Jobseeker’s diary

It’s November. Already! How fast the months have ‘gone’ this year and soon, it will be December, marking the end of 2010. An optimist would say, well, let the year come to an end so we can move to the next and onto better opportunities. Right now, I’m such a pessimist and all I can think of are the limited opportunities to better my life. I’m yet to find a decent job both in terms of payment and work conditions. I’ve squandered a couple of golden chances and I can’t help worrying if the same won’t happen even next year. And then there’s the question of resolutions. I set a number of those early this year, none of which has been fulfilled. I had set goals like starting a small ‘business’ by August, which of course didn’t happen. This business was to basically retail women’s products – mainly cosmetic items like makeup, perfume, hair extensions etc and perhaps throw in clothes, bags and shoes. Anyone who knows women knows that these are the kinds of products likely to fly off store shelves so I knew I would make some good money and perhaps save enough to buy a plot of land somewhere and start building a few years later. All good intentions I should say but I’m afraid I may have been too ambitious. First roadblock was the all important capital. You all know how hard it is to come up with that. You try to save but unless you earn a salary in a certain bracket, it takes time to put aside a decent amount with which to start such a venture. Still about saving, I need to step up and start treating savings as exactly that – savings. I don’t have an enviable saving culture and while I will go ahead and deposit money on my savings account, I will withdraw it as fast and spend it even more quickly. I just can’t scrap when I know there’s money in the bank. I also tend to “help” a lot. I find it hard to hold onto money if a friend or loved one needs to borrow it. Unfortunately, many of these people take their time to pay back and when they eventually do, it’s in bits. So if someone borrowed 30,000, they will give you 5,000 today, 3,000 after two weeks, 1,000 four days later… At the end of the day, you end up spending that money on things you hadn’t planned to. But still, they’re better than others who “conveniently” forget to pay back. Jane is one of those. It’s been months since she borrowed from me and so I decided to “remind” her to pay up, considering that most people just got their salaries. Always one to come up with excuses, she said something about the issue having slipped her mind and that she will surely work on paying back but I know that’s just hot air. I’ve thought about borrowing money myself, perhaps from one of the banks since they are working overtime to get people to go in for loans. It’s an easy way to access credit but it also has hitches and carries risks. First, they want some collateral which I don’t have at the moment and also prefer someone with a substantial salary, not meagre earners like myself. And for the risks, you can lose your property in case you fail to pay back in the event that you lose your job or source of income for whatever reason. It’s for reasons like these that I decided taking this path wasn’t in my best interest. I’m still trying to think of other ways to come up with capital to start my own business. To be continued… nsophie77@yahoo.com