I just read my last blog (what shall I do with my life now part a) and it was a lot about Christmas and not a lot about "what I should do with my life" so apologies if I deceived you into reading that. I think the conclusion was that I want a calmer 2023 with no major life changes, but I'm not sure what to do job wise.
Until now I've not been focused on getting a job, and I'm still not really looking right now, but this year I need to get a job. I'm not really that employable even in the UK, and although I have had loads of different jobs, I've never had a full time pays monthly job.
I hate being asked for a CV. Words without humour is my least favourite way of expressing myself. I much prefer proving myself by showing someone a load of photos of stuff I made. I wish employers were more creative in the way they asked for this info e.g "Lovely to meet you, could you please tell me about your working history through the medium of dance"
Here's my honest CV:
Qualifications
Some GCSEs, mainly Bs.
A weird selection of A-Levels: Art (A), Psychology (B), Business (C) and AS Chemistry (E). Really I wanted to do drama but it didn't fit with art and psychology, so I got round this by doing my business presentations with sock puppets at every available opportunity. I did accents and everything.
Foundation art course - Merit.
Fine Art BA - just scraped a 2:1, I had a great time though.
Post Graduate Diploma in "Children and Young People in Society". This is what it's called if you do two thirds of a Masters degree and then quit because you can't be bothered to write a dissertation. I tried to write a dissertation about the links between dyslexia and creativity. I had to do an original piece of research, but then I was told that you can't measure creativity, and I am dyslexic, and we are actually the natural enemies of academic writing. I don't need to prove the link to those nerds anyway, I know it. Half my art course were dyslexic. All the cool kids are.
Working History
I've done all the bad teenage and student jobs you can think of, except a paper round. Then after uni I got a job working with naughty kids part time and a job sitting in a gallery part time. I was pretty good at both of them. It's hard to be bad at sitting on a chair all day. I was resourceful with the long amounts of time I had doing nothing though. I read a bit, I started writing letters to old friends, I invented some secret games that I tried to play with other information assistants and I started this blog. I think I'd cope pretty well in prison.
Then I went self-employed, which was pretty similar to being unemployed at first, but then did become a genuine thing. A school once asked me if I could do mosaics so I said "yes" because it seemed like the answer they wanted to hear. I watched a youtube video on making mosaics, and then I just blagged it. And it went well! I started doing them all over the place. It was my most popular project, until I made a spelling mistake on a massive one worth £2000. And then a couple turned out to be not very waterproof and fell apart. But the majority of people were genuinely happy and the majority of kids did not cut themselves when they were cutting the glass tiles.
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| After the mistake was fixed. |
I did comedy, too and I was mainly good at it. I mean not every time, there was the time when an audience member told me I was shit and the promoter who had given me a trial spot, followed that up with an email confirming it was true. But there were some good ones too, I even won a competition once. I bet I'm the only comedian to dress as the virgin Mary for a Christmas special, complete with a pregnant bump containing a doll and an edible placenta.
Strengths
Including people, making community.
Coming up with fun games and challenges.
Making things out of cardboard boxes.
Jokes and banter.
Knowing what Liverpool postcodes relate to what areas.
Mixing the exact right paint colour, without even mixing as I go.
Understanding conceptual similarities - I'm in the more than 99.9 percentile for this, it was measured on my dyslexia test. It means I'm good at making links, but how can I monetise this useless skill?
Being different: want to meet someone who likes to hold a three day festival in their garden? Or tried to teach strangers to dance the YMCA using the Arabic letters? Or went through the McDonald's drive through in a supermarket trolly? Or dislocated their elbow falling off a unicycle? Or cycled to Kuwait. HI.
Weaknesses.
Spelling.
Admin.
Technology.
Parking.
Long division.
anything before 9am.
The End
If you think of the job thats perfect for my skillset, please let me know!
I did love doing art workshops, it was pretty much my dream job. It's fun to make big bits of art and it's lovely when kids are enthusiastic about it, which they generally are. It took so long to get to the point where I had loads of work and schools were contacting me and I could actually be a bit picky about what I wanted to do. It was pretty gutting to then just leave and tell everyone, "sorry I can't do that project." I also was so lucky to get to be a comedian for a bit. I never made big money but when it went well, regardless of money, it was amazing. I think I get much higher highs and lower lows doing comedy compared to art. I feel like art has been a constant throughout my life, a thing I usually really like doing, but it can't ever quite give me that same buzz that doing well in comedy can do.
So what should I do now? After 100 hours of lessons I've just passed my A1 French which is quite basic, but I can now move onto A2 which means learning how to speak in the past and future tenses. So I still need time for that, and I still have to look after the kids when they're not in school on Wednesdays. I need to do something for money, and I'd like to do something creative, but they don't have to be the same thing. Like, I'm quite happy to get a low skilled, low paid job like cleaning or babysitting, and make time for painting or comedy writing. I could put together another hour long show to do somewhere in a years time for example.
I'm actually going to be doing some writing for a French expat magazine soon, 1500 words about our moving experience. I've never written for anything but this blog before. I also started a TikTok last week, it's probably the sign of a midlife crisis. I've made 3 videos about being in France. The first was deemed too long and silent by strangers and my own children. It was one minute and 8 seconds long and it did contain a big chunk of silence, while showing lots of different views of my commute; the beautiful mountains, the train arriving and my cycle through town. I think a minute's silence is sometimes nice but then I am an old person now. My video on 5 differences between English and French schools has gone down well though. The bit where Eric dressed as a king for a nativity play, throws off his crown in disgust at the fact religion is not allowed in schools was my favourite. He looked so angry, either because he's a brilliant actor or because that was the fourth take and he really was mad. Tell me what other videos I should make about France, I'm planning at least one in a supermarket, and one about things I didn't know before I moved here. On TikTok I am @foreigninfrance.
But back to jobs. The other option is becoming an auto entrepreneur, which is being self-employed. I was self-employed in England and I like that way of working and I understand the system, but I don't think I would like it here. They are very restrictive about what you can do. In England my business was "community artist" which is basically anything I want it to be, mainly school art workshops but when I did comedy or anything else random I just put it all in there as community art. But the French system is more strict. You can only be one thing e.g. you can't just be a general builder/handyman, you have to be a registered plumber or plasterer or whatever. I think this is a stupid law and encourages people to do little jobs on the side for cash. There's a few things I've thought of doing here, the most obvious one is to try and do the art thing I did in Britain, but I don't know enough French yet and I don't know how the school system works and I really don't want to fill in a French tax return. Another self-employed idea I had was managing peoples holiday houses, like cleaning, changing the sheets, being around to give people keys, but the busiest time would be the summer holidays when the kids are off school.
I also have considered teaching English. At first it was annoying when I told people I was moving to France and they said "I know, you can teach English!" as if being born English is the only skill you need to teach English. Since I've been learning French though, I've had more of an appreciation for what makes a good teacher and a good lesson and I do find the language learning process interesting. I'd love to teach kids in an informal after school fun club. Like with games and stuff. Eric's best buddy at school has asked to go to English lessons so he can speak to Eric and for Christmas he got a subscription to an English magazine. How cute is that?! That's the kind of kid I'd love to teach.
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| The view of the snowy Canigou out of our bedroom window. |
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