7 Things I've Tried Not To Delude Myself Into Whilst Unemployed

Ranging from childish endevours to actual hard work, being unemployed has left me broke, stupid and a feeling of angst I haven't felt since the first, second, third and fourth time I watched Donnie Darko when I was 15. So as I come to my first full-year of unemployment in 5 years, I have a  few thoughts on things and a few things I've glad I've learnt from my experience of sitting at home, being alone and writing almost consistently, daily.

1. Building a fort is a bad idea.
   Being male and being bored are two inherently productive things. We find solace in creating and building things. Whether it's the digital blocks of Minecraft or the towering skyscrapers in Abu Dabai. But the greatest thing in human history is making an impenetrable force made of the comfiest material known to man: Blankets and pillows.

   

   My First-In-Command

   
   
   
   
   I thought about this for half an hour yesterday and realised that my bed is probably no where near a good enough size nor do I have any good supports to actually keep my blanket as a good roof top. I thought I'd sling it over my TV and my chest of drawers but opted out, due to fear of ruining an $800 dollar TV, something I bought before I was fired last year.
   So at the moment my plans for a fort have been put on hold until I can get the mandatory paper work done to gain access to the kitchen and also an old TV and maybe getting an old console online...oh wait...I don't have an money. B'AWWWWWWWWWWW

   

   AND: An artist's rendering.

   
   
2. Gaming Achievements aren't really achievements
   The actual purchasing of a game, from a store, still gives my heart aflutter due to the acquisition of something with a tangible, physical value makes me feel important, it's sad I know, I understand that, but when I buy something online I kinda don't get that. Whether it's through the content delivery system of Steam or PSN, I just feel hollow, like the transferring of PayPal money has sucked something else out of me (other than PayPal's slightly ludicrous transfer fees).

   

   More ludicrous than the rapper of the same name

   
   
   But there is a silver lining, like with any game, the completion of a task to get the completely valueless achivements is what truly makes me feel incredible. I recently finished The Saboteur and upon the final Nazi tossing himself to his death (Didn't have the heart to shoot him, or I was finishing a can of tuna; can't remember), a small little box popped up in the corner telling me I had finished the game and that a tiny Golden Trophy was mine, allllll miiiiiiine!

   

   Thanks for the reminder...

   But then the credits rolled and Nina Simone's classic song Feeling Good, was the only thing that truly made me feel...good. I, then purchased Crazy Taxi, in a fit of stupidity after my good friend told me she still had a Dreamcast and she still had Crazy Taxi and that I should have bought Pac-Man Championship. I slammed the phone down, only to realise moments later she was right. Pac-Man Championship is vastly superior.
   So I finished Borderlands yesterday and am finishing God of War 3 at the moment and yesterday I made it up to Aphrodite's temple, in which Kratos bangs the ethereal brains out of the Goddess, all the while two giggling girls comment on the side and provide the most comedy relief, this side of butchering random undeserving civilians.

   

   My bad.

   Upon Aphrodite possibly creaming herself like a mechanical eclair, I received an achievement, 'Ladies Man', basically showing me that I had fucked a Goddess and was being rewarded, but you know what the reality of the situation was? I had pressed a few buttons and toggled a left analogue stick (although there was a motion of that that would be helpful during foreplay) and I was sitting in my underwear in a remotely comfortable position with the world's stupidest grin.
   I think I'm gonna start drinking early.

   

   Good morning, breakfast.

   
   
3. Resumés are only as good as you can write and lie.
   I think one of the biggest problems I have is that my honesty often seeps through in my CV's or in my resume. People constantly keep telling me to fake it till you make it, mainly my mum, which makes me wonder how she got her job. I will lie about a lot of things, people I've met, games I've played, movie's I like, certain turn-on's and turn off's, but I just can't lie on a job. It's like lying in a relationship, you're bound to be found out eventually. At any point I would put a lie on my resumé, I would worry myself into nausea due to the fact I'd think of the one thing they'd mention or focus on they would call me upon or at the very least ask me to do. It's like my life has turned into a rolling sitcom in which case my follies are incresingly ramped up based on a sheet of paper.

   

   This is my life and it's ending one roll at a time

   So I try and build my way around lies, I mention things I've done at Uni, then mention things I'm doing at Uni, I mention plays I've written and a zine I've created, I mention I have excellent typing skills and can learn fast (a lie) and still I don't have a job. I guess all that guilt has just manifested itself into being unemployable.

   

   Poor bastard, probably never lied on his resumé either.

   
   
4. I should be spending this time writing and not online wasting my time.
   Every minute I'm on my computer and not writing something, my eyes strain, my heart seems to beat just a bit faster and I begin to sweat under my hands. Other than the increasingly hot laptop, due to an incompetant laptop 'expert' and sheer laziness that I haven't been bothered to fix, I feel that this piece of space-age technology is sapping my life away. Every minute I spend on digg or on this blog is just another minute of my life I will definitely not get back unless I start smoking, quit and take up jogging, Forrest Gump style.

   

   AND: Give or take 5 years.

   
   So at the moment of writing this I have to realise that when I do write something and it's read by a few people that I will probably never get to have this chance when I have a job or at least employed not as a writer or at a place without internet access. I feel that the internet is my life blood from time to time. Being connected helps me be social, being on YouTube helps me be entertained, listening to podcasts and watching documentaries, helps me be informed and so on and so forth, but I have this counteractive play, in which, I delude myself into thinking that if I don't use the internet now or do something now, I really won't get a chance later on or I'll miss something important or I'll simply just run out of interest for said thing and eventually fall down a slippery slope where I used to like something and now I can barely remember it, like 90's nostalgia.

   

   Sadly, I still remember you guys.

   
   So at this moment in time, I plan only being online unless I:
   A) Need to be, i.e. checking eBay, Facebook, email, etc.
   B) Have to be i.e. I have to do Uni work or someone is sending me something
   or C) Have something to say i.e. this blog
   Other than that I'll be confined to a pen and a piece of paper or slowly finishing God of War 3, oh wait hang on.
   D) Need to look up a walkthrough because I get so frustrated I make a dent in the wall and am looking for the easiest way to cover it up

   

   It's okay, I'm on HowTo right now.

   
   
5. Being a DJ is not a job...yet
   I've had to come to terms with the fact I'm not a musician a long time ago. I don't have an original bone in my body, considering most of my blood and organs have been slowly rotting away internally for at least 19 years thanks to asthma, cake and soda.

   

   YOU FUCKING BASTARD!

   But one thing I haven't come to terms with yet is that I could possibly be a DJ. It's been a passion always hanging in the back of my head. When I was younger, I would make mix tapes all the time. We had a CD stacker and I would put on my favourite CD's into it and have a tape placed in one of the slots so I could record my favourite tracks, through it onto a deck, dance around or play some games all to the sweet sounds of Sheryl Crow, Paul Simon, Michael Jackson or Run DMC.
   

   

   REMEMBER MEEEEEEEEEEEE!

   
   I've had admiration as I got older for remixers and eventually upon seeing 2 Many DJ's live this year and learning about Girl Talk, my mind was blown wide open to the possibility of me, a 19 year old kid with no musical or DJ experience, to being an actual DJ or at least a musical person.

   

   Pictured: A Musical Person
   So as it stands right now, I have minor experience, still make mistakes in tracks and only done the following:

   
   
   Released 2 demo's and no matter how much I think they're called 'albums', they really aren't.
   Performed live twice. The first time was a competition, in which I came 2^nd out of 3 which is almost as coming last in two person race. The second time, in which, I performed for four hours, only to have the remaining two hours be with people who either A) pitied me, B)were my friends or C) Both.
   So right now, I have a gig lined up in a fortnight for a friend's birthday. If anyone in NSW, needs a DJ for cheap, you know, I'm here, with hope....and delusion.

   

   DJ's: The Loneliest Partiers

   
   
6. Being a blogger is not a job and listening to podcasts doesn't necessarily make you smart
   I've found that over my month as a blogger that it is not a job. A job is something you are paid for. A job is something you have skills for. For being a blogger, you require neither of these things. All you need is an opinion and an opinion isn't something that is difficult to acquire or hard to attain. Skyline was shit. That is an opinion, it's a mighty and shared opinion, but it is a two dimentional opinion at that, it has an existing opinion as well which brings it's level down, making it unoriginal, vapid and completely unreadable, but you just read it, or I hope you just read and not just reading this part here which referred to a joke that you missed two points ago, rubber fish dustbin.

   

   Whooo, inside joke!

   
   But the fact that I've been a blogger for over a month has lead me to believe that my opinion may or may not be useful. Last month alone I had over a thousand people visit the site and whilst almost 1/3 of those were Austrlian and 1/10 were just people who had found images on my site and were either downloading them or masturbating to them, I still felt a sense of pride that my work was being read.
   This sense of pride, which will always falter, was brought to a higher point when I thought, you know what my gaming needs, a background voice. I started downloading and listening to podcasts left and right to pseudo-multi-task in my leisurely life. I was blowing up Nazi guard towers and throwing extremely well tuned cars down dark sepia toned alleys, all the while listening to the guys from JoBlo talk about how Skyline was probably the worst movie they'd seen in a while and I laughed and I enjoyed every second of their discussion, all the while a strange sense of pride.
   Podcasts, or rather some podcasts, are essentially talking blogs except for entertainment ones or celebrity ones. I find solace more in people like Ricky Gervais, the Joblo team, Ash and Anthony Burch and John Safran, so I guess their opinions and thoughts matter more to me because I'm more like minded with them, or at least I like to think I am. Gervais' team helps me learn new things about the world and enjoy their berating of Karl as he continues down the garden path of life and makes me feel better about the world.
   The Joblo guys keep me afloat with movie news and give me ideas of new movies to watch, but also helps my current bi-tri-quad?-weekly daily drinking problem not look so bad.
   The Hey Ash guys show me that being nerdy and being awesome are one and the same and that you will go through a lot of shit and it's hard work to get to your dreams and to your dream job. Also The God Train is coming to kill everyone.
   And finally John Safran, who's work, introspection and originality never fails to make me smile, laugh and think about the cultural divides we have in life, whether it's music, religion, love or simply wanting to go to Mike Munro's house and treat him like an arm-chair general over people's lives.
   The point I'm trying to make is this:

   

   I hate this movie.

   
   
7. Things Could Be Worse and a Job isn't Everything
   If there is one thing I've learnt about my year of unemployment is that my life could be and has been a lot worse. I broke up with my girlfriend at the end of last year and destroyed a fruitful and honest relationship in the process due to insecurities and stupidity over a job and things I personally couldn't comprehend at the time. I wasn't happy in the job, in the slightest, I was tired, I was nervous and I was completely underqualified for the job and I hated every second I was on the phone. My grandmother currently has cancer and my nights have been mostless sleepless due to relatives being drunk, annoying and loud as fuck and my own worrying for my grandmother's health and I don't think I could handle a job at the moment.
   What I can handle is the support of people like you, who read this and playing video games and making demos and writing. My God, writing has helped me a lot this year. I have learnt a lot from my Creative Writing degree (and for those of you who just sniggered can go fuck yourself and try and write a chapter of a novel in a matter of weeks and try not to deal with the crippling criticism of your peers or the constant second-triple-quadruple-pentaple-guessing you will never let go even once you've handed in the multi-paged document), in certain techniques and doing actual plays and getting criticism has taught me what I need to improve and focus on.
   Not necessarily in a Fight Club, yeah, fuck the system, kind of way, but just in an honest human being kind of way, a job really isn't anything and people aren't and shouldn't be defined by their careers. They should be defined by the content of their character, the love in their heart and the skills they possess...okay, now I think I might be delusional.
8. PLEASE EMPLOY ME.