Someone handed me an ad for a Graphic Designer yesterday, and I had a spark of excitement followed by despair. I've spent most of the last decade unemployed, and at this point, I no longer know what's excuses, what's genuinely holding me back, if there's any hope, or who to listen to.
In 2009, I was living off a government grant and two loans, but I was in college full-time, a first-generation college student, I was a single parent raising a child, and I also worked part-time at the school. My GPA wasn't great, but my major-specific classes I generally got A's and B's in, my daughter and I were close, and I had friends.
Things happened, and shortly after graduation my daughter and I were left living with whoever would let us live with them and I couldn't get hired anywhere. I didn't know anyone in the field, I didn't know how to network, and I even applying for everything from fast food to banks didn't get me hired. I was years into unemployment when I started harassing the local Wal-Mart my sister had worked at for probably fifteen years, and they finally hired me.
I managed to stay there two years. Only two years, and during that time, I couldn't afford to pay my bills and hardly saw my daughter. My friends had all moved on to careers, and we didn't talk anymore. One told me I'd never amount to anything, so I cut her off, and there went my last professional reference.
So I have this fresh help-wanted ad for a Graphic Designer. Today I was going to rework my resume specifically for this job, and everything caught up with me. If I couldn't do it with a fresh degree, how can I do it now? I've been applying for jobs online for a decade and I've gotten a handful of interviews that didn't go anywhere.
I stopped physically walking into places to ask for applications/beg them to take my resume when I started getting referred to the internet by whoever happened to be behind the counter. I could not get paper applications, and people wouldn't take my resume. My last remaining friend told me two days ago that I'm supposed to physically walk in anyway and ask to talk to a manager, then say I heard they were hiring and refer them to the online application I filled out. It seems like I should have known that, or that someone over the last decade might have told me, but I did not know that.
A large part of me is using this as fuel for the people who've called me a sponge and a leech and just given up on me. I put myself through college! While raising a child! I graduated! I've accomplished nothing since then aside from keeping us alive and off the streets, but I don't feel worth anything anymore. Assuming I borrow my roommate's car and drive around walking into places, who is going to hire a hollow shell of a person that hasn't held a job since 2015?
