Dear Wee Rachie: An Introduction

I started writing letters to my younger self last summer, shortly after my contract on my job ended and I was looking for something to do to pass the time in between application forms and volunteering.
These eventually turned into a bit of self therapy for myself when I was feeling a bit crappy and I thought I would put some of them up on my blog, I've edited a few bits like changing 25 to 26 and circumstances that have changed etc.  I'll play it by ear whether I put any more on, I'm unsure, but here was the first one I wrote myself. 

Dear Wee Rachel,   

Rachie, Rach or whatever variation of Rachel you are going by at the present moment.

It’s me, well it’s you, I’m you, but I’m future you! Don’t be scared, I’m perfectly normal, well, I’m as normal as you are.  There will be times when you wonder and imagine what it will be like to be me - I remember what it was like to be you! I wanted to get in touch, I don’t want to spoil your hopes and dreams or give you too many spoilers but I thought I’d offer you some insights that I’ve picked up along the way that might have been useful to me back when I was you.  

To paraphrase dear old Madonna (I say old, she is probably more active and in better shape in her 50s than I am in during my 20s or ever will be - if I look half as good as she does when I’m past the half century mark, I'll dance around in my pants too! *Note – I won’t Mum, I’m just being a smartarse) we are living in a material world and I am a...... graduate with no job.   Ok, one spoiler, you went to university; (you passed exams and everything!) I bet you can’t begin to fathom that right now, but believe it or not, you aren’t actually stupid!

Back to the whole crappy being unemployed thing, I'm not at all unique in that, for every job I apply for, every interview I go along to, I am going up against hundreds of me's (they may not have my self-inflicted red hair, my grasp of sarcasm or my ridiculous phobias of feet and tiny insects), but like me they've studied their craft, read a thousand books that bore little relevance to the career path they wanted to follow but merely helped them to pass a module that was the best of a limited selection that semester (I digress but yes, I am talking about Film Theory Goes to the Movies, Catriona if you ever read this, you are a fantastic educator and I thoroughly enjoyed that module, also reading about the monstrous feminine made me question whether my body really was a monster and helped me come to the realisation that most theorists in that subject are misogynistic muppets - thank you!). Getting back to the point, the hundreds of me's that I come up against are suffering from the same problem that myself and others across the world are - too many job seekers, not enough opportunities. It’s not much fun but you aren’t alone. 

There will be some for whom everything generally works out straight away because it’s just who they are - they are pushy in the good way,  they view tutors as potential industry contacts, they’ve been networking since the age of conception and have that steely determination to achieve the best no matter what the cost, and while that makes you feel crap, it’s the difference between them and us unassuming folk who let the life come to them and hope for the best and teaches us an important lesson - grab life by the balls or you'll spend your days scratching yours!! (Yes I know you have no balls of which to speak, imagine metaphorical balls for effect!).

I’m a 26 year old graduate struggling to find employment in a competitive field with red hair (yes you have red hair now and Mum loves it, Dad doesn’t really acknowledge it, which probably means its fine!), a smart mouth and a pink ukulele.
You have had some jobs, an amazing one year internship, some admin contracts and you invigilate exams.  It's not all hopeless.
 My musings of the world probably won’t be the most insightful anyone will ever read or change the world but hopefully they might help you or someone like you to feel better about their life, maybe they’ll amuse someone further on in life with an penchant for nostalgia or maybe it’ll just make a judgmental old pensioner I know feel a little less smug to see that I do more with my time than sit on social media accounts all day - three of which I have open as I type -  yeah, I can multi-task bitch!

I'll write to you again soon.

P.S – I say this with love, and hindsight…. Throw out that bloody awful Orange padded jacket, you look like a pumpkin!