Week 40 - in Liverpool there is time to reflect on blessings in disguise

Edited BY


G P Kennedy 


Olivia - Liverpool, UK



When Dolly Parton wrote 9 to 5 back in 1980, she never could have imagined what work would look like in the age of Covid-19.

Now, the typical workday for many of us involves living in loungewear and squinting into a laptop on the inside of our colleagues’ homes.


I’ve been thinking a lot about work this week, as I’ve been busy attending lots of interviews.


The way that the companies approached them has varied massively; from being asked to send pre-recorded video clips of myself over WhatsApp, to a barely audible in-person interview wearing facemasks.


Business is not as usual in the UK, as the pandemic continues to ravage the economy, and employers cut thousands of jobs.


After a record of 370,000 redundancies from August to October 2020, some newspapers are now warning that unemployment could rise to 3.5 million by the middle of 2021.



The two groups hit hardest by furloughing and job losses have been 18-24s and over-65s. 

For many young people, the prospect of trying to enter the job market is now very daunting.


Another year of GCSE and A-Level examinations in England has been canceled in favor of teacher assessments.


University students are making complaints about not getting their money's worth whilst studying remotely.

The old ideal of retiring after 40 years with one company no longer seems to apply. Millennials are now more than ever feeling the consequences of short term contracts and freelance jobs.



Losing my job in November was actually a blessing in disguise.

Working from home caused a complete death in motivation, and I felt cut off from my colleagues.


We would usually help to make the working day fly by with cups of tea, funny stories, and comradery.  


I suddenly had time for lots of walks, reading and thinking about how I want to spend my days. 



After this enforced break, I am visibly healthier.  I can go into my interviews with a renewed sense of purpose and passion. I will keep you posted on any news!


I’ve decided that for me, the perfect job involves feeling appreciated, doing something you’re good at, and making people’s lives better.


What a way to make a living.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 44 - Mixed messages lead to protests in Turkey

Image
Edited BY G P Kennedy Gul- Aegean Coast, Turkey  The weather was icy cold last week, when I said I can’t take another day, suddenly that feeling of spring was in the air.   According to the Turkish folk calendar, the first Cemre - imagine a meteor fireball passing by up in the sky, warming the air - fell on Feb 19 and 20. There are two more yet to fall, one on Feb 26 and 27 and the last two in March – also will lead to the New Year Nevruz (Nowruz, Iranian).    They say the first Cemre always falls to the air, the second to the water, and the third to the earth.  Nowadays, because of warmer weather, we are able to have coffee in our garden with our neighbors and have a chat. Otherwise, we were overwhelmed with loneliness.  POLITICAL CRAZINESS  Our ordinary lives can be boring but daily politics is the opposite, there was a controversial event almost every day this week.   This country will make all of us mentally sick. It is ...
Read more

Week 49 - Simon says, 'Count your blessings my fellow Aussies'

Image
Edited BY G P Kennedy Simon - Perth, WA   Hi everyone, hope all is well wherever you are.  So here we are at the end of March in Western Australia, which means over 12 months of the Pandemic.   Across all of the country, the vaccines are being slowly rolled out but we are not hitting our intended targets.   This seems to be a combination of lack of supply and the doses being given by GP’s rather than at vaccination centers. I guess the only thing that stops this from being a real concern is the size of our case numbers.   The vast majority of our small number of cases is from returned overseas travelers who are put in quarantine anyway.   This week sees a small outbreak in Queensland with some community transmission. This has led to a snap three-day lockdown to try and contain it and perform contact tracing.  Going forward it looks like this will happen fairly frequently. We have demonstrated that these short and sharp lockdowns seem...
Read more

Week 15 - Wednesday in Milan explores the 'new normal' for Ellie

Image
Edited BY G P Kennedy Ellie - Milan, Italy    “How are y'all doing?” a friend from Texas asked me recently. I am happy to report that the contagion rate in Italy have been mostly down. Daily rates of new infections have been around 150 for the country.    I have the feeling, though, that this is due not only to scared people who mostly stick to their masks and distancing, but of the possibility to do things outdoors, which is what helps with holding new infections down. There are many unwelcome signs for change, though. For example, hope for getting rid of plastics, and its dispersal in the environment, is definitely given up.    Now that all coffee shops, company cafeterias and restaurants that hope to have clients indoors are required to outfit their spaces with distancing partitions, plastic has drastically increased. But it has also started causing some awkward moments.    I met with a friend for a coffee recently, our first get together after...
Read more