Lately it seems I've written about a million cover letters. I won't deny the practise has been helpful, but lordy is it depressing! For every application I send, for every half an hour I spend agonising over word choices, I am getting nothing back.
I've heard a lot of people say that Australian employers are by far the worst for getting back to you. I've never tried to get work outside of Aus, but I'm inclined to agree with that assessment. If you don't want to hire me, FINE! Just bloody well let me know! I'm not going to sneak in during the middle of the night and vandalise your shop!
It especially gets me when I drop my resume off at a shop in the city that I walk past often. No emails, no phone calls, and nearly a month later they still have their 'staff wanted' sign up. Doesn't do much for a girl's self-esteem. I've heard back from maybe one out of four places I applied to, and it's all been "Blah blah thankyou for your application we found someone with more experience".
Picture snitched from here.
I pretty much am doing the assistant manager's position at my current job, because we don't HAVE one, and one of the 'co-managers' has been away. I've done rosters, customer orders, banking, returns, opened and closed the store, and tracked the budget. I'm not getting paid extra for it but I don't care. It needs to be done and I'm here pretty often so I just do it. However when I get back to uni, because of our weird shop schedule and overabundance of casuals, I'll be getting 6 hours of work a week. Yup. SIX. HOURS.
Hence why I am looking for another position. New or second job, I'm not fussy. Except that I've been looking since about
November.
I have a lot more availability this semester than I did last semester. A lot of places are looking for full-time staff but even more are looking for casuals. I have a ton of experience in a wide range of fields. I learn fast, I'm easy to work with and I'm great with customers. I don't understand what I'm doing wrong! I want to be able to save money while I'm at uni, not just scrape by.
Writing endless cover letters and worrying about money isn't fun. It's sapping my creative energy, hence why I haven't been blogging much. I haven't done any writing for myself lately either, despite having some really great feedback from a magazine.
I've got about a week and a half til I go back to uni, so I'm applying for things left right and center, and trying to muster inspiration to get things started and finished before I get bogged down with studying and assignments. I have been thinking about (thinking about thinking about :P) opening a jewellery shop on Etsy - simple and slightly geeky items, but I don't know if I have the stamina for such an extended creative project! I also don't have the equipment or expertise to do anything beyond beading. I know that some of the stuff I have come up with is really quite pretty and marketable:
The first and last necklaces also have matching earrings. Some of the pieces I can fairly easily re-create... but some of them are really 'one-off' designs that were made out of vintage beads or just took really long to make. I've been working on a gorgeous tiered safety-pin necklace for months now, it keeps falling apart on me! I'm thinking it may need to be soldered. Clamping them works fine for the earrings as there's no strain on them, but the weight of what I want to make usually ends up being too much for a necklace and it just falls to pieces on the third or fourth wear.
I also don't want to just make random junk-y things, I wanted it all to be 'discreet geek': inspired by books, games and TV shows. I don't know if I'm going to be able to come up with enough designs to merit a whole shop... I get inspired by beads, by jewellery and by plain ol' necessity. Most of the pieces in those photos were created because I didn't have a piece with a certain colour scheme, I acquired a piece of jewellery that didn't quite work for me so I altered it, or I saw the beads and just HAD to make something with them. This inspiration process can take anywhere from a day to years.
I have had these beautiful blue marbled beads for months and still haven't been able to decide what to do with them.
I guess I'm still in a state of indecision, where I'm waiting for things to happen (i.e, uni to start so I know how busy I'll be, and to hear back from some jobs) so that I can figure out what my next move should be.
