Your life in two pages or less

About a week and a half ago, I decided with my doctor that I was well enough to go back to work. I still had random pains, and of course my hip dysplasia causes daily pain all on its own, but as long as it's not a job that involves a lot of standing or driving, there is a job out there that I can do. Plenty, I hope.

Because I've been on sickness benefit, I'm entitled to use a free back to work service, where you get to work with advisors. They help you with your CV, with interview prep, and the actual job searching. It was all very new to me, because I had never been out of work before in this way. I was used to going straight from job to job.

I had been feeling a lot of anxiety about going back to work. What did you say to prospective employers? Do you put your time off work clearly on your CV, or do you bring it up in the interview? The consensus seems to be that you don't put in on the CV, but do put it on a cover letter. 

CV's are a minefield all of their own. I hadn't done one for a very long time, and one of the first things that advisor said when looking at it was that the font was old-fashioned. I hope that way back when I wrote it, it was hip, but possibly it was unfashionable even back then. Best not to dwell on that.

Over the next hour or so we rewrote it, and padded it out with some new and trendy buzz words, and then sent it off to three prospective companies.

There is a good side to being unemployed and job-hunting. In the past I had the stress of secretly arranging interviews in lunch breaks, but now I'm free and easy. It's not much, but it's something.

And now...we wait. And apply for a load more jobs, to stave off the tide of rejection emails that will drown my spirits. I must remain positive at all times. At all times. AT ALL F*****G TIMES!

Nailing it.