Bringing it all up to date

To bring it all up to date now,

So, it's now 2014 and on Thursday 29 May I finished the last part of the Creative Writing module, and that means I've done the very last part of my degree. So now what exactly?

I've been dying to get a job, for ages actually, I'm sick of people asking the question "what do you do for a living?" and not being able to respond to it with any kind of useful answer. Leaves you feeling so useless and so dependent. My mum says, that being a mother is valuable, however society, the government, the media - whom ever you want to blame has us all trained to think of single parents who don't work as lazy, good for nothings whose only goal is to scab from the state.

Of course, there are people whose goal is to scab from the state, but honestly it is not a life I'd chose. Let me provide some realities. Aside from the obvious, there's only so much Jeremy Kyle that one person can watch without actually feeling their brain start to dribble out of their ears, there are major disadvantages to being on benefits.

1. You must provide your personal details in order to get help

Of course, I understand that the government - if they are going to give you assistance - are entitled to know that you actually deserve it. Take the form for Income Support for example, you have to give any benefits you are receiving, you provide details about yourself, your child(ren), any savings, any debts... the list goes on. To fill in those forms, which take forever, is soul destroying. I hope that I never ever have to do it again.

2. You don't have enough to have a good quality of life, you are given only enough to get by. 

Now, I understand the reaction that most tax payers (bearing in mind I paid tax too, working from the age of 16)  will have, why should you have any kind of treats if you don't work hard for them. I agree - for the most part. However, it has been eight years since I have had a holiday. Every single pair of shoes, or pair of jeans has to be essential because if I buy something like that then something else has to give way. I need to justify it. I have only been on income support for two years, whilst I've been studying, and I can assure you that I can't even afford to get my son Christmas presents without incurring a debt on my credit card. It is now June and I still haven't fully covered my debt because other things have been needed. To be fair, I'm good with my money and when I need to I can seriously cut-back in order to get myself on track.

3. If something collapses, everything else could fall down, just like dominoes.

So, I live in a small two-bedroom flat, exactly according to the rules that NIHE (Housing Benefit) dictates. I have no furniture to my name except a TV and my son's bed! It's just me and my little boy here - no one else lives in my house. However, recently some callous piece-of-work decided to tell the Jobs & Benefits Office that I was living here with someone else!!!! They rang me and asked if I had anyone else living here - I said no. They asked that question, three different ways. Of course, each time the answer was no. Then I was sent the long form to fill in again, even though I'd done nothing wrong. I was so worried they'd stop my benefits and I'd begin incurring debts - it had me panicking for weeks. They never even had the courtesy to send me a notification to say that the 'Fraud Investigation Department' (the dept. I'd had to send the form to) had investigated and found nothing. There was no apology for wrongful suspicion. No confirmation that my benefits were not going to be stopped. As the money was not stopped and clearly they had nothing to investigate, I should just be grateful that nothing negative occurred however, the worry was horrible. This is what living dependent on the state is like. If they decided to stop paying you, for any reason - your in the creek.

4. Lack of financial autonomy or security.

You can't do overtime when you need something, if you wanted anything out of the ordinary - you'd have to apply for a Budgeting Loan or Crisis Loan, which has to be paid back by monthly installments from your allowance. Of course, as your allowance is only enough to live on, this isn't really an option unless it's completely necessary. If an unexpected expense (or even an expected one sometimes) crops up, you are really not in a position to deal with it, and there's very little you can do in the short-term to help your situation.

5. The longer it goes on, the harder is seems to get a job

I'll do what I call the 'Benefits/Job Trap' in more detail in another post. Suffice to say though, that when you have a job it's easier to get another. When you don't have a job - sometimes it seems like no matter what you do, you can't seem to find something that'll work - especially in the current economic climate, with fewer options. This will be explored more later.

6. Strips you of self worth

In a continuation of all of the above, being on benefits has certainly left me lacking in confidence and feeling useless. Sometimes I want to scream, I want to say 'I didn't just sit in front of the TV for years - I've been furthering my skills - I chose to study subjects I didn't necessarily like but thought would be relevant - I have worked really hard, juggling looking after a young child, and moving house and relationship breakdown and still kept studying and you beggars aren't crying out for someone like me to work for your company?! Doesn't this prove I'm driven? Doesn't this prove I will try and try and not give up? Doesn't this show I'm not adverse to further training? How come I am not the kind of person that employers want?! I know this sounds like a moan. It probably is a moan!

It's not that I think that people who are not earning and out working hard should get a silver spoon, or a bunch of treats. I suppose I'm writing this to give the other side of the story. Programmes like Benefit's Street and the likes, show the worst kind of person who relies on benefits. Of course those people are indeed out there and exploiting the system. The majority of people however would rather not be in this predicament. I, would not like to be in this predicament anymore.

So... on with the job hunting.