…about not having a job.

I was recently made redundant from my position with a rather bizarre company that, when all said and done, I didn’t really enjoy working for. There’s always been this myth that finding a job is easier when you’ve already got one. This is not true. In fact although I did attempt to get another job a few times while I was working at the bizarre and unfriendly company I was working at I found time restricted and the rather variable world of employment agencies not compatible with the regulated world of a day to day job.

New employers tend to want you to come for interview the day after they read your CV and in my field I get the impression that new employers tend to think that because they are offering employment they can behave in any strange way they want until they’ve offered you employment. I’ve twice confused prospective employers by not wishing to wait a month for a callback and moving to different areas of the country while they’ve been sitting on their hands. I’ve also confounded them by finding their interview techniques so rude that I didn’t need to see much to tell that working for them would be somewhat akin to a sojourn in hell.

There’s a secret in web development I don’t think even web developers are entirely aware of. Your job interviewee is very similar to a visitor to one of your web applications, they are the unexpected guest who arrives at a time you weren’t really expecting to see anyone and hence only gets the bare minimum of respect. Now this either means that the interviewee is given some respect as a complete stranger and then allowed to access a small variety of generic interpersonal, business-oriented services or they are confused, treated with a shocking disregard for one human being to show to another and then ejected rudely not sure what it is they’ve just been exposed to. The same is almost exactly true of web visitors to such company’s web-based applications.

I don’t want to make my name as the web developer whose applications are the most confusing and inoperable in the world and so I have to choose carefully who I work for. Companies are hegemonic and how the culture of a company treats an interviewee is very similar to the way their web site will treat visitors. I don’t really care how great it is to be on the inside of a business, what really matters is how the quality of my work will be perceived by the people outside. The people I chose this career path to service.

Anyway, the point is that most companies (with the one exception of legal firms who retain an employment law department) have no clue whatsoever that people they might be considering hiring are actually human beings with lives that do not revolve around getting a job with their company. I don’t think, to be honest, that if someone gives every appearance of being absolutely desperate to work for your generic office based organisation that they shouldn’t be turned away for psychiatric counselling.

I like working for people who seem aware that it is their responsibility to be friendly and welcoming to everyone even if they are about to cost the company money in the form of a salary. People who enjoy the high horse a little too much are not people you really want to be working for.

Still, eventually in the case of a job hunt you get up in the morning and all you can think about is getting a job, all that runs through your head is that you would like a job, you don’t even care what job. Our lives need shape and when they’re shapeless it distresses us.

All of which is a rather lengthy explanation as to why I’m currently on hiatus. Apologies to those awaiting reviews. I will be back as soon as I have sorted out the essentials of life. And if anyone knows of a position for a C# based ASP.Net developer in the Nottingham area of the UK, drop me a comment…

Many writers will tell you that the ingredients necessary in the partner of a writer add up to a kind of stoicism. A willingness to accept the writer’s somewhat antisocial pastime/dream/goal. I think that although these could be termed a kind of “essential” ingredients package without which a relationship between a writer and a non-writer would be untenable there are other things that help.

In light of recent events I have been giving much thought to just how amazing and wonderful the esteemed Mrs. Monkey actually is. As is part of the mood of this website I don’t really talk about personal things that often on here except as in how they impinge upon my ability to write/comment/review in the self-publishing arena. Usually life effects on writing are detrimental. The essential ingredients of the writer’s other half is that the person must not be a detriment to the work.

Mrs Monkey has always been encouraging of my goal to write and to be proud of what I write but I think it desreves to be noted that in fact it goes a lot further than that. I don’t think most writers dare to even dream of having a partner who enhances their writing skills but that is exactly who it is I have found myself with. I didn’t set out looking for such a thing because it wasn’t even on a list of things I thought existed. I also don’t think that it is something you can go and look for you either get it or you don’t. So I guess that means I have to count myself as lucky.

I am, as you’ve probably worked out if you’re a regular reader of this journal, quite a mind centred person. I spend a lot of time thinking. Mrs Monkey is far more emotionally centred than me but it is partnered with an incisive emotional and expressive intellect which allows her to talk about emotional truth a lot more frankly than just about anyone I’ve ever met.

Not that I knew that when we first met. I think my requirement in a partner when we met was someone who liked me who wouldn’t mind my vast DVD collection. I had no further requirements in a partner. These are qualities she fulfilled rapidly and also qualities that sold her a little short. What I didn’t understand at that time was that she had so much more to give and I was going to get it whether I wanted it or not. I think the flip side of that is that if someone is there to be well, there, and to not object to a DVD collection that sells them rather short. Only a cipher has no needs of their own.

We’ve always had a bit of a running joke that we’ve come at the business of a relationship bass-ackwards. We started with a volatile and argumentative realtionship which most people would have been keen to get out of and slowly over time we have gained a nice interaction with soggy patches.

Mrs Monkey, you see, demands emotional honesty, if you think about that you would be foolish not to have a shudder go down your spine. It’s not an easy thing to achieve (still working at it over here - heh) and not an easy thing to demand of someone. Is it any wonder that our relationship was initially unstable? Over time though we have started to see things the same way although as with anything it will always be a work in progress.

It’s that emotional honesty, however, that has had its profound effect upon the way that I write. Every book has to have characters and character tension but its in that space of thinking about emotion that separates out contrived characters and situations from honest ones. I had just about given up hope of really achieving a raw emotional honesty among my characters. I might be able to do peaceful conversation but difficult conversation was always something to be fudged.

There’s also a gap between action and speech. You can believe from what a character says that they are a character but a reader can infer from their actions that maybe they’re not so heroic after all. My sensitivity to this gap has also increased as a direct result of being with Mrs Monkey.

All of which has been an accident. Like I said, I wanted someone who would like me and put up with DVDs, then I wanted someone who was above and maybe a little more secure and happy, then I wanted someone who was not afraid of what I would do next in our relationship, then I wanted someone who was not maybe who they really were but that lasted about two days, then I wanted someone who was free to be who they were but also happy and able to put up with the DVDs and also not afraid of what would happen next, and then I wanted someone who would feel free to tell me what was going on between us that I wasn’t seeing and all of the above. I doubt we’ll ever tie it down. All that I know is that what I want has become more sophisticated as a result of being with someone who is not afraid to challenge me in any way.

The best illustration of this is a time were washing the pots in the kitchen and talking about arguments and I asked Mrs Monkey a question I don’t even remember properly it was something about what she found most frustrating about me or what bad thing about me I didn’t know about myself. Without missing a beat she replied:

“You think you have the right not to be blamed or attacked if you’re trying to do your best.”

Which is quite blunt thing to say. It’s also counter-intuitive. I think many people feel like that. As a student of Buddhist thought I realise though that no ego has a right to anything by default. Every way in which a person is not prey to suffering (in the Buddhist sense) is a liberty either earned or accidental. And the accidental liberties are not really worth that much.

Really if someone feels like blaming or attacking you they’re going to and you should be busy wondering why you’re being attacked or blamed, not believing you have any right for it not to be happening. That there’s how wars can start.

Doesn’t make the fact of it any easier to swallow though.

It’s that kind of honesty that makes the relationship continue. I am thankful for it every day. Mrs Monkey and myself aren’t love’s young dream, we’re something better. Every day I look forward to the day where our past actions have been paid back and we can get on with the future together without more than our fair share of fear. I’ve never known such a goal before and if I had I probably wouldn’t have understood what it meant. That’s what Mrs Monkey gives to me and that’s where all my hopes for the future lie.

Overall it doesn’t just make the writing better, it makes everything better. So maybe this is more praise for Mrs Monkey than a piece about writer’s partners. But I stand by my assertion that a writer should strive for emotional honesty in their work as much as any other quality. If they don’t I believe that’s a real failure not just as a storyteller but also as a person. I am glad I was saved from that failure and it’s something I hope I will never be able to forget.

As long as Mrs Monkey is by my side I am sure I never will. And anyone who wants to come and attack her as happened in the recent past has to understand that this will always be perceived as an attack on me also. I am under no illusions that she has enriched my life far more than any other human being with her uncommon wisdom and ability to express that wisdom. I’m intent on never letting her go as I love her with all my heart and soul; words which mean even more to me now than they ever have before.

If that was all a bit too heavy to take advice from Nathan Bransford has some more prosaic writing advice which I found to be worthwhile.

Have a good weekend all!

…going to apologise that my job hunt and sundry other activities had kept me from the keyboard… but it seems that its been quiet all round. So at least I have an excuse. More when I secure gainful employment.