Like all the best blogs,1 this one has enjoyed a good, long sleep without any new content. Much as though I might find the idea of a six-and-a-half year hibernation appealing, that isn't what happened. I've just been doing things other than blogging. Yeah, shocking, I know. It turns out that I have continued to be alive, and awake, and meeting people and stuff, in spite of widespread suspicion on both sides that may well have been a bad idea.
Since April 2020, when it comes to big global news stories, some stuff has definitely happened.[citation needed] And regarding me in particular... well, I dated someone on and off for a couple of years; the three-years lease was up on my flat, so I moved; I learned to swim; and after more than 5 years in the same job and at the same grade, I reached the conclusion that my goals and the goals of my employer were no longer sufficiently aligned, and so it was time to move on.
Rejection
I've changed my mind a few times about how to write about this — how much detail to go into, how long an article might you, the reader, have the patience to read, which aspects I feel are important to mention, and which others are perhaps best omitted. I hope I've found a decent balance. So here goes.
Once I'd decided to move on, I looked for a new job, and I found one straight away. I sailed through the interview, signed the contract, and at the start of June 2024, I started work. Less than two months later, I was dismissed. My manager did not, as per contract, have to give a reason, and nor did he do so.
Losing that job was a significant hit to my mental health. I started looking for work, and ... well, nothing came up. I had been unemployed just once before, back in the UK in 2007, and that lasted only six weeks or so. This time was something completely different. The weeks went by, I applied for more and more jobs, and got more and more rejections. Each rejection received, each day passed with no solution, was another hit to my mental health, and that made it even harder to look for work. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Bait & switch
In 2025, one of the jobs I applied for, I again interviewed well. A specific salary figure was never mentioned, but the CEO told me that I'd be paid "fairly". Then, with no explanation given, instead of being offered a contract, I was offered a four-week unpaid internship. Because the local job center had been pressuring me for months to take an internship, I reluctantly took it. At work, I demonstrated that I was more than capable; they were impressed.
However, instead of then hiring me, I was "offered" an additional four weeks of unpaid work, because they "[wanted] to see more". Well of course they did; they weren't paying me anything. I said that was out of the question, and instead invited them to explain what it was they wanted to see, that they hadn't already seen. Or indeed why the hell I was even interning in the first place, when I had successfully interviewed for a full time paid job.
To both questions, answer came there none. If they ever had any intention of actually hiring me and paying me, then they kept it extremely well hidden. We went our separate ways.
Bad medicine
In March 2026, I was actually hired, to an apparently decent job. However, this one, too, lasted only a few weeks. The key factors in this were, as far as I can tell, my poor mental health (so badly did I need the job to succeed, that I was stressed, and thus made mistakes); my at-the-time poor physical health (I was on the wrong medicines, and that meant that I was in near constant pain and had to take frequent breaks); and that, while the company professed to understand the value of diversity, they seemed far less willing to do so if it meant that they had to change.
And that's the closest I've got to actual full-time work. In 26 months, I've had 17 days of paid work.2
Throughout all of this, as part of claiming my unemployment support, I have had to engage with the local job center and my insurance company. In a pattern which I'm sure will be familiar to many, as institutions they are not kind. Rather, they're variously unhelpful, spiteful, rude, and careless.
And then, in June 2026, they ruled — based on distinctly flimsy evidence — that I was not available for work, and they stopped my benefits. Since then, I have been on precisely zero income; I'm just burning through my savings, bleeding money even faster than before. That, too, was a big hit to my mental health. While I have appealed the ruling, and that appeal has so far partially been upheld, it still leaves me with no income, and a further reduced self-worth, etc.
Beaten
In August, I was voluntarily admitted to a psychiatric ward, because I was in such a mess at home. Being admitted did nothing, of course, to address the underlying problem (no job, no income), but it did at least give me a change of context for three weeks.
And that's kind of where I've got to: lots of healthcare appointments, far from ideal mental health, no job, and no income. Every now and then I find the spoons to send in another job application or two, but of course, none of them are giving me the outcome that I need. Various people try to help by sending me pointers towards companies that are hiring, or giving (often unsolicited) advice on how I can get myself out of this hole, but I seem to be way beyond the forms of help that they're able to offer. I suppose I just keep trying, until I can't any more.
There's a saying in Danish: if something is "gået i fisk" (literally: "gone in fish", or "turned to fish", or similar), it means it's all gone very wrong. That feels like a pretty apt description of my life these days.
Maybe I should just change direction completely and get into scamming people, or something.3 Perhaps I'd be really good at it. You never know until you try.
[1] where "good" is measured by resistance to change
[2] Actually, 18 days. I was an election worker at the local/regional elections in November of 2025; I'd gladly do it for no pay, as part of my civic duty, but it turns out that they do in fact pay you. However, if we're only counting software work, i.e. what I've done all of my working life, then it's 17.
[3] humour (n): the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement