8 Signs You Would Sell Your Soul Just To Get A Job

1. You’ve begun checking your email more than your precious smart phone and social media accounts.

You’ve tossed aside concerns of how many double-taps and favorites you’ve received on your Instas and tweets, instead checking your email upwards of 15+ times a day in hope of seeing a magical message from one of the hundreds of companies you’ve applied to, only to find nothing new or automated rejection letters from jobs you can’t even remember applying to three months ago. But don’t get me wrong; those automated responses are much appreciated in a time where recruiters rarely take the time to let you know a job you’ve been dreaming about has been filled with some other lucky person.

2. Your employed friends are hard to sympathize with.

Those friends with their 9-to-5s will lament on their work days that go past 5 o’clock, their annoying coworkers, or their lack of desire of to get up in the morning to go to said jobs. Meanwhile, you sitting fuming in the same desk chair you’ve been planted on while trolling Indeed or LinkedIn, or the bed you’ve found yourself lying on exhausted after hours of fruitless job searching. It’s like when your friends who have boyfriends excessively tell you how in love they are while you have only the heat of your laptop to keep you warm at night.

3. You’ve transformed into a moody teenager again.

Some mornings you’ll wake up, ready to absorb the sun shining through your childhood bedroom window, optimistic about today’s search and with the hope that you’ll finally hear back from that hiring manager you spoke to last week. But then there are other days in which you wish the sky would be as gray as your mood and the skies would cry along with you as you face the fact that you’ll probably be unemployed forever.

4. You’ve started to post your business everywhere with no qualms.

Though you know the efforts are probably futile, you’ve posted your resume on all of your social media accounts, maybe multiple times, practically begging for someone to reach out to you. You’ve shirked all ounces of possible shame and have aired your dirty, jobless laundry to the world in hopes that a Good Samaritan with the power to grant you employment will extend their hand and pick you up off of the streets.

5 You are ready to irrationally sacrifice things.

Dear Job Gods,
If you grant me employment with this company, I promise to not eat that fourth slice of pizza for 6 months. I will deal with a messy, loud roommate in my new city. I will downgrade my iPhone back down to a basic phone. I will exchange sex for a year in place of this job offer. I will even give up alcohol for…a month.

6. You’ve begun to think it’d be more likely for you to win the lottery.

7. You inhabit a limbo where days blur into one another.

You find yourself confused by people’s #tbt’s, convinced only minutes ago that it was Tuesday. The weekends lose some of their delicious excitement and value because every day has a bit of languidness in your unemployed state. Too much freedom is a thing. You are no longer in school worrying about exams and group project deadlines, but you also aren’t on that daily work grind. You’re just kind of floating along on this revolving earth until you find another main purpose to get out of bed. (This is unless you’re one of those overly optimistic “live, laugh, love” sorts that have managed to convince themselves that each day truly is a beautiful gift to savor. If so, I applaud you and ask you to teach me your ways).

8. As bleak as things are, you know you can’t give up.

Sure, it seems like this unemployment will never end, and a job offer is a thing of fantasies, but if you really give up and pull the covers over your head in the morning, hiding from the world indefinitely, and no longer throw your resume and numerous cover letters at people, you definitely will never get that CEO title you’ve dreamed of, or that nice summer home, or even a basic income to support the family you want to have one day. You have to have faith. While trying to scrounge together every dollar you have, you have to do the same with the last little crumbs of optimism you have in you. If others before you have succeeded, you can, too. Just go read some Internet lists of actors that were homeless before they reached stardom and find some inspiration in that.