Your problem? You need an excitable, over ambitious, half-arsed, ex student with little if any experience and a chronic lack of motivation?

But there is a solution. Me.

So time has drifted by and I haven't blogged. There are several reasons for this. But they key reason is the sheer lack of anything to blog about. I've been sort of hanging around waiting for someone to ring me up and give me a job. It's slowly dawned on me that in the real world this doesn't happen. Even when you have a degree (fluke).

So, two months having passed since I took my final exam it's time to start applying for things. And my oh my oh my is it boring. And what's more people are so slow. Most adverts come out and say "deadline in four weeks" (as if they'll ever give you a deadline that generous when they actually give you the job!). Then they say 'interviews will be, like, a few weeks afterwards or something, whenever we can be bothered'.

Presumably at this point they just hang about a bit scratching their heads wondering whether they should give you the job even though in the intervening period you've long since passed retirement age. Or rather, whatever retirement age was last time I checked. It's creeping up behind my back like the wolf in that playground favourite "What's the time mister Wolf?".

The only thing to do whilst the jobs you first spotted drag themselves out of their stupour and actually read your CV is apply for a whole load of other jobs that, frankly, you're not sure you'll ever accept in the first place. And every week the papers come out with more job adverts, some you want some you don't but feel you should apply for.

But the thing is you have to operate on a time-lag and imagine yourself somewhere in mid-December when reading it. For example, I applied for 5 jobs the first time I looked. None of them are even at the "letting you know if you've got an interview" stage. That was nearly ten days ago - and they were old adverts with looming deadlines that I hadn't looked at before due to being post-finals pissed for about 6 weeks longer than standard. If I'm offered any of these I'd be mad not to take them. That could be in about 3 weeks. By which point these other jobs coming out now won't even have hit deadline.

But if I don't get any of these jobs, what says I'll get any of the new ones? It could conceivably be 2011 before I get anywhere. So if I haven't got a job by December I should be setting my sights a bit lower and aiming for more entry level jobs that will get my foot in the door and a roof over my head. But here's the problem - if I need to make sure I've got a job, any job, by the winter and therefore need at some point to stop being picky the ridiculous time it takes people to sort this stuff out means I need to start applying for some of the more modest jobs like, now.

But I haven't even been turned down for a single job yet. It just seems like a momentous waste of time to be applying for hundreds of jobs willy nilly at all kinds of grades and so on when I could still get, and accept the first one I went for. And not a little defeatist.

This would be at least bearable if applying for jobs were a remotely interesting activity. It isn't. Each and every employer appears to believe that they, and they alone, have THE form, THE question, THE advert blurb, which will give them the upper hand in identifying that young, thrusting, ambitious candidate who will transform their murky little hobby horse into dynamic market leader in the NIMBY, bleeding heart fraternity. (I'm generally going for fluffy right-on lobbying jobs by the way - if you hadn't guessed).

Well, let me tell you, the next time I have to write "I am a dynamic...passionate... blurdy...blurdy...advocate...nonsense whatever" to someone who can't just say "bung us yer CV and pop in for a chat" and be happy with that I'll throttle someone. Probably a poor child, or an upset animal or some other worthy cause.

So. Tomorrow I will blog about the things that have filled my time in the intervening period.