Anyone who has spent any reasonably lengthy period of time ‘looking for work’ can tell you that there is a fundamental difference between being ‘unemployed’ and being a ‘job-hunter’.  Saying you’re unemployed is a less guilty way of saying “I don’t have to go to work today or any day” It’s like being on a holiday that has no foreseeable end. It’s a world without alarms, fixed time lunch-breaks, and mundane office banter. Being unemployed epitomises the adage of ‘living the dream’.  When you’re unemployed, the volunteer work you’ve always felt guilty about avoiding starts to become something that you might actually begin to start to think about considering. When you’re unemployed you can have beer on your cereal when there’s no milk because when you’re unemployed, you’re your own boss. In short, being unemployed gives you the freedom to be master of your own domain.

Now before you all go marching into your boss’s offices brandishing an active fire extinguisher and start yelling obscenities at photos of their children in a quest to make yourself one of the unemployed ‘lucky ones’, there’s something you have to know. There is a catch.  Being unemployed quite unfortunately goes hand-in-hand with another fish entirely, known commonly as ‘looking for work’.  Whoever the person was who compared this soul-crushing exercise with the sport of tracking and killing living things by referring to it as ‘job-hunting’ will know what I’m talking about. Job-hunting is ruthless, cutthroat, and the punter with the sharpest sword won’t necessarily end up being the one to slay the beast. …more