I’m starting work tomorrow. It’s been a year since I last had a job, and I quite miss it. I have no idea if I’ll enjoy the actual work or not, but at least it offers the opportunity to learn new things, form new social contacts and generally just have routines in each day, and I welcome all that. Not to mention the ability to earn a living, which is obviously extremely important on its own.

If there is one thing I’d like to avoid from now on, it’s unemployment. I don’t know anything quite as soul-sapping as the hollow feeling of browsing job ads one by one, desperately hoping to find something that is even remotely applicable to your own qualifications and coming up empty again and again. Of course, there are the few exceptions when you find something, write an application for it and for a while you feel like you actually accomplished something worthwhile again – only to receive the dreaded “thank you but no thank you” email in your inbox some days or weeks later. Back to square one. Back to feeling utterly worthless.

It spreads everywhere after a while. As the number on your bank account dwindles, you narrow down your choices little by little. No more shopping for anything but the bare necessities, and even those should be a cheap brand or on discount. You don’t really need cheese on your bread, after all. It’s also best to not meet your friends in the city centre, because that means expenses you can’t really afford, or squirming when they offer to pay instead. Buying presents becomes a nightmare, because you can’t really afford anything anyone would want. If anything breaks, you really need to consider whether you can’t actually survive without it. Repairing or replacing it might well be beyond your means. It’s not real deprivation; not yet. It’s just a slow slide towards the tears in society’s fabric where ultimately you’ll end up incapable of affecting your situation anymore. That way lays hunger, mental and physical illness, and isolation.

I didn’t fall that far. I still had options by the time my soon-to-be employer said yes instead of no thank you. You have no idea how grateful of that I am.