Anniversaries
I am reaching an age where I'm finding numbers don’t add up, and I get confused on some details. My niece, Maggie, was born on the morning I relocated to Canberra. At a glance, I count off the (almost) three years I was in Canberra, my departures to Spain and Peru, and my move back to Melbourne a year ago. That would make Maggie at least five, except she was born in 2005. I have to go back and work it out again, and remind myself that nearly a year of my term in Canberra came after Spain, and that Canberra was actually more like two and a half, rounded to three. Yet even with that rationalisation, it still doesn’t feel like all that’s happened since the end of 2006 has happened in that time.
In my time at RedBubble, my employer confronted me at least once about my disconnectedness from my work. From their perspective, I was not engaged with what I was doing, and I guess that would have to be right to some degree. Since my return from Spain I’ve tried numerous times to get back there. There have been a few close calls that almost got me to the line—the most recent just a few months ago—but were ultimately in vain.
The immigration system in Europe is so deliberately sluggish and obstinate, that only the truly determined, lucky and financial resourced, will ever be able to overcome it. Employers are not interested in wrestling with the bureaucracy, and all have backed away at the first sign of red tape. My brother has recently experienced the same issues in his efforts to gain a new visa for the UK, the one European country with at least some history of being a bit friendlier to it’s former colonies.
Like me when I had to turn for home, he’s experienced a degree of bitterness over how the system works. Australia is for all its faults, one of the easiest first world countries to get into. Our immigration department may occasionally “lose” our citizens, lock up anyone who arrives on a boat in some rather inhumane conditions, or deport people to potential death zones, but provided you play by the book, there’s a pretty good chance you can get in. Obviously, there are caveats here and this is an over-simplification (I’m not taking into account the political pressures brought to bear on departmental staff, nor the fact that you still need a lot of money even if you do play by the book), but when comparing first world country to first world country, there are few if any that reciprocate the open doors we provide to them.
The political discussion aside, I have again found myself staring at the listings on InfoJobs today, wondering if it’s worth the effort to submit any more job applications. The reality is it’s not worth me applying for jobs outside Melbourne until the end of the year (at least), when Edgard is finished his study and has moved on to the next stage in the visa process, as he can’t move to another city unless he changes universities, and moving outside Australia won’t be easy.
My retrenchment from RedBubble a few weeks ago has acted as something of a catalyst. For the past year, I have carried a weight on my shoulders, a burden of responsibility to provide financially for us, and that has made me too scared to put my head up. I have spent the last several months trying desperately to hold on to my job, at least until the end of the year when the big expenses will have passed, and so haven’t been as brazen or focussed on the work as I might normally be.
Now that job and all its security has suddenly been taken away from me, right when I thought the end was in sight. Being suddenly pitched overboard, I found myself sinking to some crushing depths, as a number of factors combined to send me spiralling into a deep depression. I’m still there now, in fact, unable to focus myself on the task at hand of finding a new job, and lacking the confidence to convince a prospective employer to hire me even when I find them.
I will part company with RedBubble almost a year from the time they first hired me; a year from when I was travelling around Peru; two years after I was travelling in Spain and looking for work; and four years since we met.