Some annoyances in my job hunting

Three quirks appeared in my job hunting this season. I am not going to write about them professionally, so my anonymous blog shall be the enjoyable recipient of such experiences.

The first concerned my attempted application to an international school in Japan. I was intensely ill in the week before, taking effectively three days off when previously I had none for many years. The interview itself was a 'conversation' with a public schoolboy/man. It went well enough, although I received an email a week or so later consoling me that I wasn't going through to the next stage. Several things disturbed me though:

a) In the interview, repeated references were made to the lack of Sixth Form teaching available. As an A-Level school, it is apparent that very few students would take my subject. As the last one in, it would be remarkable to trump someone else in the informal authority of a place. Whilst I said the right things about waiting, I don't think they accepted that.

b) In the week before, all students (dominantly British) were banned from the shops around the school. The school itself does not have a canteen. Imagine telling your form that the community regarded you in such low regard.

The second incident was a missed interview by a head in a new school in Hong Kong. The money of Hong Kong is magnificent, although the figures they give were misleading to the point of lying. An interview was booked for 9pm their time. I researched the school but felt uncertainty about the fact the Headteacher was a PE teacher (no real reading of the humanities), and of its newness. A new school is an intense place to be organisationally and emotionally. True to expectation, the head missed the interview, only popping on 5 minutes before it was due to end to apologise. A stream of excuses appeared, most notably about having to put her child to bed and having a long day. I requested a rebooking of the interview via Skype, to which she insisted it had to be via a third party app. I emailed a week later requesting that I book the interview later (much later!) after my Manila interview. I received no message until a week ago (about a month after that time) saying that I had not been successful in my application to be interviewed, even though I was invited to interview. The truth told, it seemed a disorganised place with an unimpressive leader.

I don't want to recount that story to my professional networks because none of them deserve to be notified of its ridiculousness.

The final incident saw me invited to interview in the best school in Thailand. However, I had been invited to interview in Manila first. Firstly I requested to visit Bangkok, which was ignored. Then I was told that I was not accepted to interview. Upon questioning this email, I was told an error had been made and that I should travel to London (!). I waited a week and turned the job down the best I could, having made my mind up to connect myself to the good things I could see in Manila.

Satisfied with a new job yet writing about avoidance

I sit in front of a large monitor purchased two years’ ago for the purpose of better writing. It gives me recognisable satisfaction. Yet no emotion moves me. In a similar way, I sit here knowing that I have a secured a new job and one that will more likely give me experiences that I desire. But there is not distinct emotional response or it is subtle to the point of non-existence if so. 

So what do I intend for this post? I think it is something about facing home truths. Initially entitled ‘avoidance’, it intends to ignore that and address my social mind. 

Firstly, I have to declare that I am satisfied that I have secured employment in a good school. It is an IB school with a great reputation. There are only a few other places I would want to go: Mongolia, Hong Kong etc. The people I met were kind and I feel that I am going to enjoy a reasonable wage. It is not a Middle Eastern wage, but it will suffice. More than this, it is a place where I will feel once again abroad. I feel something of shame that I live in Dubai. It is not a place that impresses me, and it is not a place that I admire people for choosing. Perhaps that is down to the wretched connections I have made here, or the ill-treatment I have both suffered and delivered. It is a place that needs to be in my past where I can then speak more kindly of it. 

Already I can see the reality of leaving: I will see that water feature in Dubai airport where once I cried upon my ex inviting her ex to stay with their child. Despite promises to the contrary, that was always going to happen. Tears might come again when I pass that for the final time, although this time they will be of relief. And again my life will be mine a little more. Here in Dubai I am trapped in mediocrity, and a weakened mindset. Weak connections and weak people around me. A place of manging procedures rather than fostering vision.  

I have also read extensively about management and leadership over this week. This is emotionally challenging to me, far more than the rest of my studies. Recently, I spent so little time being with larger groups of people. My circles here in Dubai are small. I am able to speak publicly with due skill and occasional aplomb. But I do feel entirely able to speak with complete confidence to larger groups, perhaps not surprising given the experiences I have suffered here. 

This lack of movement towards others causes me to question myself. Do I speak with arrogance to other people? Do I disdain them? What is the mass of 'the other' with whom I do not seem to mix well? I liked my friends in York: that was a group of people that I admire and that I felt most at ease. Coming from the degrading experiences of living in Hull as I did, York was balm. Seducing my partner at the time was an ultimately bizarre experience; I remember meeting her mother and not once being called to address her by her actual name, not ‘Mrs Ryan’. I enjoyed my time there and experienced profound success.

Scarborough was a place that saw me flourish in my eccentricities. But there were so few partners and even less chance of any kind of romantic connections beyond a few loose dates. I did apply to work in Manchester, but my CV did not appeal to them. 

My move abroad was seemingly inevitable. 

I found the Beijing people to be interesting and varied upon first meeting them. But I remember the Big Brother teacher, charming if totally caddish, to be a little too earnest for my liking. He was frank about his Asian exploits and open with his easy manner towards female colleagues. There was a time whereby I did not want to miss a social occasion with everyone. But then that stopped, somehow. I can’t remember when. Looking back, I dated three people within a month of moving to Beijing and stuck with one. One was perhaps unsuitable, the other moved to foster her business in Australia, and the other became a partner of three years for whom I moved to another country. In the year between, when I was by myself, I suffered a little socially. The same has happened in Dubai, despite some of my efforts. 

My socialising in Scarborough revolved largely around football. That was fun and fair. In Beijing I remember such sport to be largely irksome. A terrible man, lacking in character and substance, often walked out, complaining with the viciousness of a true snowflake. I found, too, that three other chaps fouled me constantly. These were men who I should have perhaps enjoy friendship had I not treated them like Stokes and Robbins in the past and disdain them. One of them even went far beyond angry and attacked me in a match with handbags. That was a bizarre incident. Whenever I contested any of that, I should have remembered that they were drinking heavily most weekends together whilst I was with others. Do I want to have been closer to them? Perhaps so. They weren’t my people, but they were there.

That they were young and without children, very young, is telling. 

And so I think it is far too easy for me the play the role of the lone wolf. My roles and my expectations in life are admittedly hazy and immature. I am 37 and still undecided of paths to take and more. I have done well in my career and have fostered some decent skills. My influence on the lives of others has been worthwhile and my professional ambitions so far have been reasonably effective. But given my skills and my mind, there is perhaps more, much more, that I could have done or be doing right now. I suffer with the lack of any real expectation given to me. 

Firstly, my family give me little in the way of expectations, especially socially: there were barely any social functions. My mother and brother are far more social now, however. My father was selfish with his time. The men I know are not built to be social. 

Also, being single now means that I don't really have an easy way into social groups. I am socialising more than I did before, taking time to see friends each weekend. But there isn’t that easy connection with people that family gives you. That is costing me, I think. 

Finally, I've always found the excuse of work and reading desirable to avoid socialising, as friendly and capable as a I seem to be. Truth told, I desire the company of thinkers and readers, of gamers and musicians, of artists and rebels. Even now, at the age of 37, I find the company of other people outside those realms to be darkly tedious. And yet in order to succeed in the professions I take, such movement within these different spheres is necessary. I need to be more broadminded than I apparently am. 

I think to be with people is to experience the rhythms of my brain in a far better way than I do now. I have written a thousand words for the first time in a long time.