"even then...eternity would scarcely have begun." J Joyce, "A portrait of an artist as a young man".

Let me share this with you if you don't already know it. It still makes my head hurt.
"You have often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are its tiny grains! And how many of those grains go to make up the small handful which a child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, reaching from the earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to remotest space, and a million miles in thickness; and imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on birds, scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the vast expanse of the air; and imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all? Yet at the end of that immense stretch of time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended. At the end of all those billions and trillions of years eternity would have scarcely begun. And if that mountain rose again after it had been all carried away. And if the bird came again and carried it away again grain by grain, and if it so rose and sank as many times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, leaves on the trees, feathers upon birds, scales upon fish, hairs upon animals, at the end of all those innumerable risings and sinkings of that immeasurably vast mountain not one single instant of eternity could have said to have ended; even then, at the end of such a period, after that eon of time the mere thought of which makes our very brain reel dizzily, eternity would scarcely have begun."

James Joyce. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Well it's a bit like that when you are unemployed. After the first three weeks or so of being busy now it's the waiting time. I am the the pile of sand that Joyce refers to, though more of a sandcastle sized pile really. Everything is now about waiting and learning whole new ways of being patient.

Waiting for:

1. The jobs section every week in the papers.
2. A position that one can reasonably apply for.
3. New jobs on the on-line recruitment web pages.
   
4. The mortgage protection policy provider to pay out.
5. Any, any recruitment consultant to answer emails or messages left on their voicemail ever. I reserve a special place in Recruitment Consultants' Hell for these people. It will be particularly fiendish.
   
6. Interviews.
7. Feedback from interviews.
   
8. Feedback from the submitted applications. Public sector applications have an astonishingly lengthy process. Six weeks to submit a dazzlingly complex application form (I do not remember how many "O" levels I got as I cannot find the certificates and why do they want to know the grades?) and then a "if you do not hear from us in 10 years you may assume your application was unsuccessful."
   
9. Application forms to come. It's amazing how many web links do not work.
   
10. Rejections - most applications just "disappear" and I refer you to point 5. This is like the error message in Excel, 'cannot resolve circular argument'.
    
11. Call backs from people you are trying to network with.
12. Responses from those people you used to know quite well when you worked but now don't respond to emails, phone calls, pleading or begging.
    
13. To sign on at the Job Centre.
14. To get a different form from the Job Centre.
15. Even the traffic seems to conspire against me though I accept that this may now be sign of faint paranoia.
    

I could go on. I have gone on. The point I'm making with this very blunt tool is that there is nothing you can do about it except be very, very patient. I used to kick and scream and find it all very disheartening but now I know you have to work with the system, for what it is. When you are in work this is what most of us do to job seekers.

"I put it to you, as defendant in the dock, that you have willfully, and regularly ignored phone calls, CVs and attempts at networking whilst in your last job sending them off to HR or putting them directly into the bin thus causing exactly the same emotional response as you are feeling now. That is correct is it not? Answer my question, yes or no".

I suspect that for most of us the answer is yes, that's how we treated other attempts from other people when they were seeking employment so it's hardly surprising that is what happens to us.

So wait. If you don't hear anything after submitting an application (certainly after two weeks) it's a goner, move on, if people won't call back find new contacts, look for other sources of jobs, follow up network contacts but after a reasonable time (remember they have jobs and therefore very important meetings to go to and then do nothing), go for a walk, get fit. Do something.

Don't wait passively is my advice (if you've been waiting for any and it's taken ages to come what with all that Joyce stuff) but wait positively and actively. Because one day someone will ask you "what have you been doing with all this time?" And they won't wait for an answer.