THAT DSLR MAN

113 Days - A Job Seekers Tale

The above number of days can be converted to one of these units:

• 9,763,200 seconds
• 162,720 minutes
• 2712 hours
• 16 weeks (rounded down)

Really does seem like an age when you have nothing to do, but do you really think you can do everything you wanted even when you have all that free time?

Let me take you on a tale, because you see it all started back in January, the 7th to be precise because I have a few things to clear up for anyone bothered to read this..

# Enter Dramatic Waving Hands and Mystical Music #

I woke up, knowing something was up as we all (i.e. every staff member) had been called into work that morning (old job at the camera shop), we knew something was going down, this was confirmed when the happy so polite HR Manager & the area manager walked in through the doors both at the same time, three minutes after I put the final price ticket onto a camera in the cabinet, a Fuji.

So we were carted upstairs and was given the fucking wonderful delightful news that everyone in our store was going to be made redundant because we simply didn’t make enough money for them to make our store viable in the economic plan of the company, this had no reflection upon myself as an employee however, just the profit vs. loss in the bigger picture.

This said, in an unrelated ironical sad event, the entire company proceeded to go into administration not but three days later and my heart felt sadness did genuinely go out to all of my friends that did work for the same company.

So I lost my job, I’d spent 5 years working there and had nothing much more than a Christmas hat wearing toy moose, knowledge and friends to show for it, as well as a fair few disliked people, but never the less had I enjoyed my time there? As much as I complained, yes I did, I learned a lot, I did a lot, I felt like fucking rain man some days with all the knowledge and processes of how & why I could do things in different ways etc.

So what did I do? I did what any and most people would do in this situation, I went mental, I had a total breakdown, it took a fair few hours for it to totally sink in and after a costa hot chocolate, hugging my canvases I took of my work and looking at the still smiling expression on my moose’s face I burst out into tears whilst waiting for my friend Zoey to come and find me between my plastic bags sitting on a shopping mall floor in a wreck.

I had a nice talk with her and her friend, some good words and some nice friendly advice, which I still remember, that night I booked tickets and ran away on a train to see my partner Charlotte at Uni, I couldn’t handle it here, I really couldn’t, just looking at this screen, being around the same locations, everything just felt terrible and I needed to leave, so I spent a week away, it was good, as much as becoming an Agoraphobic could be.

I proceeded to spend the week sitting in her room eating noodles, it was the only thing I could stomach as high stress stops me eating, sitting in the corner of her room hugging a pillow, for the first time in years, I even turned my phone off, if you know myself personally you will know this is a big thing, not because I’m pathetic and addicted to it, I just needed to not hear from people randomly, I needed to pick who and how much at that point.

I even proceeded to make a video diary, I got about half way through the video and just broke down again, now I am not one to say that it doesn’t happen to anyone else but please do appreciate that this was the first major job I had ever had and I had been there for over 5 years, 1/5th of my life.

So after a week of noodles and rocking like a crazy I came back, I signed up for the job center plus scheme’s, I downloaded all the shit terrible job search app’s to my iPhone and proceeded on my way to finding myself a job.

Needless to say after the initial meeting of the JCP as the woman treating myself like some form of a crack addict it suddenly dawned upon myself why they have security guards in the building because its to stop you from smashing the monitor across her smarmy fucking head.

So a few weeks went past, my anxiety issues destroyed my health further to the degree that I had to seek medication and ended up on Propranolol tablets to stop myself getting worse, they worked well, kinda.

So I took them for a few weeks during of which I got a job interview with a high street retailer, but they didn’t decide to choose me because of my ‘Lack of experience’ with the products they sell and they felt it would be better to train the person they chose in the customer service and retail skills I already possessed than to teach me a few names of products that I already had a basic knowledge of.

So that was pleasant, I wasn’t surprised but it was more about the fact I kept working myself up, telling myself that I was going to be fine, “Yeah Mike, you’ve got this, you’ll be awesome!!”, like fuck hell, either people didn’t bother to ring you back or even actually for the bank I applied to after wasting 7 weeks of my life they dumped a generic rejection email the following day after my interview with the biggest asshole displeasing manager ever.

Well I kept looking around, around and around, company websites are the way forward, I found it an easy task to walk through the companies in my head, or google street view, and then go to that companies website to see if they have a job vacancy opening.

Nothing.

So what do you do with all this spare time on your hands? See now you call it ‘Spare’ time, you divulge into realizing how little you bothered to pay attention to the things around because you were too busy before, you complete those tasks, your steam un-played games list shrinks heavily and you resist the temptation to play ‘World of Warcraft’ again, yes again.

I did a photoshoot, I edited photo’s, I got bored of editing photo’s, I edited some more photo’s and then I started realizing how little people seemed to care about the fact that I had no real income but still expected me to do everything for free, funny how when I changed that to asking for donations, first jokingly about wanting to afford lunch, then seriously about needing to afford lunch, or razer blades to get rid of my hobo beard hah, that people decided to stop asking or just stop talking to me at all.

Always good to see who’s in it for the good and bad times, which brings myself onto the main reason why I have wrote this not so quick entry to thank those people that bothered to stick with me, the few people that bothered to take me out for lunch so I didn’t totally go stir-crazy, the few people that wanted me to help them out with things or just let me complain at them whilst listening.

I would like to list your names but I feel that I do not want to offend people encase I forget to mention you, so I plead that you just read this and understand that I am grateful for your help.

You don’t hear it very often from myself when I can admit that everything was fucked in my life, I turned into a stressed ass, ok worse, hah, but again if you know myself personally you will know how much stress totally screws me up and if I cannot control it what it does to my health.

Too much stress = A very sick Mike.

So what else did I do besides play games and take the random photo? I searched for a job EVERY day, before people complain at me.

I took to researching and trying to learn video editing, I got some basics done, you can find a result of a created video intro on my youtube channel.

I realized how much I really hated day time television and the sun so I started sleeping during the day and waking up at like 3/4pm, watching prison lockup documentary’s, I get very OCD like when I am stressed and latch onto things and must either complete them and must know a lot about a certain subject, a problem I am aware of and try to control, this is also why I have a problem wanting / starting to learn things that do not potentially strike myself as interesting unless I have a genuine desire to know about them, even if I ‘HAVE’ to know about them.

So short of growing too much beard hair, eating way too many noodles and resisting the urge to spend all of my savings on stuff I didn’t need I am not sure what kept myself sane besides my partner and staring at the stupid smile on that moose’s little face.

But it would appear that all has for now ended in a good turn of events and I have recently acquired a new job selling telecom’s equipment, the people seem nice, the job seems much like my prior job in that its principle is selling things and customer service so we will see how things go, I hope for the positive and I hope they like me, I believe I am doing a good job thus far.

So in closing to this I would again just like to say thank you to those people and I have some helpful advice for anyone out there looking for a job like I was.

1. As much as you think its glum, one day, one time, someone will employ you if you shave and keep a smile.
2. Don’t think it will just come quick and don’t be ashamed to be on JSA, if you are genuinely looking for a job then you deserve it, if you are sat on your ass doing nothing then feel bad.
3. Money isn’t everything, if you can justify it then find something you will like or rather something you can be happy doing.
4. People will use you but you will find out who are really around when you need them to help you.
5. Free time is not.
6. Propranolol.
7. Google Street View / Mind Travel + Company Websites.
8. Find a way to vent your anger in a constructive, but free, way, be it shooting 13 year old german kids on COD:MW, Battlefield or Halo rather than on the people you care about, but get them to understand that you need them and you are sorry in advance if you do happen to get angry with them.
9. Thank the people that helped you when you find your next job, the people that stuck with you and not just your stuff.
10. Don’t feel bad for spending your own money, just remember that it’s yours if you earned it from a previous job.
11. The Government Insolvency Agency are the 2nd most useless department and I quest you to beat them for that level.
12. Shiney things will become more shiney and needed when you have no money income, so stash it all in another account that you cannot access and if needs be give it to someone to look after and monitor it for you so you don’t buy that brand new TV ‘Just because’.

Again, thank you to the genuine people out there.

Yes this made no sense but it has kinda helped me a little.

I hope to get back into doing the video VLOG stuff soon, I will be doing much more with my photography group based stuff soon also.

Thank you for reading this if you made it this far, just remember, no-one’s safe, I didn’t see it coming, always have a backup plan, if that fails however then sell all your stuff, buy a tent and become a hippy ;D

Mike out

So I made a list of things I learned at the weekend, this is what I have learned this week, well so far..

1. Plugging any external microphone / recording device into my camera’s microphone introduces something called a ‘DC Offset’ error and as such totally fucks messes up the audio creating a ‘pop’ sound when playback is initiated and causes the audio waveform to shift from DC 0 to around +2.5% on the left channel and around +8.33% on the right channel, which, in short, basically makes it shift and sound shit not so good.
2. Apparently smoothies are worse for you than eating the fruit itself.
3. If you have made it, the Chinese have copied it.
4. Twixtor, Twixtor Pro, 25fps, 50fps, 60fps its still not enough to look good without terrible ghosting (But will do for now)
5. I am glad about my time to learn new things but would like certain people to hurry up and re-contact me about a job..
6. Pepsi max is still below Coca-Cola.
7. When in a power cut, an iPad suddenly becomes more interesting than to just be a paperweight, this is unless you didn’t charge it because you are an idiot.
8. Auto Levels in After effects is really good, unless the subject in view becomes dramatically contrasted through exiting or entering the shot thus blowing everything out, so if this happens just use manual control editing of levels.
9. ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ was a pretty crap film.
10. There are only so many days you can have noodles for lunch and get away with it.
11. I really do need to get out into the fresh air further than 500m from my house.
12. I need a cat, a cat or some form of 3rd person social entertainment.
13. Waiting for things to be released doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be using or playing them the second they come out or even week for that matter, I.e. Minecraft 1.5
14. I somehow have managed to gain more money through not having a job than I have when I did have one? But this doesn’t mean that I do not want one and am not trying, I am definitely trying.
15. I still hate stupid questions.
16. Apparently “Let me google that for you” is an insult? Well, lesser minds and all that.
17. Insane Office Escape Part 2 is better than Part 1
18. I still suck at video editing but I can make it look pretty good from the point of view of standard video but my effects work needs serious learning.
19. I still should stick to photography.
20. I still need to buy a Viewfinder Cover or an external monitor, specifically the external monitor if I want to do any form of blogs
21. Lastly that I should actually make this my Vlog content rather than typing it -_-;

So I learned the following this weekend about video capturing. the equipment I own and a few other things:-

1. The Canon EOS 7D and Canon L 24-105mm F/4 IS USM as a pair are truly weather sealed, you can thank the sickening horrendous amount of rain for that test.
2. Wearing reaction lenses when shooting using a LCD viewfinder is a fucking stupid & silly idea as it makes your footage appear darker in a ND style, thus allowing you to blow out your footage.
3. I need a LCD Viewfinder cover / Z-Finder if I want to continue to film outside / free-held.
4. Charlotte’s banana cookies are lovely
5. I need new glasses -_-;
6. There are some cool people at these YouTube gatherings
7. I still don’t fully understand that ‘Ninja’ game
8. I have too much equipment
9. Adobe Products take way too long to install
10. No matter how much you think you have learned, you will always have more to learn, bring on YouTube tutorials and lots of coca-cola

Many thanks to all the people of the YouTube gathering this weekend and thank you for the test footage for practicing with.

So it took 3 1/2 years but windows you finally beat me.. I’m reinstalling the whole of Win7 64bit.. Yay.. =\