The Rollercoaster
On March 18, 2025, I woke up in the morning unemployed for the first time in over a decade. Almost 11 months have passed, and I have yet to find gainful employment anywhere. A handful of freelance work has helped pay the bills, but I've been slowly emptying the house by selling things and living off very careful credit card use. In January I was introduced to a company looking for people to teach subjects online, and I was quickly brought on board for some part-time lessons. My first paycheque will not arrive until the last business day of March.
For months I've invested 40+ hours per week "hustling" to find work and have been met with absolute silence or offers from companies offering less than minimum wage. This is in addition to the occasional freelance job.
I don't mind working hard. I don't mind being busy. I detest being useless, though.
In December I started to seriously look for work in Canada. If I am unable to earn enough here, then I'll be forced to return to my country of birth. The place is wildly different from the place I left, but there's family there who may be able to help out with a sofa to sleep on and a meal or two. This is not something I want to do but, if push comes to shove, it's something I will have to accept. Canada is a big country, though. If I return, I'd like to have a job lined up. Most of my family lives in Southern Ontario, which is where most jobs are. I also have a local phone number there through a VOIP provider that forwards directly to my phone here. So I started applying for jobs. The work history was certainly very Japan-centric, but the contact information was all local.
Over the past ten weeks, I have applied to 271 places in Canada. Many through Indeed. Many on company-specific websites. All wanted cover-letters, which I wrote myself without the help of AI or a standard template. All wanted someone "experienced". My first lines of code were laid down in 1994. Experience is something I have in spades.
However, these companies were uninterested. Of the 271 applications, exactly zero have resulted in a phone call, an email, or any other sort of acknowledgement.
People say that HR departments are racist, sexist, and unwilling to hire white guys. Not wanting to paint people I've never met with such a brush, I decided to test this by changing just my name on the application. I created another account on the job sites, but used the same work history, my mother's address, and my forwarding phone number. When I applied to a job as Jason Irwin, I would then immediately follow up with an application from Jasmine Indrani.
Again; same work history, address, contact info, and initials.
Jasmine has had 8 invitations for an interview. Jason has had 0.
Zero.
In Japan, I can understand that my non-native language skills make it very difficult to work at companies around this part of the country. Some have suggested I move back to Tokyo to work at a company where I can use both English and Japanese, but that's outside of what I can do financially. Others have suggested finding additional freelance gigs on Upwork, but the average cost of applying for a job there is $4.75. Yes, you pay to apply to jobs on Upwork. Last week I spotted a job that was almost completely aligned with what I excel at, but I was asked to pay close to $30 USD for the luxury of being placed higher in the list of applicants.
I cancelled my application and swore with language so foul that I can still taste it today.
Competition is not a problem, as it's generally a sign of a market existing. If nobody wants a thing, there's usually a good reason for it.
Which explains the rollercoaster.
Two or three times a week I will wake up around 3:30am and wonder how I will pay the next round of bills, due on the 25th of the month regardless of income. I wonder why my applications to local companies for jobs that are not tech-related are seen, but not acted upon. I wonder why I am full of creative energy, but have no way to earn anything from it.
Why am I so worthless?
The days when I wake up feeling creative are great. Ayumi and I will go and do various things that cost little to no money. Video footage is recorded and, a few days later, something is put up on YouTube for the world to see. Sometimes I'll think about some software I'd like to work on and do that. Or maybe I'll just go into the yard and clear the weeds and pick up leaves.
But this energy rarely sticks around for more than 80 hours. On the fourth day, I'll crash and feel I'm absolutely useless after checking the mail and seeing yet another demands from the government insisting that I pay $380 per month into a pension system that will not exist in 20 years. I understand that living in the modern world costs a great deal of money, but sometimes too much really is too much.
This malaise generally sticks around for three to five days before giving way to another burst of creative energy ... only to be replaced by self-defeatism ... then replaced with energy ... then absence.
The ups and downs are nothing new. I do wish they'd be less disruptive, though. Ayumi is a patient dog, but even she sighs in frustration when I'm stuck in the doldrums of nihilism while the sun is shining.
Several months ago I lamented that I did not know what to do. I still don't know what to do. I wake up. I look for work. I do the small bit of work that people have entrusted me to accomplish. I look for work again.
Perhaps this is all that can be done.