Down but not out...

Wow, it's certainly been the longest since I last wrote an entry in this blog. Unfortunately things are unlikely to change any time soon. Things are on a bit of a downer at the moment.

I'm now going through the longest period of unemployment in my life. I've had no joy with job agencies, sending CVs off to as many places as I can or on some weeks even finding jobs to apply for.

I've even bitten the bullet and signed up for Jobseekers Allowance. It's better than zero income but I have to prove that I am applying for 3 jobs a week which can be hard when some weeks I'm lucky if I can find one appropriate job.

I absolutely love IT and technology, have management experience but evidently never enough for any of the jobs out there. It's as if my career has gone in the wrong direction and seriously needs a reboot.

Giving up programming years ago was a big mistake and whilst I am keeping myself up-to-date with various languages and technologies, it's not worth a lot to me so long as nobody is interested in hiring me and gives me a chance to apply my knowledge.

Head's up, stiff upper-lip and all that but it's still hard to not feel down about the way things in the last 12 months have gone.

A year ago, I had a good well-paid job, was getting married and looking forward to moving to a new house with my future wife.

On the down side:
- I have spent more than 6 months out of the last 12 unemployed and cannot afford to move.
- The longer I'm unemployed, the harder it may well start to get to explain to potential employers what I have been doing with my life.
- My savings are dwindling away. This is money that was for our future and is now being used up by me in the present instead.

On the up side:
- I have a lovely wife who has helped tremendously to keep my spirits up as much as possible. Marrying her was by far the best thing that has ever happened to me in my life.
- I have no mortgage. Thankfully we didn't move last year, otherwise we would have been struggling financially big time to meet payments.
- I've had time to spend some of my money in driving lessons and have now passed my theory test. It's an investment as some jobs benefit from being able to drive from place-to-place.
- I have had time to read up on programming (C# and ASP.NET), project management (PRINCE2) and general management techniques. More so than when I was employed and in the thick of things.

My typical day consists of job hunting in the morning with a break for lunch and a load of reading or programming in the afternoon.

I know I have to be positive but at the moment I just want a salary so that I can un-pause my life and get on with doing things...