"Think of all the starving children"

Now I've learnt as much as I want to about Microsoft Excel 2010, I'm ready for my dream job. The next time I go to an interview and they ask me if I can do pivot tables I'll say, "Yes, they're a piece of piss and I wasted a hundred quid on software from which I've learnt very little. It's all common sense, innit?"

I say the next time I go to an interview but maybe there won't be a next time. You see I'm looking for a part time job, a few days a week. I've had enough of the Monday to Friday grind. I was interviewed for a part time job last year. The man interviewing me inferred that I should have been looking for an 8 to 6, Monday to Friday, me not being a married woman whose kids have grown up and who's just looking for a bit of pin money. A man needs to work and work long hours to prove his manhood.

I'm now unemployed but not part of the government's statistics. How many of us are there, living off our savings, taking an early retirement we didn't ask for? The careers adviser said I should be doing some voluntary work to put on my CV. But there's bugger all of that around locally unless I want to do the petty cash for five minutes a week for the Scouts.

Work still has the ability to make me anxious. I still wake up in the middle of the night thinking dark thoughts about my experiences of the past three years. Then I tell myself I've been lucky, look at all the people working in horrible jobs on poverty wages. All the people with no hope trying to survive on poverty benefits.

But that doesn't make me feel better about myself. Why should it? When a child is egged on by a parent to eat something they hate the taste of, does being told "Think of all the starving children!" actually make the food taste better? If the child has any sensitivity they will get depressed about the starving children and will want to not eat in solidarity. They will make themselves ill. In the same way that my anxiety is fed by constant news of how shit the world is and constant confirmation that we are led by cunts. How can anybody feel optimism?