Intermitent Display Of Emotions

[wheatbiscuit]

13 hours ago, pdallair91 said:

I haven't made much of an effort to find a new job.  So far, I've updated my resume and applied for a single job.  I'm an honest and simple guy.  I keep my resume short and to the point.  The job posting was we are looking for X of Y with 2 years of Z experience.  I was X of Y with ~10 years of Z experience.  Seriously, it's almost like I was applying for something adjacent to what I was just laid off from.  And yet, my application seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

The whole process feels so tedious and futile; I feel commodified - stripped of all ideas and personality - every step of the way.  It doesn't matter how honest and deep you look at yourself, just sprinkle as many buzzwords as you can on your profile/resume, call it a "skill", call it "experience", and hope to God someone gets tricked into selecting you.  Curiosity, ambition, ideas, values?  If you don't have the means to make it happen yourself, put all that aside, shut up, sit down, and do what you are told.  Like God damn, even dating apps are better than this and I've been single (no benefits) for >10 years.  Can I at least get a "sorry but not interested" from this 1 employer?  Sheesh...

Whenever I do a "what are my values" quiz or whatever, "honesty/authenticity" comes up all the time near the top for me.  However, it seems like we live in a grifter's paradise these days.  Being honest and accurate is for losers, it seems.  Spread misinformation about yourself, others, and the world at large, it's all about quantity and not quality.  That's the monster (i.e. the abyss) I feel I am up against, the type I am encouraged to become and it disgusts me.

I don't know what the point of all this is meant to be.  Maybe I'm just ranting. *sigh* ... honestly, I don't "really" want to work for anyone else on some "bigtech" product... I just don't want to have to worry about rent, food, and medical expenses while I do my best to make myself and others feel a bit better somehow.  I feel too tired and frustrated for large ambitions right now.  I just want to feel safe and welcome.  Is that too much to ask for?  Apparently so...

When my mom was rejoining the workforce, she was lucky enough to be recognised by old workmates from 10+ years previously. I've heard that some people don't even like the word 'authentic' now - me, I think any term can be called a buzzword if overused. I just played Charles Wright's 'Express Yourself' twice because it popped into my head, as a lot of older things do when I'm feeling challenged. Anyway, my mom sort of treats the world like a village (I am at risk of turning that into a buzz word now). Even the person who's been helping me in finding new work has now said that the world is small (they will be in new work too soon, handing me to another person in the agency) - because we're likely to recognise each other socially, but also maybe because one way or another, we're supposed to recognise certain qualities first in other people, then they come into focus fully (again, perhaps). Do you let or encourage people to make big impressions on you? I wouldn't now underestimate the value of remembering probably small things others have said or done but meant a lot to me, then bringing them up, because it can be very flattering. Then it's like I'm suddenly welcome in their life. Had I known that and found better outlets than gaming earlier in my life to process and wait until people needed it.. retreating into my head might never have posed such a problem. We shouldn't give up so easily.

~ Matt

[Pochatok]

23 hours ago, pdallair91 said:

Whenever I do a "what are my values" quiz or whatever, "honesty/authenticity" comes up all the time near the top for me. 

Hey, I hear you- same is for me. And indeed, the current predominant modes of social interaction, be it dating apps or employment, do not favor that. In fact, that is very much discouraged. What you're doing is so brave- I'm glad you do not compromise on your values!

I'm not sure how difficult it is for you to find employment places where honesty/authenticity would be valuable... I too am searching for those- it seems that places like that do not pay much, and are very community/social-focused. Informal education, mutual aid nonprofits (like providing free counselling), etc.. 

I'm sorry you've had so much struggle from living by your values- it certainly does not need to be that way.

[Vee]

23 hours ago, pdallair91 said:

I haven't made much of an effort to find a new job.  So far, I've updated my resume and applied for a single job.  I'm an honest and simple guy.  I keep my resume short and to the point.  The job posting was we are looking for X of Y with 2 years of Z experience.  I was X of Y with ~10 years of Z experience.  Seriously, it's almost like I was applying for something adjacent to what I was just laid off from.  And yet, my application seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

The whole process feels so tedious and futile; I feel commodified - stripped of all ideas and personality - every step of the way.  It doesn't matter how honest and deep you look at yourself, just sprinkle as many buzzwords as you can on your profile/resume, call it a "skill", call it "experience", and hope to God someone gets tricked into selecting you.  Curiosity, ambition, ideas, values?  If you don't have the means to make it happen yourself, put all that aside, shut up, sit down, and do what you are told.  Like God damn, even dating apps are better than this and I've been single (no benefits) for >10 years.  Can I at least get a "sorry but not interested" from this 1 employer?  Sheesh...

Whenever I do a "what are my values" quiz or whatever, "honesty/authenticity" comes up all the time near the top for me.  However, it seems like we live in a grifter's paradise these days.  Being honest and accurate is for losers, it seems.  Spread misinformation about yourself, others, and the world at large, it's all about quantity and not quality.  That's the monster (i.e. the abyss) I feel I am up against, the type I am encouraged to become and it disgusts me.

I don't know what the point of all this is meant to be.  Maybe I'm just ranting. *sigh* ... honestly, I don't "really" want to work for anyone else on some "bigtech" product... I just don't want to have to worry about rent, food, and medical expenses while I do my best to make myself and others feel a bit better somehow.  I feel too tired and frustrated for large ambitions right now.  I just want to feel safe and welcome.  Is that too much to ask for?  Apparently so...

 

I relate to a lot of that. The course I'm on has an employability module, and there's a lot of "be yourself!" alongside "Do X, Y and Z otherwise you're putting yourself at a disadvantage". I hate all the bollocks involved in getting a job, which is why I've dragged my feet over updating my CV and applying for jobs.

I've been single for ten years as well, and haven't touched a dating app in seven years(?). I don't think you are penalised for authenticity in the same way there, but I can't feel authentic on a dating profile when I know I'm being selective about what I do and don't mention. That's true in real-life interactions too, but it doesn't feel so...manipulative.

[Ikar]

On 4/16/2024 at 6:35 PM, pdallair91 said:

The whole process feels so tedious and futile; I feel commodified - stripped of all ideas and personality - every step of the way. 

Sending a CV is the first (and out of necessity formal) step in applying for a job. Building rapport is for the interview itself and for the trial period. It's not personal that company X doesn't reply to your CV. Maybe their HR is overloaded. Maybe the job offer isn't current. Maybe there are some hidden conditions they don't mention. Maybe some people applied before you and they're having interviews with them before (and if) they get to you.  You can't know, so there's no reason to worry about it.

What I did in the past (some 3-4 years ago) was to find companies that I felt were relevant to me as a potential employer (that is, even without them explicitly offering a job). I jammed every email adress I could find into Bcc, wrote something short, attached my CV. I did that maybe twice or thrice. I'm sure I sent out hundreds of emails this way. From all those emails, I was at around 30 interviews. Maybe 5 turned out to be profitable (gave me courses at some point) and maybe 5 others came back to me later.

But before I started that, I was also hung up on getting a response/interview/job from "that one company". Now I can turn them down, because I don't need them anymore and I have better paid courses.

-

As for the dicussion about authenticity that @wheatbiscuit @Pochatok and @Vee expanded on: I found out that honesty and authenticity works great in my life. But (and this is a big BUT), there's also a lot of "catching up" to do with others, at least at first.

We've rebuilt ourselves since admitting the gaming issue. Some more, some less. Depending on how much we still identify with our "gaming past/gaming trouble", it will influence the conversations we have and the relationships we have.

We all here joined this forum, because we understood we had a serious problem. Gaming is/was our drug of choice. Even being among addicts is often troublesome on its own. Some people will damn us for that outright just out of their strange principle that we're not "normal". And even if we never had a gaming problem, people are people and some people don't like others just because.