It took a while to get back on my feet after the last redundancy, but I managed to get some contract IT work to cover the bills and although it wasn't great pay and barely covered rent and travel, I added another couple of hundred to the pot, bringing the total to £25,463.40. Not great, but it's something at least. It felt like I was in survival mode the whole of last year.
I did try my hand at starting a business on the side, but really struggled to find anyone who wanted to work with me (and I can't afford to pay anyone). I don't know that many techie people where I am, and those that I do know are already very busy working for someone else. So that quickly fell apart. I'd love to run my own company one day, as there are so many things I want to build that I need extra hands to help with. But until I manage to raise a lot more funds from PAYE work, it seems that I'm destined to work for other people and focus on investing as best I can.
Which is fine, I guess. I'm back to full time work now, albeit still not on brilliant money. I can never seem to get past minimum-ish wage for long, despite having all the skills that employers apparently love and being a happy workaholic. But it has forced me to learn how to stretch every single penny as far as it will go. If I ever did manage to get a well paid job, I'm not sure I would know how to spend all that extra money!
Showing posts with label unemployed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unemployed. Show all posts
14 Jan 2019
30 Nov 2017
Winter's Coming!
This will only be a quick update, as I've taken on extra work to build up a bigger and faster nest egg. I'm also spending a lot of my free time pouring over old economic data for patterns.
However, I've started to pull some of my european investments and switch for cash in preparation for the coming big R. I remember the previous recession incredibly well. In fact, it has scarred me for life - thankfully! In my case, having very clear memories of the year or two leading up to it means that I notice those same patterns when they repeat themselves. When one or two repeat, it gets my attention but the issue normally resolves itself. But right now, all of the economic data is pointing towards a nearing cliff edge. So I'm getting myself ready.
I'll freely admit, I can't predict how quickly each domino will fall. Every recession behaves a bit differently. 2008 was fairly quick to happen and slow to recover. In fact, those of us who started our careers in 2008 still haven't recovered. But we are also hyper aware of changes in the economy, which is to our benefit.
There are multiple signals that I look out for, but the main ones are:
The Housing Market
Property prices have stagnated this year. In most places, they haven't started to decline yet. But London tends to be a catalyst for changes elsewhere and the London market isn't looking great right now. Outside of London, new buyers (the GenY/Millennial/Gen Z crowd) are too strapped down with student debt, low wages and high rents to consider house purchases. So as the older owners are starting to downsize or die off, fewer young customers are queuing up to buy from them. This problem isn't unique to the UK. Australia, Canada, America and elsewhere appear to be suffering the fallout from the same generational divide in wealth. Their housing markets are starting to feel similar pressure. In fact, many are predicting a downright crash and advising clients to stay away for now. Foreign investors in the UK market have started to pull away, leaving only 5% of housing stock owned by overseas buyers rather than 12% in 2010. It could be argued that a decline in house prices is a good thing, as those in their 30s waiting to buy a home and start a family will finally be able to. However, when viewed in conjunction with other economic signs, it suggests a not-so-rosy near future.
Debt Levels
Debt is always something I pay attention to, regardless of how the economy is doing. I have an abnormally old fashioned view of debt compared to most people (all debt is bad), which I don't expect the rest of society to follow. But while I assume there will always be some state, business and personal debt, there is a scale from 'bad' to 'worse' to 'unmanageable'. At present, the Eurozone is nearing the 'unmanageable' end once again. Several debt figures should get people's attention. Individuals already have more debt, credit companies are lending out more debt and state spending is up (and a growing population means that spending will only increase further).
Unemployment Figures
These are interesting, as the data currently shows generally low unemployment. However, the total figures hide the fact that wage growth has flat-lined (as an example, I haven't had a pay rise in real terms in almost 20 years) and 'employed' includes underemployment (forced part time or unskilled jobs), zero hours, temporary contracts, those who have stopped looking for work or claiming job seeker benefits, those classed as self employed (even if not earning), and anyone else who may have simply fallen into the gap. I would be far more interested to know how many people are in full time, living wage or above jobs. And by 'living wage' I mean a salary that can cover basic rent, travel costs, food, pension savings, healthcare, other everyday bills, money to save for a house deposit within 5-10 years and repayment of the average student debt. I don't think those numbers would be so high!
Stock Market Drive
Last year saw big gains for those who were lucky enough to have timed the market correctly. Both the UK and US markets crashed and bounced back up following Brexit and Trump's win and they have continued to soar upwards ever since. The S&P 500 has broken multiple highs and is currently on its way to 2500, and the FTSE 100 has been bumping around the 7500 mark following a similar pattern. There was a market boom just like this before the 2008 crash. Markets were reaching new highs amid cheers from investors, lenders relaxed their standards for lending to buyers (oh, hang on), the housing market began to cool off, panic set in as the number of mortgage defaults increased, then the problem spread outwards to other parts of the economy.
Today, we have the added problem of massive student loans (small mortgages in their own right), Brexit, the myriad problems in the EU (which has only very recently come out of the 2008 recession), China acknowledging their own debt problems (albeit a different situation) and a new creature in the form of subprime car loans in the US. This all feels like déjà vu to me. With the added fun of already non-existent interest rates, backing the BoE into a corner.
Good luck everyone and see you on the other side!
* EDIT: Shout out to the owner of Spicer Lemonade Stand at the Lovebox Festival and her parents for encouraging early entrepreneurial skills! I started my working life selling home-grown tomatoes along our street with my brother and sister and it was an excellent way to learn the basics of business. I hope to see you on Dragon's Den in the not too distant future!
13 Mar 2014
What I Learned From Being Unemployed
I'm in the last few months of my degree and things are getting manic!
I can see the finish line now, so all my energy is going towards not
tripping over before I reach it. I'm doing a full time degree (do not
recommend), a full time job, and a fortnightly weekend job. As a result,
I'm not able to add new posts every single month. However, I did get a
few minutes of down time last week while stuck in bed with some weird
gunky infection disease thing (think that was my brain exploding), and
managed to type out some wordage in my drugged-up state. Reading back,
most of it makes sense. So I'm going to post it here.
In 2007 I was doing pretty well. I had a nice office job working for a property management firm that was only half an hour walk from my house. The pay wasn't terrible for a junior role, and I was only 21 so hadn't yet figured out what I wanted or could do career-wise. The only things I loved were writing books, maths and painting, all of which I was steered away from at school. My previous summer/gap year jobs had mostly involved finance, so getting a permanent role as an accounts clerk was fairly easy. I remember thinking how great it was that my office had a free vending machine where I could get tea, and the library was only a short stroll across the road.
In 2010 the big boss announced that our jobs would now be moving over to India. That summer I was out of work. Just in time for the recession to really hit.
Lesson 1: Ego. Remove.
I collected over 200 rejection emails/letters/calls that year (that doesn't include all the companies that never replied). At 24, to be told unanimously that you are basically crap and unemployable isn't a great feeling. I was barely out of the awkward I-hate-my-face teenager stage. After a few months I had run out of savings, so had to drag my pathetic behind into the job centre and beg for mercy (an experience I hope never to repeat).
It quickly destroyed any preconceptions I had about my own worth and any leftover grammar-school bred entitledness. These days I don't take myself so seriously and never expect automatic favours. I work hard, do the best I can, and have learned not to take it personally if other people don't always respond in a positive way. It has toughened me up. I'm like Lara bloody Croft now (okay, maybe without the humongous bank account and holographic personal butler - although I do have a crazy tech-genius brother and one day I will have that indoor bungee rope. One day!)
Lesson 2: Your parents and teachers are not always right.
Doing well at school, studying hard, getting good grades and regular work experience does NOT guarantee you a job later on. There is no magic formula. Don't be surprised when you discover most of your competitors have all of the above. You need to find a niche. Something you can do better than the majority of your peers.
Lesson 3: Networking.
A term I didn't discover until I got hold of my own computer and started Googling career sites until the early hours of the morning. It's 90% who you know rather than what you know. With most roles not requiring a PhD or equivalent, you can learn the specifics of the job once you're through the door. You just need to get someone on the inside to open the door for you. Which leads me to...
Lesson 4: Self-promotion.
Again, this was new terminology. I hated salesmen. I remember going to a car showroom with a friend as a teenager and getting more and more wound up by the second as this guy in an oddly coloured suit tried to convince my acquaintance to part with his cash for a set of wheels that was far over his budget. And I mostly avoided watching TV due to the annoying commercials that seemed to jump out and smack you in the brain at full volume. I'm a pretty cold, logical sort of person at heart - a bit like a friendly computer. I can very easily switch into character and be the life and soul of the party, but I generally like to be given the facts, when I ask for them, and then left alone to make a decision. Supermarkets irritate the hell out of me with all their epilepsy-inducing strip lights and bright yellow 'HALF PRICE, MOTHER FUCKER' signs everywhere, and that god-awful background music (I'm getting edgy just typing this). That was my idea of sales. I didn't want to be the cause of someone else's misery. Especially not my friends and family. Even the thought of handing someone my CV to pass onto their boss was nauseating.
Basically, I was being too considerate. The harsh truth is that there are billions of people on this planet battling out an existence. You can be friendly and give back to society once you have something to give back. Until then, you do everything you can to pay the bills, get food, and keep a roof over your head so that you aren't dependant on other people's taxes. Most people are too busy with their own lives to consider helping you (bar people like Oprah and Branson, who have clearly made it to the top of the food chain and can now relax occasionally and think about distributing their spare change whilst sipping a G&T). So if you need help then you have to ask for it. I'm now in a position where I can begin to help other people. However, I'm completely wrapped up in my ridiculously busy life and struggle to notice whether I've remembered to eat, let alone who is and isn't happily employed. If someone wants my help then they need to get in my face (literally - I'm fixated on a screen or running chores on auto-pilot most of the day). I'm more than happy to hand copies of CVs to my boss or give someone a fabulous reference, but if someone wants my help then they need to distract me and ask.
Self-promotion also means treating yourself like a business. Advertise your skills and knowledge everywhere you go. Look for places to go. Get yourself to events, gatherings, groups of like-minded people that you can collaborate with, sign up to trade circles and professional forums where you can talk to and learn from people higher up the ladder than you (or perhaps on a different ladder entirely if you want to jump over into a related field). Many of these events have free booze/munchies and the other attendees are generally clever, talented, awesome people! You can't lose.
Lesson 5: The biggest discovery I made - Understanding how and why I work.
Firstly, I am someone who requires routine. Not everyone does. I hadn't realised this until being forced to spend month after month by myself. Without a routine, I go a bit nut-nut. A payroll job forces you to turn up at a fixed location at a set time every day. Everything else in your life gets scheduled around the edges. Because you're in the office until 6pm, the gym has to wait until 6:30pm. Which means you don't eat dinner until 7pm. Then the housework and shopping have to be squeezed into either your lunch break (if you get one) or before work. Which leaves you an hour or so in the evening to study. Add on commuting if you don't live next door. You don't have time to stop and worry about what you should do next. You just attempt to cram in as much as possible when you get the chance. There is a constantly growing 'To-Do List' that never gets completed. You consider yourself lucky if you manage to book a GP or dentist appointment during the week (why do they all seem to be closed outside of office hours?), and you silently curse when someone decides to get married or keel over and die because it means trying to haggle time off during the exact week that all of your colleagues decide to jet off to Majorca. There is no flexibility. High-school and college were pretty much the same. Other people set the schedule and stole the best hours of the day, so you had to fit everything else in the best you could.
I learned that should I ever be in the position to work for myself, my first task will be to plan the year, the month, the week and the day. I'll invest in one of those phones that shouts at you drill Sargent stylee when anything needs doing. If I can get it to yell like the guy in Full Metal Jacket, even better! I will try to schedule the work into the hours where I am most productive (morning/evening) and make sure I can actually get to dentist and GP appointments (my teeth are full of holes and there are several medical things that could have been treated a lot more easily had they not been left to get worse). I had time to catch up with things like that while I was unemployed, but lacked the finances to get things properly fixed, and this has come back to haunt me (surgery is not fun). Routine is my friend. But a routine that I have control over. I now have a routine that benefits my employer. I get a hell of a lot done, but they profit from my work. This needs to change.
The planning thing also applies to the work itself. It bugs me that I'm not able to organise my actual work during office hours. I get there early in a futile attempt at damage control. I start the day with several hundred bits of work that no one in the team has had time to do (through no one's fault - we are just drastically short on staff). I plan to get some of those completed to minimize the number of shouty clients on the phone. There are 23 people in the team and usually 4 of us taking calls. My boss walks in and hands me 3 projects that will take an hour each to complete if I spend all my time on that one task. After an hour, she gives me another project that will take 2 hours minimum to complete. Every few minutes I have calls from angry clients threatening legal/media action if I don't drop everything and sort out their problem. We've been told to prioritise these calls. I also have multiple email accounts that get filled by the minute and other employees walking over to ask questions that I have to stop and answer. Every day the post comes in with hundreds more of the previously mentioned bits of regular work. Around lunchtime my boss will ask if the projects have been done. They rarely are.
The work that does get completed is generally rushed, and I get really irritated at mistakes. I work with money and it needs to be accurate. Some of the work involves very large sums and requires focus. We never get to focus. Constant mega multi-tasking means that errors are constantly made by everyone, which leads to more angry clients. The office needs someone dedicated to just taking calls, but they won't do this. As a result, work either isn't done or is done inaccurately, nothing is organised so we can't give clients any time-lines (which leads to more calls), and everyone is exhausted and getting ill. Staff keep quitting, so we are constantly re-training rather than catching up on the growing backlog of work. Occasionally there will be a meeting where we all sit down, politely freak out over the situation, come up with strategies that take up even more time than the work itself, avoid the major issues of under-staffing and misplacement of existing staff, and start the whole process all over again. So... I've learned that either employed or otherwise, I prefer to have my day at least partly organised in advance if I want to get anything accomplished!
Another related discovery is that my productivity increases in correlation with the amount of guilt I feel about potentially letting people down. I need some sort of outside pressure to really push myself. If self-employed, I would make use of shared office space (or working lunches - I've seen these advertised near by) and join groups where other people hold me accountable for my work. I tested this recently with a few sole traders in my town. We meet up online roughly every fortnight and it makes me want to work harder so that I have something to show them and talk about. There is an additional social benefit to this. I hated being by myself all the time while unemployed. I had no money to go out and no one to talk to at home. The one thing I appreciate about my payroll job is the team itself. I've always been lucky to work with fantastic colleagues, and I would miss the banter. My job changed drastically at the end of last year, so I don't get to socialise much now (except getting yelled at on the phone), but it beats being completely isolated.
Lesson 6: Think outside of the box.
In fact, run far far away from the box. When the obvious option is moved out of your reach, you are forced to reconsider the problem and look elsewhere for answers. During my 'empty year', I took on any job I could to earn extra money - private tutoring, story-boarding for a small production company, offering my Excel skills and sorting out a local business owner's finances (which I could have charged a lot more for in hindsight). I picked up some very useful skills in the process, and discovered there are other ways to earn money outside of a regular payroll job. I went about finding these jobs in completely the wrong way, and wasted a lot of time and energy as a result. But if I lost my job tomorrow then I could probably survive as a freelancer or start my own company if I could get the funding. In fact, I am tempted to do this at some point in the future anyway.
There are still areas that I am aware I need to develop. Sales and marketing is still not my strong point. I am happy being loud and opinionated in certain environments, but I need to expand on this and build my confidence in any environment. Perhaps I should take up a weekend job as a door to door salesman or join a theatre troupe? I need to develop more ways of walking up to total strangers and telling them 'this thing I can create or do is epic! You need this in your life! Give me money and I will make it happen!' And I need to specialise more. I have a few general areas that I am good at (two of which I love and cannot live without, another that I don't mind, and one that I've learned through necessity) and lots of things I can do fairly well if required. They sort of overlap in places. I need to perfect those skills and focus on maybe a couple that I can throw all my energy into and profit from.
I now regard my unemployed year as having been a wonderful opportunity to test out my ability as a potential business owner! At the time it was one of the worst experiences of my life, but looking back I think it did me a lot of good. When things go wrong, there is always something to learn from the experience.
In 2007 I was doing pretty well. I had a nice office job working for a property management firm that was only half an hour walk from my house. The pay wasn't terrible for a junior role, and I was only 21 so hadn't yet figured out what I wanted or could do career-wise. The only things I loved were writing books, maths and painting, all of which I was steered away from at school. My previous summer/gap year jobs had mostly involved finance, so getting a permanent role as an accounts clerk was fairly easy. I remember thinking how great it was that my office had a free vending machine where I could get tea, and the library was only a short stroll across the road.
In 2010 the big boss announced that our jobs would now be moving over to India. That summer I was out of work. Just in time for the recession to really hit.
Lesson 1: Ego. Remove.
I collected over 200 rejection emails/letters/calls that year (that doesn't include all the companies that never replied). At 24, to be told unanimously that you are basically crap and unemployable isn't a great feeling. I was barely out of the awkward I-hate-my-face teenager stage. After a few months I had run out of savings, so had to drag my pathetic behind into the job centre and beg for mercy (an experience I hope never to repeat).
It quickly destroyed any preconceptions I had about my own worth and any leftover grammar-school bred entitledness. These days I don't take myself so seriously and never expect automatic favours. I work hard, do the best I can, and have learned not to take it personally if other people don't always respond in a positive way. It has toughened me up. I'm like Lara bloody Croft now (okay, maybe without the humongous bank account and holographic personal butler - although I do have a crazy tech-genius brother and one day I will have that indoor bungee rope. One day!)
Lesson 2: Your parents and teachers are not always right.
Doing well at school, studying hard, getting good grades and regular work experience does NOT guarantee you a job later on. There is no magic formula. Don't be surprised when you discover most of your competitors have all of the above. You need to find a niche. Something you can do better than the majority of your peers.
Lesson 3: Networking.
A term I didn't discover until I got hold of my own computer and started Googling career sites until the early hours of the morning. It's 90% who you know rather than what you know. With most roles not requiring a PhD or equivalent, you can learn the specifics of the job once you're through the door. You just need to get someone on the inside to open the door for you. Which leads me to...
Lesson 4: Self-promotion.
Again, this was new terminology. I hated salesmen. I remember going to a car showroom with a friend as a teenager and getting more and more wound up by the second as this guy in an oddly coloured suit tried to convince my acquaintance to part with his cash for a set of wheels that was far over his budget. And I mostly avoided watching TV due to the annoying commercials that seemed to jump out and smack you in the brain at full volume. I'm a pretty cold, logical sort of person at heart - a bit like a friendly computer. I can very easily switch into character and be the life and soul of the party, but I generally like to be given the facts, when I ask for them, and then left alone to make a decision. Supermarkets irritate the hell out of me with all their epilepsy-inducing strip lights and bright yellow 'HALF PRICE, MOTHER FUCKER' signs everywhere, and that god-awful background music (I'm getting edgy just typing this). That was my idea of sales. I didn't want to be the cause of someone else's misery. Especially not my friends and family. Even the thought of handing someone my CV to pass onto their boss was nauseating.
Basically, I was being too considerate. The harsh truth is that there are billions of people on this planet battling out an existence. You can be friendly and give back to society once you have something to give back. Until then, you do everything you can to pay the bills, get food, and keep a roof over your head so that you aren't dependant on other people's taxes. Most people are too busy with their own lives to consider helping you (bar people like Oprah and Branson, who have clearly made it to the top of the food chain and can now relax occasionally and think about distributing their spare change whilst sipping a G&T). So if you need help then you have to ask for it. I'm now in a position where I can begin to help other people. However, I'm completely wrapped up in my ridiculously busy life and struggle to notice whether I've remembered to eat, let alone who is and isn't happily employed. If someone wants my help then they need to get in my face (literally - I'm fixated on a screen or running chores on auto-pilot most of the day). I'm more than happy to hand copies of CVs to my boss or give someone a fabulous reference, but if someone wants my help then they need to distract me and ask.
Self-promotion also means treating yourself like a business. Advertise your skills and knowledge everywhere you go. Look for places to go. Get yourself to events, gatherings, groups of like-minded people that you can collaborate with, sign up to trade circles and professional forums where you can talk to and learn from people higher up the ladder than you (or perhaps on a different ladder entirely if you want to jump over into a related field). Many of these events have free booze/munchies and the other attendees are generally clever, talented, awesome people! You can't lose.
Lesson 5: The biggest discovery I made - Understanding how and why I work.
Firstly, I am someone who requires routine. Not everyone does. I hadn't realised this until being forced to spend month after month by myself. Without a routine, I go a bit nut-nut. A payroll job forces you to turn up at a fixed location at a set time every day. Everything else in your life gets scheduled around the edges. Because you're in the office until 6pm, the gym has to wait until 6:30pm. Which means you don't eat dinner until 7pm. Then the housework and shopping have to be squeezed into either your lunch break (if you get one) or before work. Which leaves you an hour or so in the evening to study. Add on commuting if you don't live next door. You don't have time to stop and worry about what you should do next. You just attempt to cram in as much as possible when you get the chance. There is a constantly growing 'To-Do List' that never gets completed. You consider yourself lucky if you manage to book a GP or dentist appointment during the week (why do they all seem to be closed outside of office hours?), and you silently curse when someone decides to get married or keel over and die because it means trying to haggle time off during the exact week that all of your colleagues decide to jet off to Majorca. There is no flexibility. High-school and college were pretty much the same. Other people set the schedule and stole the best hours of the day, so you had to fit everything else in the best you could.
I learned that should I ever be in the position to work for myself, my first task will be to plan the year, the month, the week and the day. I'll invest in one of those phones that shouts at you drill Sargent stylee when anything needs doing. If I can get it to yell like the guy in Full Metal Jacket, even better! I will try to schedule the work into the hours where I am most productive (morning/evening) and make sure I can actually get to dentist and GP appointments (my teeth are full of holes and there are several medical things that could have been treated a lot more easily had they not been left to get worse). I had time to catch up with things like that while I was unemployed, but lacked the finances to get things properly fixed, and this has come back to haunt me (surgery is not fun). Routine is my friend. But a routine that I have control over. I now have a routine that benefits my employer. I get a hell of a lot done, but they profit from my work. This needs to change.
The planning thing also applies to the work itself. It bugs me that I'm not able to organise my actual work during office hours. I get there early in a futile attempt at damage control. I start the day with several hundred bits of work that no one in the team has had time to do (through no one's fault - we are just drastically short on staff). I plan to get some of those completed to minimize the number of shouty clients on the phone. There are 23 people in the team and usually 4 of us taking calls. My boss walks in and hands me 3 projects that will take an hour each to complete if I spend all my time on that one task. After an hour, she gives me another project that will take 2 hours minimum to complete. Every few minutes I have calls from angry clients threatening legal/media action if I don't drop everything and sort out their problem. We've been told to prioritise these calls. I also have multiple email accounts that get filled by the minute and other employees walking over to ask questions that I have to stop and answer. Every day the post comes in with hundreds more of the previously mentioned bits of regular work. Around lunchtime my boss will ask if the projects have been done. They rarely are.
The work that does get completed is generally rushed, and I get really irritated at mistakes. I work with money and it needs to be accurate. Some of the work involves very large sums and requires focus. We never get to focus. Constant mega multi-tasking means that errors are constantly made by everyone, which leads to more angry clients. The office needs someone dedicated to just taking calls, but they won't do this. As a result, work either isn't done or is done inaccurately, nothing is organised so we can't give clients any time-lines (which leads to more calls), and everyone is exhausted and getting ill. Staff keep quitting, so we are constantly re-training rather than catching up on the growing backlog of work. Occasionally there will be a meeting where we all sit down, politely freak out over the situation, come up with strategies that take up even more time than the work itself, avoid the major issues of under-staffing and misplacement of existing staff, and start the whole process all over again. So... I've learned that either employed or otherwise, I prefer to have my day at least partly organised in advance if I want to get anything accomplished!
Another related discovery is that my productivity increases in correlation with the amount of guilt I feel about potentially letting people down. I need some sort of outside pressure to really push myself. If self-employed, I would make use of shared office space (or working lunches - I've seen these advertised near by) and join groups where other people hold me accountable for my work. I tested this recently with a few sole traders in my town. We meet up online roughly every fortnight and it makes me want to work harder so that I have something to show them and talk about. There is an additional social benefit to this. I hated being by myself all the time while unemployed. I had no money to go out and no one to talk to at home. The one thing I appreciate about my payroll job is the team itself. I've always been lucky to work with fantastic colleagues, and I would miss the banter. My job changed drastically at the end of last year, so I don't get to socialise much now (except getting yelled at on the phone), but it beats being completely isolated.
Lesson 6: Think outside of the box.
In fact, run far far away from the box. When the obvious option is moved out of your reach, you are forced to reconsider the problem and look elsewhere for answers. During my 'empty year', I took on any job I could to earn extra money - private tutoring, story-boarding for a small production company, offering my Excel skills and sorting out a local business owner's finances (which I could have charged a lot more for in hindsight). I picked up some very useful skills in the process, and discovered there are other ways to earn money outside of a regular payroll job. I went about finding these jobs in completely the wrong way, and wasted a lot of time and energy as a result. But if I lost my job tomorrow then I could probably survive as a freelancer or start my own company if I could get the funding. In fact, I am tempted to do this at some point in the future anyway.
There are still areas that I am aware I need to develop. Sales and marketing is still not my strong point. I am happy being loud and opinionated in certain environments, but I need to expand on this and build my confidence in any environment. Perhaps I should take up a weekend job as a door to door salesman or join a theatre troupe? I need to develop more ways of walking up to total strangers and telling them 'this thing I can create or do is epic! You need this in your life! Give me money and I will make it happen!' And I need to specialise more. I have a few general areas that I am good at (two of which I love and cannot live without, another that I don't mind, and one that I've learned through necessity) and lots of things I can do fairly well if required. They sort of overlap in places. I need to perfect those skills and focus on maybe a couple that I can throw all my energy into and profit from.
I now regard my unemployed year as having been a wonderful opportunity to test out my ability as a potential business owner! At the time it was one of the worst experiences of my life, but looking back I think it did me a lot of good. When things go wrong, there is always something to learn from the experience.
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