[Prologue: Cover letter (January, 2022)] Dear Prospective Employer,
I’m nearly forty, and I think I’m in the first stages of an early-onset Midlife Crisis—if not a full-blown bout of Existential Dread. And I think this might be because I have no Job.
More specifically: I’ve had no Proper Job now for almost a decade, because I gave up my last full-time Job to become a freelance writer and part-time child-carer. But for the last five years I’ve done even less work than before, because I’ve been on a sort of unofficial Career Break since we moved house in 2017. And now I’ve done almost no paid work whatsoever since St Dogmæl’s Day, June 14th, 2019. As a result of this, I’ve begun to wonder with increasing regularity what I am actually for.
I always wanted to be a writer—at least, I did from the time I gave up wanting to be an artist; which was while I was still at school, shortly after my family moved from North Wales—where I’d grown up—back to England—where I was born. After school and university, and a decade of what passes for hard graft in my socioeconomic group, I’d finally managed to become a Professional Writer when I jacked it all in to go Freelance so I could move back to Wales. In my first five years as a freelancer, I did odd jobs for mostly regular clients—heavily subsidized by the income of my wife, whose professional skills command a significantly higher market value than mine—with occasional fixed-term forays to far-flung locations, when and where the money made it worthwhile.
But… I don’t know… copy-editing websites for start-ups that invariably flopped and writing status-updates for the Facebook pages of toilet-roll brands wasn’t quite what I had in mind as a Career back when I was a teenager. I thought I’d be a novelist. Maybe not right away: after I’d lived a bit; got a bit of experience; developed my skills—my voice. It’d be fine, I always used to think. There’s no rush. As long as I get the first one published by the time I’m—I don’t know… forty?
So we’d been at our new house for a few years. (Me, my wife, the kids, the dogs.) It was the first place I’d felt truly at home since I left North Wales as a teenager. And I was a few years in to my de facto Career Break, and I’d kind of stopped writing anything longer than the odd haiku once a week—but I’d got pretty good at DIY. And I’d just finished a one-off, four-month contract Job that paid well enough to tide us over for a few months. So I decided it was time to construct a shed, in which to situate a Home Office.
I felt this was important for three reasons:
So that next time I got a Job working from home I could do video calls without people asking why there was a washing machine behind me;
So that next time I was interviewed by BBC journalists about our Terrible Internet, I’d not have to sit on a pouffe in the front room—thus potentially damaging my credibility by giving the impression of being an Unreliable Narrator. And last but not least;
So that I’d finally have a “room of my own” in which to be a writer: A Proper Writer.
But it takes longer than you might think to erect a shed, Prospective Employer. Especially a multi-purpose shed able to comfortably accommodate both an ever-expanding array of DIY and garden tools, and a discrete Home Office comprising a desk, a computer, a laptop, a broken printer, a filing cabinet, a jam-pan full of foraged hazelnuts, the jade plant my oldest brother gave to me in 2009 to thank me for helping him move house, some bookshelves, some objets d’art, a toilet, a sink, a sofa, a heating source, an electricity supply, lighting, insulation, cladding, beading, flooring, and the cumbersome inventory of my increasingly unsuccessful poetry-publishing company.
I’m pleased to be able to tell you, Prospective Employer, that I have by now got a shed which largely meets that brief. Indeed, I had much of it in place by early 2020, at which point I was—honestly—going to get back in touch with my Freelance contacts and start scouting for regular Work again. Maybe even apply for a few actual Jobs…
But we all know what happened next: The Pandemic struck, and a recession followed hard upon. In my case that meant that our primary-school-age daughters were both sent home, I was furloughed from the company I co-owned with my wife, and for the next year and a half I became an on-and-off primary-school teacher in addition to my existing Extracurricular roles as child-carer, chicken-keeper, cleaner, cook, house-husband, handyman and taxi-service. We were lucky that my wife’s income was largely unaffected. And although the travel restrictions imposed by successive lockdowns scuppered my side-line in letting out our old house—and also our efforts to sell it—I was able to temporarily house a couple of displaced livestock veterinarians in it, before finally securing a sale in the brief housing boom that descended on rural Wales following the lifting of the First Lockdown in July 2020.
You will already have noticed, Prospective Employer, that I have a tendency toward Rambling. For this, which is My Nature, I can only apologize; but I do think it’s important that you have as comprehensive an impression of my Character, my Circumstances, and my Employment History as possible, so that you’re able to make a truly informed decision as to whether or not to employ me. I’ll expand upon this later in the letter; but at this juncture I’d like to point out that some of these sentences are long and complicated because Life is long and complicated. It’s not because I’m A Bad Writer; I can’t stress that enough.
So, after three years on the market, our old house finally sold in December 2020—to a couple from the Cotswolds, who would move back to the Cotswolds within 18 months, having made no discernible changes to the house but nevertheless making a £100,000 profit. Still, we’d reclaimed enough equity from overpayments on the mortgage over eight years of Freelancing to begin seeking planning permission to convert the derelict woollen mill and cow-shed in the garden of our new home into holiday lets—thus to (quite sensibly, I’m sure you’ll agree) Diversify our Income in an increasingly unpredictable Economic Climate. But then there was another lockdown. And I had to start teaching again. And then the planning-application process derailed—partly because of my insistence on cutting costs by doing almost everything myself (including arboricultural surveys, plans, elevations, etc.). But mostly because of Bats. By the time the application was finally submitted it was December 2021. Then we all got Covid. (Again: mostly because of Bats.)
At the time of writing it’s January 2022, the planning application is with the national park, and I know I really should now look for a Job—which is why I’ve retired to my shed-based Home Office (still not quite finished) to work on my CV. But this has proven difficult. My wife’s income still allows us to maintain a relatively comfortable existence at the modest standard to which we’ve become accustomed. And although I’ve never been Workshy—as I’ll soon forensically detail—my recently reordered existence as teacher / child-carer / chicken-keeper / cleaner / house-husband / handyman / taxi-service has significantly altered the way I think about myself—my Role, my Skills, my Nature—and had no small effect on my Professional Confidence, and—perhaps even more importantly—my personal Hopes, Dreams and Ambitions.
Our Terrible Internet problem has by now been mitigated by the installation of overpriced Satellite Internet, which is merely Bad. And improvements in Videotelephony, coupled with the apparent normalization of Remote Working and Flexible Working practices, ought to allow me to find a Job to fit around my existing commitments—thus hopefully allaying the aforementioned early-onset Midlife Crisis (or full-blown bout of Existential Dread). But, like many people whose Curriculum Vitæs have been diverted by The Pandemic, I’m not sure I’d be able to go back to the way of life I had before—even if I wanted to. I’ve scoured my hard drives for old CVs to dust down and polish up for presentation to you, Prospective Employer. And in doing so I was struck that the most recent CV I sent out—way back in December 2018—says very little about the life I’ve lived, and the breadth and variety of my Career, such as it is. The paltry, single-sheet, double-sided A4 document paints a poor impression of who I was then—let alone of who I am now. And my hard drives are groaning under the data-weight of these old CVs: hundreds, if not thousands—redrafted and rewritten, with deliberate exaggerations and glaring omissions; most of which were probably glanced at once and deleted, some of which might have been read, forwarded on or printed out, and a very few of which actually led to interviews—by phone or email or Skype at first, and then, if successful, in person, often following a long and expensive train ride. And fewer still led to an agreement, written or spoken; to the exchange of my Labour for Remuneration: in other words, a Job.
And I’m troubled, Prospective Employer. Because none of those CVs, whether or not they achieved the desired outcome, comes anywhere close to giving an honest impression of me and my Hopes, Dreams and Ambitions. They barely even accurately represent my Skills or Experience. So how could you, Prospective Employer—with your myriad Jobs to which I may or may not be suited—hope to make an informed decision concerning my fate, based on a couple of heavily editorialized paragraphs, crammed into two measly sheets of A4? I’ve had time to think about it. And I want a Proper Job this time, Prospective Employer: maybe even a Career. So I can’t for a minute entertain the awful notion of going back in to that fake game. I want my Employer to know exactly who they’re inviting into their Workplace, and exactly what he’s learnt and achieved—and hasn’t learnt or achieved—over the course of his quarter of a century of Work. This letter thus serves as an introduction to my full and unabridged Curriculum Vitæ—no mere résumé or trifling summary of my Professional Life, but a comprehensive account of my life’s course: a working life story. Once you’ve read each and every one of these 393 pages, you will then—and only then, Prospective Employer—be sufficiently well-informed to make a fair decision about my future.
I will dedicate a chapter to each of the Jobs I’ve had that contributed significantly either to my Professional Development or my capability to feed and clothe myself. Some did both. Some did only one. And any that did neither, but might still be broadly classified as a Job, I’ll deal with as briefly as I can. I’ll also tell you what, if anything, each Job taught me. And I’ll assess each Job on set criteria as "A Good Job" or "A Bad Job"—this will help you decide if your Job is truly suitable for me. The criteria I have chosen are Solidarity, Dignity, and Productivity. For a Job to have been A Good Job it must have satisfied all three. If any Job I’ve had, or any aspect of any Job I’ve had that might be relevant to this CV, is absent by the time this CV reaches you, Prospective Employer, it will be due to the deficiencies of my memory and to the dearth of the records available to me—not, I assure you, because of any Coyness or Cunning on my part. I will also detail the grade and provenance of any Education I have undertaken and any Qualifications or Certificates that have been issued to me as a result. Where appropriate, I will include details of unpaid Voluntary Work or other Extracurricular Activities that could conceivably be relevant to a Job for which I might be considered. I will protect the identities of those who might not want to be implicated in my fate by referring to Colleagues and Employers pseudonymously, and to Workplaces euphemistically. As a preamble, I will briefly detail my life before work, including observations upon the Professional Lives of others in my family and how they might have influenced my own Professional Development. All of this will be laid out chronologically. But where two or more Jobs occurred simultaneously, that which ended first will be dealt with first.
As a concluding note to this Cover Letter, dear Prospective Employer, I can only hope that you will enjoy reading about my Jobs half as much as I enjoyed doing them.
Yours sincerely,
Alexander Velky, January 2022.
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