29 days to unemployment

I took a break from work and from blogging just to get away from it all for a while. To be honest with you, I’m tired of job applications. It’s endless. I spent god knows how many hours doing it last year and right now, history is repeating itself.

Some application forms for round 2 jobs run to 30 pages and they’re each taking me at least four hours to complete. The rota has me working between 68 and 72 hours a week every week this month and I resent spending ALL my free time on applications. But it has to be done because as it stands, I have 29 days to unemployment.

The thoughts going through my mind are:

I don’t want to move to far flung areas of the country to get a job. I’m especially loathe to do this for a non-training position. I’ll be destroying my life outside medicine leaving my family, my sports club, my friends etc… and then I’ll probably have to do it again in a few month’s time so is it actually worth it?

Unemployment doesn’t actually scare me too much from a non-career point of view. I’m a bright lad and I live in a capitalist society. There’s always ways and means of making money – plus I have no wife or children to look after.

What I AM worried about is my career. MMC have repeatedly said that August 2007 is my best chance to get a training job. If I don’t get one now, then everything becomes orders of magnitude harder next year. With this in mind, I realise that if I don’t get at least a trust grade (non-training) job, then I’ll be more or less unemployable come this time next year and this is very worrying indeed.

To quote the recent single by electro-popsters Unklejam, “What am I fighting for?” Trying to get our ward to run smoothly is – not to put too fine a point on it – fucking hard work. I have to work overnight on a regular basis. I have to give up my weekends and I there’s lots of stuff I’d like to do outside work that I’m not able to simply because I don’t have time. The job itself is hard work. It’s very rewarding but it’s sometimes very tough and I find that I have to try my best to be all things to all people. Like any job, there’s bits I enjoy about it and bits I don’t but at the end of the day being a doctor isn’t SO AMAZING that I’m willing to give up my entire life for it. Willing to move away from my family, friends and hobbies for, willing to move to a whole different COUNTRY for – forever. I honestly believe that if I was in a different career or profession, then I wouldn’t make those sorts of sacrifices for my job, so I’m not sure if I’m prepared to for hospital medicine.

So I’m in a quandary. I’m continuing to use my free hours to apply for jobs but after nearly a year of bullshit doled out by the government, I feel like my “fight” left me. I feel let down. The people who dreamt up the MMC system, the people who thought it would be a good idea, have either been sacked or resigned but at the end of the day, the MMC system marches on and it’s left this junior doctor with only 29 days to unemployment.