, and that the person I imagined myself to be at age 20 was slowly manifesting. That’s not happening. Yet. I am moving on and I do have dreams for the future. I think that’s the main point of this story. Things in life are going to go bad sometimes, but surely there will be a silver lining. So if you’ve made it this far, first of all congratulations. And secondly, keep reading. One day you will be reading the success story of an unemployed.
My name is Christie Anthony and I am very excited about the opportunity to work for your company. I am recently unemployed (well if you can still call 3 months recent, to me it seems like it has been a lifetime) but I assure you I have a great work ethic and a strong determination to learn. I suppose if I had such a strong determination I would have found myself a job by now, but please don’t hold that against me. I get along well with people but am fully capable of being in a store by myself, I have practise, considering that since I lost my last job I haven’t had much enthusiasm for being social with the people I used to call my friends. I am available to start early or work late, as long as it’s not before midday because I don’t really wake up in the mornings anymore. I’m great with late nights though; I don’t usually sleep anytime before 2am anyway. I’m looking for work in a position that hopefully doesn’t require much effort, another thing I’ve gotten really good at is procrastination and putting things off, because frankly I’m now just too lazy.
I think the above points should prove to you that I would be perfect for this position and I look forward to your response.
This is the calling card of the unemployed. Cover letters, resumes, online applications, they’re all just as equally depressing; they all get you nowhere. However this story is not meant to be depressing, I don’t want to make my readers feel depressed or make them read a story that may or may not put them to sleep. So believe me, it does get better. I say this on the basis that every story has to have a beginning. Without a start somewhere there would be no story to follow it. Well my story starts on the day I quit my job. I was sick of all the harassment and bullying and negativity, however ask my previous employers what happened and I’m sure they’d have something completely different to say on the subject. I had a plan. So things weren’t working out where I was. Just because it was good money and good hours and generally speaking I liked the people I was working with. So what. Right? The plan was this. I’d had enough. I’d secured a casual job that would tide me over until I found something more permanent. I was going to quit and it wouldn’t even effect me because I’d be moving onto other things. So I quit. It was terrible and hard and I almost wished they had fired me instead. But I did it. The next day, I heard that the guy who was going to hire me had been retrenched. His successor decided that there was no chance he’d give me a job. This is when things started to go bad. I knew what would happen when I started filling out job applications. I would sit for hours finding open positions, tweaking my resume and cover letter, thinking of clever things to say on the application forms, and then I’d send it away into cyberspace where I couldn’t get it back, and I’d wait. And nothing would happen. A very negative view on things, but sadly, the truth. So this is what happened. And I started to drown. I was drowning in my own misery, my own self-pity and worst of all my own laziness. It got to the point that I just wouldn’t try anymore. What was the point? But this wasn’t even the worst of it. It was my own head that became my worst enemy. I wanted to talk to someone I wanted someone to listen how I felt and give me advice, at the very least tell me that it would be ok. But no one did. Who wants to listen to the sob story of a girl without a job? So, the more no one listened, the more I wanted to talk. I started staying up later and sleeping in longer. I couldn’t stand to go to bed at night and be left alone with my thoughts, almost as much as I didn’t want to get up in the morning and face another day of nothing. I procrastinated all my homework, all my chores and even put off going out with my friends. All in all, I was a completely worthless (in my own mind anyway).
I did promise that this was all going to get better though, so if you’re still reading this, keep reading because here it comes.
So here I am. No job, practically no friends, and no motivation whatsoever. Now what? What does someone do when they feel like they’ve hot rock bottom? What is the appropriate period for feeling sorry for yourself? These are the questions I started asking myself, and this is the answer I gave myself:
I came up empty.
I’m still not over the feeling of worthlessness, that no one wants me and that I’ll never be good at anything, but I’m not obsessed anymore. That’s a positive step right? I’ve started putting it behind me and moving on. What is the point of moping and self-pity? What does it get you? This is my happy ending. I wish I could say that everything has worked out fine, that I have a bigger and better job, that I’m making loads of money and can’t even remember what it felt like to be at the bottom. I wish that I could say that all of my dreams have come true, as corny as that may sound, and that the person I imagined myself to be at age 20 was slowly manifesting. That’s not happening. Yet. I am moving on and I do have dreams for the future. I think that’s the main point of this story. Things in life are going to go bad sometimes, but surely there will be a silver lining. So if you’ve made it this far, first of all congratulations. And secondly, keep reading. One day you will be reading the success story of an unemployed.
Dolly's Room (aka folio piece 1)
Two brown eyes, glazed over and still. They watch as nothing changes in this now almost impossibly small room. From her perfect hairline, the fringe that stays perfectly in place day after day, to the chocolate brown eyes, turned upwards portraying a joy that you may not know she is feeling otherwise. Her small button nose is as white and perfect as the rest of her baby smooth skin and her lips. Her rose petal pink lips that don’t move, never utter a sound, like the room around her she doesn’t change. Her perfect features, like her perfect beauty stay still, almost like the still air of a breezeless summer day, hot and stuffy and quiet.
She sits in this room, waiting. With her back against the warmth of the beautiful sunny day creeping in through the crack in the curtains, the sunlight creates a small fracture along the floorboards, where the light shows the dust settling to the ground. Outside, in that sunny day children are playing, running around, careless and happy. She isn’t allowed to join them. Instead, her glassy eyes observe as a small black spider appears in the corner of her eye, spinning its home in an abandoned corner of her room, she can almost feel the air stirring, as it hasn’t done in so long. As the web gets bigger and bigger, and the fracture of light moves slowly across the room, the spider drops from its corner, scuttles across the floor and under the door. The room is still once again.
As her eight-legged companion disappears, she might wonder why it is she can’t go out and play. She has shiny black shoes on her feet, virgin to the dirt of the outside world. Her dress, perfectly creaseless and ruffles all in place has yet to move and dance in the wind of the outside playground. There is a jumper lying around somewhere that could accompany her in case of a cold turn in the weather, and yet she still sits alone.
It has not always been this way, she has not always had to sit quiet and patient, waiting for the door to open after so long, she might remember a time when the room was full of light and dancing and joy. She knows every detail of this room, so she must know how the silence has changed it. From where she sits, the bookshelf is on her left. The rows of musty pages all contained properly within their hard covers, have yet to all be opened. The volumes of tales from around the world are yet to be heard, and for some unfortunate authors, the pages have been left carelessly open, for the words to start fading and disappearing from the pages as the sunlight rests on them briefly everyday.
To her right, the rocking chair is still. Its strong, sturdy legs that so often rocked under her weight where she was cuddled and sometimes even fed, now seem as if they will never remember how to move ever again. The pillows that cushioned the wooden seat seem to have deflated and faded as if the lack of use has somehow caused them to shrivel and lose hope of ever been useful again.
The room has changed. Although some fixtures are taking the abandonment worse than others, the bed is the only one to seem as if nothing has changed, it was after all the first to fall into disuse. The sheets all lined up and neatly tucked into the sides are just as crisp and flat as ever. The pillows still in place after all this time. It is the one sign that the room may be loved once again.
There are other details in the room that still act as reminders of a better time, the short grey lines on the wall with the respective ages beside it, showing the growth of it occupant near the frame of the door, the small crack on the side of the dresser where a tantrum was thrown and the dresser bore the brunt of the foot that kicked it during. The one reminder that her eyes may have been drawn to most regularly though, was the dark spot on the otherwise flawless floorboards where she had once spilt her tea. No one was ever angry with her for it, and now it was just a reminder of her time spent with little girl.
Little Girl was her best friend. She was the cause for the happiness associated with this room and the reason for its desolation now. Her dimpled blindingly white smile was a permanent scar on an otherwise lovely little face. With her sparkling blue eyes and bouncing blond hair, she was the perfect cliché of a perfectly happy child. Each day she would come running in, flinging open the door and racing around her bedroom. She would shove another volume into the already bulging bookshelf, brush past the rocking chair causing the creaking old movement to commence and plop herself down on the bed to catch her breath. She would then slowly stroll to the windowsill to greet her friend and tell her about her day. ‘Dolly’ as Little Girl would affectionately call her would sit and listen about the lessons where little girl had to struggle to stay awake and the tea parties that Little Girl loved to attend with her friends after her lessons. She would be told that little girl had great plans for them that night and would take her over to the door to start their adventure. Then Mother would call and Little Girl would have to take Dolly back to the windowsill before racing downstairs to be carted off to some function or play date, where the room would sit silent for hours until Father carried little girl through the doorway and tucked her into her neatly made bed, Little Girl too exhausted to do so herself. It was this daily routine that Dolly could have marked time by, each day seemed to be the same until one summer when things started to change.
Little Girl still came running in each afternoon, but it seemed that each day she would be a little bit more out of breath as she did so. She seemed to stop paying so much attention to the fluffy teddy bears and plastic toys strewed about her room. If Dolly had noticed these changes, she might have thought they corresponded to Little Girls limbs growing longer and her dimples slowly disappearing from the corners of her cheeks. She might have expected that there would be a day when Little Girl no longer wanted to share the excitement of her day with Dolly or would plan their adventures before being lured away by the sound of mothers voice. Dolly may not have expected Little Girl to stop coming altogether.
So it happened that one day the room was still. No bouncing curls came running through the door, no air was stirred and coated by little girls perfume, the smell of grass and fresh air and scones. No stories, no adventures and no breaking the seal of the laundered sheets and plumped pillows on the bed. Without realising, this is when Dolly started to wait.
Day after day as the silence became more resolute and dust started settling on every surface, it became apparent that Little Girl was not coming back and that this was Dolly’s room now. If Dolly had left, it may have felt that the room no longer existed, that every story told here, that every book opened and every mark on the wall would disappear.
Slowly some noise started penetrating the silence of the room, but these were different sounds, and meant something different for Dolly. The sounds of little feet rushing up the stairs were replaced by heavy, hard footsteps straining to reach the top. Instead of the door swinging open someone would stop outside the door momentarily and move on. Once a heated conversation happened right outside that door, the closest that Dolly got to finding out exactly what was going on in the rest of the house. Father demanding to open the door and empty the room and Mother pleading crying that she couldn’t take it and no good would come. Their footsteps retreated and all was quiet once again. Finally a day came, when without even knowing it, Dolly and her room were to be abandoned. She heard the creaking of the stairs as they strained under the weight of the large suitcases being carried downstairs and she heard muffled voice possibly discussing what was to be done with the rest of the houses belongings. Then the sound of a door being shut. Dolly didn’t know it, but she had just heard the front dor being closed for the last time as Mother and Father left their fairytale home to move to a cramped little apartment near the town’s hospital.
If Dolly had known all this, she might have wanted to go with them. She might have wanted to visit Little Girl at least once if once was all she had and hear about her day. She might have apologised for spilling her tea on the floor and not seeing the signs that a demented disease was worming its way into Little Girl and spreading. She might have preferred anything than sitting keeping watch over a desolate, deserted room and waiting for Little Girl to come running back to her.
So it came that when Mother and Father found out that Little Girl was gone, Dolly would still be sitting and waiting. She would never find out the news herself, instead she would be greeted by some news of her own.
If Dolly had been sleeping that morning, she would have been awakened by the house stirring as the front door opened and the first breath of fresh air swarmed into the open rooms and hallways. She would have heard the voices downstairs, the excitement and joy as windows were opened and boxes were dumped along the walls. The sounds of little feet rushing up the stairway would have made Dolly’s heartbeat quicken as the footsteps approached her door and stopped. As the door swung open, Dolly would have been glad that Little Girl was finally home. That as she walked through the room, directly to Dolly’s sitting place, Dolly would have expected to be told tales of jam and girls in pretty dresses. Instead the little girl that walked in was not Little Girl, instead a mere shadow. This little girl did not bounce as she walked, nor did she smile as she approached. Instead she carefully picked Dolly up and, cradling her in her arms, took Dolly outside her room for the first time ever and carried her downstairs. Dolly lay limp in this little girls arms as she was carried throughout the house, past the movers carting in heavy furniture and to the kitchen where a new mother was standing, waiting. Dolly’s perfect porcelain face was still as she was held up for inspection.
“Look mummy, I found a doll. Can I keep her?”
She sits in this room, waiting. With her back against the warmth of the beautiful sunny day creeping in through the crack in the curtains, the sunlight creates a small fracture along the floorboards, where the light shows the dust settling to the ground. Outside, in that sunny day children are playing, running around, careless and happy. She isn’t allowed to join them. Instead, her glassy eyes observe as a small black spider appears in the corner of her eye, spinning its home in an abandoned corner of her room, she can almost feel the air stirring, as it hasn’t done in so long. As the web gets bigger and bigger, and the fracture of light moves slowly across the room, the spider drops from its corner, scuttles across the floor and under the door. The room is still once again.
As her eight-legged companion disappears, she might wonder why it is she can’t go out and play. She has shiny black shoes on her feet, virgin to the dirt of the outside world. Her dress, perfectly creaseless and ruffles all in place has yet to move and dance in the wind of the outside playground. There is a jumper lying around somewhere that could accompany her in case of a cold turn in the weather, and yet she still sits alone.
It has not always been this way, she has not always had to sit quiet and patient, waiting for the door to open after so long, she might remember a time when the room was full of light and dancing and joy. She knows every detail of this room, so she must know how the silence has changed it. From where she sits, the bookshelf is on her left. The rows of musty pages all contained properly within their hard covers, have yet to all be opened. The volumes of tales from around the world are yet to be heard, and for some unfortunate authors, the pages have been left carelessly open, for the words to start fading and disappearing from the pages as the sunlight rests on them briefly everyday.
To her right, the rocking chair is still. Its strong, sturdy legs that so often rocked under her weight where she was cuddled and sometimes even fed, now seem as if they will never remember how to move ever again. The pillows that cushioned the wooden seat seem to have deflated and faded as if the lack of use has somehow caused them to shrivel and lose hope of ever been useful again.
The room has changed. Although some fixtures are taking the abandonment worse than others, the bed is the only one to seem as if nothing has changed, it was after all the first to fall into disuse. The sheets all lined up and neatly tucked into the sides are just as crisp and flat as ever. The pillows still in place after all this time. It is the one sign that the room may be loved once again.
There are other details in the room that still act as reminders of a better time, the short grey lines on the wall with the respective ages beside it, showing the growth of it occupant near the frame of the door, the small crack on the side of the dresser where a tantrum was thrown and the dresser bore the brunt of the foot that kicked it during. The one reminder that her eyes may have been drawn to most regularly though, was the dark spot on the otherwise flawless floorboards where she had once spilt her tea. No one was ever angry with her for it, and now it was just a reminder of her time spent with little girl.
Little Girl was her best friend. She was the cause for the happiness associated with this room and the reason for its desolation now. Her dimpled blindingly white smile was a permanent scar on an otherwise lovely little face. With her sparkling blue eyes and bouncing blond hair, she was the perfect cliché of a perfectly happy child. Each day she would come running in, flinging open the door and racing around her bedroom. She would shove another volume into the already bulging bookshelf, brush past the rocking chair causing the creaking old movement to commence and plop herself down on the bed to catch her breath. She would then slowly stroll to the windowsill to greet her friend and tell her about her day. ‘Dolly’ as Little Girl would affectionately call her would sit and listen about the lessons where little girl had to struggle to stay awake and the tea parties that Little Girl loved to attend with her friends after her lessons. She would be told that little girl had great plans for them that night and would take her over to the door to start their adventure. Then Mother would call and Little Girl would have to take Dolly back to the windowsill before racing downstairs to be carted off to some function or play date, where the room would sit silent for hours until Father carried little girl through the doorway and tucked her into her neatly made bed, Little Girl too exhausted to do so herself. It was this daily routine that Dolly could have marked time by, each day seemed to be the same until one summer when things started to change.
Little Girl still came running in each afternoon, but it seemed that each day she would be a little bit more out of breath as she did so. She seemed to stop paying so much attention to the fluffy teddy bears and plastic toys strewed about her room. If Dolly had noticed these changes, she might have thought they corresponded to Little Girls limbs growing longer and her dimples slowly disappearing from the corners of her cheeks. She might have expected that there would be a day when Little Girl no longer wanted to share the excitement of her day with Dolly or would plan their adventures before being lured away by the sound of mothers voice. Dolly may not have expected Little Girl to stop coming altogether.
So it happened that one day the room was still. No bouncing curls came running through the door, no air was stirred and coated by little girls perfume, the smell of grass and fresh air and scones. No stories, no adventures and no breaking the seal of the laundered sheets and plumped pillows on the bed. Without realising, this is when Dolly started to wait.
Day after day as the silence became more resolute and dust started settling on every surface, it became apparent that Little Girl was not coming back and that this was Dolly’s room now. If Dolly had left, it may have felt that the room no longer existed, that every story told here, that every book opened and every mark on the wall would disappear.
Slowly some noise started penetrating the silence of the room, but these were different sounds, and meant something different for Dolly. The sounds of little feet rushing up the stairs were replaced by heavy, hard footsteps straining to reach the top. Instead of the door swinging open someone would stop outside the door momentarily and move on. Once a heated conversation happened right outside that door, the closest that Dolly got to finding out exactly what was going on in the rest of the house. Father demanding to open the door and empty the room and Mother pleading crying that she couldn’t take it and no good would come. Their footsteps retreated and all was quiet once again. Finally a day came, when without even knowing it, Dolly and her room were to be abandoned. She heard the creaking of the stairs as they strained under the weight of the large suitcases being carried downstairs and she heard muffled voice possibly discussing what was to be done with the rest of the houses belongings. Then the sound of a door being shut. Dolly didn’t know it, but she had just heard the front dor being closed for the last time as Mother and Father left their fairytale home to move to a cramped little apartment near the town’s hospital.
If Dolly had known all this, she might have wanted to go with them. She might have wanted to visit Little Girl at least once if once was all she had and hear about her day. She might have apologised for spilling her tea on the floor and not seeing the signs that a demented disease was worming its way into Little Girl and spreading. She might have preferred anything than sitting keeping watch over a desolate, deserted room and waiting for Little Girl to come running back to her.
So it came that when Mother and Father found out that Little Girl was gone, Dolly would still be sitting and waiting. She would never find out the news herself, instead she would be greeted by some news of her own.
If Dolly had been sleeping that morning, she would have been awakened by the house stirring as the front door opened and the first breath of fresh air swarmed into the open rooms and hallways. She would have heard the voices downstairs, the excitement and joy as windows were opened and boxes were dumped along the walls. The sounds of little feet rushing up the stairway would have made Dolly’s heartbeat quicken as the footsteps approached her door and stopped. As the door swung open, Dolly would have been glad that Little Girl was finally home. That as she walked through the room, directly to Dolly’s sitting place, Dolly would have expected to be told tales of jam and girls in pretty dresses. Instead the little girl that walked in was not Little Girl, instead a mere shadow. This little girl did not bounce as she walked, nor did she smile as she approached. Instead she carefully picked Dolly up and, cradling her in her arms, took Dolly outside her room for the first time ever and carried her downstairs. Dolly lay limp in this little girls arms as she was carried throughout the house, past the movers carting in heavy furniture and to the kitchen where a new mother was standing, waiting. Dolly’s perfect porcelain face was still as she was held up for inspection.
“Look mummy, I found a doll. Can I keep her?”
Home
well, here it is, my very own blog. I am a creative Writing student, so this is where creative writings will go! I may include some other bits and pieces if I feel like it, but we'll see how we go. feel free to comment, I prefer constructive criticism above all else, so keep that in mind.
Enjoy my work :)
Enjoy my work :)
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