…what employer would hire some ‘blow-in’ from interstate?

(with audio) Previously it was about That Elusive First Job. Now a new adventure! I had some idea that I was going to be some famous artist when I finished studies in fine arts years ago. I really ‘drank the Kool-aid’ on that one. So I moved north interstate to a great tourist town on Queensland’s Gold Coast. I started to look for work. I looked and I looked and I looked. Month after month I pounded that pavement, applied for those jobs, and wrote those targeted cover letters. Nothing!  Plenty of knock backs. I even offered to work for free and still ‘a flat no’… It was really soul destroying.

The truth is though, what employer would hire some ‘blow-in’ from interstate when their own are out there looking for work? I was in a tourist town now not Sydney. Sydney has way more people and job opportunities.

Yes it ‘wasn’t my finest hour’ but I wonder if the whole experience actually ‘slapped some common sense into me’. Cause I had some naive idea that ‘the world would be my oyster’ and that commissions for art would just ‘pop up out of nowhere’. I didn’t have connections. I didn’t have a marketing background, and the internet was not an option back in those days. 

A Defining Moment

Then several months later reality crept in after I turned a load of washing pink. I laugh now but it was a defining moment. I remember it quite clearly. Standing there in the shopping centre with a tub of stain remover in each hand. One cheap brand and then another more expensive brand that I knew would give good results. This was my ‘scrape the bottom of the barrel’ moment. I looked in my wallet and tried to imagine there was more money there so I could get that more expensive one. LOL…yeah nup!

Cut Your Losses

So I ‘cut my losses’ and hightailed it back to Sydney.

The only highlight of this unemployable journey north was an excellent tan! 

Stay tuned for the next episode as I take on a new tack to score a job in Sydney. Ep 3 Twist of Fate (click here)

Photo by Caleb Russell from Pexels

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Phrase or Saying

• Drank the Kool-aid – Believed the delusional promises.
• A flat no – No said in a monotone voice
• Blow-in – Arrive unexpectedly. (and can probably leave just as easily as has no connection to anything)
• Wasn’t my finest hour – Acknowledge a bad decision
• Slapped some common sense into me -Start thinking sensibly
• The world would be my oyster – Achieve anything you wish
• Pop up out of nowhere – Appear almost instantaneously
• Scrape the bottom of the barrel – Stuck with the very last bit
• Cut my losses – Abandon