How’s the job hunt going?

😩 Slowly! The organisation I interviewed with a couple of weeks ago has started their background checks on me, and they’re really intensive. Not even the NHS cared to examine my history this deeply. I’ve had to engage with the Disclosure and Barring Service’s sensitive applications team, and now my checks are halted pending a photocopy of my degree certificate.

🎓 I graduated twenty years ago. Twenty years ago! I have no idea where my certificate is. No-one ever, in the last twenty years, asked to see it. And even if I did have it, all it proves is that I once learned something that’s now clearly out-of-date anyway.

😕 So honestly, I’m starting to think I might just be unemployable now and I’m not sure what to do about that.

Where did I go?

👎 Nowhere. I’ve been in a bad mood.

🐿️ I saw a squirrel. Actually, I saw about a thousand, but this one said they wanted to jump on me. I said no.

What did I eat?

🍞 I went back to The Octagon. I had the veggie breakfast with something like eight slices of sourdough toast added on the side. The staff triple-checked that I was sure I wanted that much toast. The table was too small for all the toast. I have no fucking regrets.

🥘 I made a slow-cook… thing. I drew a Venn diagram of the sets of what I like to eat and what Alex likes to eat, then I put the intersection into a pot and cooked it for 12 hours. I’m a veggie-leaning omnivore and Alex is an adorable little fusspot, so the intersection is basically Alex’s set. But remember, folks: the trick to filling your tummy is lentils. A cup of dried red split lentils in my slow-cooks fills me up proper.

What did I drink?

🍷 Alex wasn’t loving their job, so I encouraged them to quit. This was all on the assumption that I had a job offer on the way and I’d be starting any day now. Ha ha! Oh God, I’m fucked. Anyway, Alex treated us to a bottle of Co-op Fairtrade Shiraz Rosé to celebrate. It was incredible! Plus I really needed a drink! Ha ha! Oh God, oh no. Ha!

I played…

📎 Pachinkremental. It’s bloody good.

I learned…

🎭 From my late-night drunken cry-posting, I learned I have some unresolved sadness about choosing computer science as a career.

I listened to…

🎵 Absolutely nothing new. I’ve been in a fussy funk.

🎮 I rediscovered the Fez cover albums FZ: Side F and FZ: Side Z.

🕰️ Very much especially Coda’s The Clock Master (Sync/Majesty).

I watched…

🔥 I started watching Helluva Boss a couple of weeks ago, and I said I hated it. But I stuck with it, and now that I’ve finished the first season… oh my good lord. It took its time and made some mistakes along the way, but it’s an absolutely beautiful tragedy.

🥵 The first time I ever heard about The Hot Wing King was this trailer for The National Theatre. I went in blind, and came out absolutely bloody beaming.

I read…

📅 I really like Martin’s style of week-noting with the daily breakdown of music and quotations. His writing is sad in an earthly way that makes me feel human.

I’m perturbed by…

🙁 I’m unemployable.

🙁 My next HMRC payment-on-account on January will wipe out the last of my savings.

💧 And also, my landlord still hasn’t fixed the leaking boiler.

🔥 And my fire alarm is still broken.

🙁 I’m terrified to think about all the things I’m too old to do now, but I can’t stop and it’s devastating.

🙁 I’m fucked.

What’s coming up?

🤨 Screaming.

I need to remember…

☑️ This whole thing might be a bipolar episode.

☑️ Keep screaming.