Macaroni art

I will return to my regularly-scheduled "Inca Trail" scribblings after this brief segue.

Things have been tough for the girl and I in recent months.

Losing my job to redundancy in July was unfortunate, but I immediately started claiming "job seeker's allowance" to try and keep the wolves from the door when it came to rent and bills. The fight to get housing benefit out of the local council has sometimes felt like an uphill struggle, however -- particularly when we were told the girl earned too much for us to claim benefits.

The girl had to return home to Western Australia several days earlier than she had planned, missing out on a trip to Paris with her Mum, when her grandfather died. Even at that time, we hoped that her work visa would come through in no time, and it would only be a short time before the girl would return to merry old England.

We hoped the setbacks would only be very temporary, but it's October and I haven't yet found gainful employment, and the girl's company still don't have their licence to sponsor her, so she is in unpaid limbo on the other side of the world.

Next month we don't know if we will be able to pay the rent. I have already borrowed sums of money from my parents to help make ends meet in previous months, but we are now getting the housing benefits we were previously denied so I hope to be able to hold the fort a little while longer.

On the positive side, the logic would follow that every day that passes without the girl hearing news on her company's licence we must also be one day closer to her joyful return. I also have some promising leads on jobs that I am interviewing for.

I don't spend a lot of time in the house I share with the girl now that she's not here. It makes sense to visit my parents more and take advantage of their hospitality to keep the running costs of our house down, but most of all it doesn't much feel like "our" house when I'm there alone.

I won't lie, emotionally I've had a bad time since I lost my job. Never having been the most stable of people in the past, losing the security and income of a job I (mostly) enjoyed set me adrift a little.

In a dramatic break with tradition, however, things have taken a turn for the better there -- and it might even seem in years to come that being made redundant was a good thing to happen. For a start, if you're out of work you can access government-funded training. And I'm not talking about basic maths or literacy, but more or less anything you want.

Granted, I am still trying to get someone to commit to the details, but in theory at least there are options open to me if I want to learn things like digital marketing, graphic design, web design because it will make me more employable -- those three could all help me make a move into roles like web content editor.

Not directly related to work, but sort of related to government funding, I have been in therapy, which was probably overdue. I think because of the recession, money has been freed up for what is being called "talk therapy", a combination of counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy. While it hasn't exactly set my world ablaze, it has helped me to recognise and address some errors in my thinking. Which neatly leads me onto the next point.

Personal Development. A local college is currently a 10 week personal development course for people a bit like me -- it's not solely for those out of work, but being held twice a week on weekdays probably means it's not very accessible for anyone in fulltime employment. The course is led by a certified Psychotherapist who also makes a decent living in areas like Hypnotherapy, as well as coaching and training.

It's all making for a good combination -- the course provides me with something to do other than look for work, I can tell employers about it when I go for interviews, and it is giving me useful tools for managing my own thoughts and behaviour. Mixing that with my cognitive behavioural therapy I have recently learned to treat myself better and be more objective, feel more positive, and have identified some goals and objectives. I won't go into details of the techniques I have learned today, but it's enough that it is doing me some good.

I visited the girl for a few weeks in August and September, which should have been longer if only we'd known there was not going to be work waiting for me on my return, and no firm return date for the girl in sight. But that's how these things go. I will be blogging about those adventures -- under the title of "Tales of Girls, Boys and Marsupials" (something I have considered renaming my blog on occasion) -- when I have exhausted my "I trekked Peru, yo" posts.

We aren't too clear where we go from here right now, except that today is one day closer to the girl's return and another day closer to finding a new, incredibly awesome job for me. And people will probably be getting macaroni pictures as Christmas presents this year.