Sneaking onto the Market

We are taught how to sneak onto the market, as if the employers wouldn't notice us. "Most jobs never reach the ads", says Karin at the Employment Agency when I call her. "Sign up on their websites, introduce yourself at the workplace, leave your CV everywhere. Then maybe next time they're looking to hire they'll rather call you than the other 400 people in line if it goes out as an ad."

She's right, of course. Making an impression is vital. But to me it sounds a bit like a few generations ago, when there was plenty of work wherever you asked. Now, if we just go to a workplace and introduce ourselves like in the old days, maybe opportunities for work will magically appear. Financial crisis solved!

I watch the TV show "Lyxfällan" and feel sorry for the poor bastards. Living above their resources until they crash down mentally on the TV screen, wondering how they could ever end up in a trap like this. They have credit cards, ten or twenty of them, and use them for luxuries, to consume, to create an echo of a Hollywood life in a Svensson home. They are basically kids who were never taught what money was. That if you don't have any, you can't pay for things. Simple logic, to me. But then again - what do I own?

I have one credit card, a gas station card. I use it for tight spots when I really need to use it and really can't afford it at the moment. It took me years before even getting that one. I don't wanna end up losing control over my finances to such a point where the big minus sign one day outweighs the considerably smaller plus sign.

Of course, with my humble finances, it's easy enough to stay in control. The mantra goes "Don't Buy Things You Don't Need", with a few plausible exceptions here and there for a candy bar.

There is a jar in my cupboard, a glass jar that I labelled Paradise Falls, after watching brilliant Pixar movie Up. I had a few bills in it yesterday. That was before I had to go grocery shopping. Now there are some poor coins rumbling about in the bottom, and I know that is what I have to last me another 2 weeks before salary comes.

Unemployment money still hasn't arrived. 2 months have gone by.

But at least my freezer is full of food. At least I'm pretty much alive still. And at least I have heat and the lights on. I'm not the myth of J.K. RowlingJ.K. Rowling yet.

POET in the GLASS JAR

Writing her way to sanity