Why it's important not to isolate yourself

Pret a Manger provides comfortable seats, ample plug sockets and an environment of white noise. At this Pret in Victoria, I'm starting to recognise the people around me. A teacher to my left, who comes to Pret to mark his papers in his free lesson periods. The server who knows what coffee I want in the morning (although the real coffee I want here is 'None Pret, your coffee tastes like grit') and the two girls who have more work coffee breaks than I'm sure their company allows.

It's nowhere near as sociable and friendly as a real workplace, but at least JobHungryGrad doesn't feel isolated and stuck at home.

I think isolation is the most danger that an unemployed graduate looking for work can put themselves in. There is a feeling that its totally possible to disappear from society and that nobody would notice. You, locked alone in your house, in a London suburb, could very easily disappear from the network and no-one would know. Of course, it's not true, but full days of having to converse with your mind, your fingers, and whoever might email you during the working day can leave you with a sense of solitude to the extent that you  start to feel as though you might be auditioning for the leading role in Gabriel Garcia Marquez' seminal tome.

If you're one of these filthy job-hunting scroungers, get to a coffee shop, zone into your work for the week and get on it. Hint number two: dress up. I'm wearing formal clothes because it makes me feel as though I'm 'really' working. Wear a hoody and gym leggings and chances are people won't take you quite as seriously.

Plus, good things come from working in coffee shops looking nice:

• On friday I got asked out on a date by a hot Danish guy 
• I've been given business cards from people after we've got chatting and they've heard my sad and desperate JobHungrySadGrad situation
• I got free coffee in Pret last week. I KNOW. 

Plus be courteous with your table/laptop space, or if you want to annoy telegraph readers, go crazy:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9254698/Wi-fi-lingerers-in-coffee-shops-are-causing-territorial-disputes-academic-research-finds.html

It has been six days...

It has been 6 days since I last posted in this blog. Congratulations, JobHungryGrad must be busy with her new, high-powered 9-5 executive graduate position! Well done JobHungryGrad!

*Cue hollow laugh

Instead I have been writing. Writing won't get me a high powered 9-5 but it has brought me a sense of fulfillment and happiness. But that's not as important as money, is it? Because when we die, after a short average of 78 years on this beautiful, wonderful planet we call home, whether or not we achieved enlightenment will be ignored: instead what will count is the financial legacy that we will leave to our children and grandchildren.

Isn't it?

Recently, I watched all three (long story) of my grandmothers die or grow old while losing all the money they had managed to put away for a 'rainy day' because they had money, so they had to pay full fees for their nursing homes or house-care. Those who had less, were given grants or their 'fees' for these NHS services were subsidized.

This is not me, at 23, throwing down my towel and declaring that from now on, I will forgo work because I don't want to pay my nursing home fees. That would be ridiculous. But my generation now has a painful and lengthy period of financial woe ahead of us: in my graduate job I worked my ass off. And for what? My current housemates get in at 10pm and leave at 6am. Why? And for what?

For money? To survive? To achieve? To fulfill their ambition?

Or because we are expected to?

What is the right thing to do?

My generation has many questions, and perhaps, Messrs Cameron and Clegg, we'd like them answered. Where will all this lead, and when will this stupidity, this waste of human resources cease? 

Life cannot continue like this.

Am I sad and depressed?

Other than a fact that I'm currently house sitting for a friend whose housemates all work for the civil service fast stream, the company I just left, the most depressing thing is that I feel like everything's a little pointless.

That's not to say that I'm sad, depressed or suicidal, it's just you kind of have a little more time on your hands so you start thinking about where it all went wrong/right (if, like me, you're still convinced that leaving your last job was the best thing you could do right now). Here's an example. I was sitting on the bus yesterday at 6pm.

Teenage girl to her grandmother: I had extra art class today but I had to leave early because I needed to go and take my lifeguard exam but then I realised that I had left my swimming costume in the dance studio during rehearsals.

That is exactly what my life was like approximately 5 1/2 years ago. Minus the dance and plus some piano lessons. All the people I've met who are unemployed so far are either moping, don't have any experience because they spent all their time getting drunk at university and doing nothing else, or just aren't applying to anything. I'm in denial, and am calling my new period of unemployment 'freelancing' until the point when I get a new job and I can breathe a sigh of relief that the unstructured days of yesteryear are over. (I actually love it, I just feel guilty that I love it rather than conceding to societal mores and working a 9-5 because I'm not currently getting paid enough to buy milk).

So occasionally you do wonder what the point of it all was. Those of us who have jobs mainly dislike them, some lucky ones love them, and some lucky people who have excellent connections have excellent jobs. Others decide to risk it, change the direction you're pointing in and try to start again.

As my friend Clare's wardrobe says: 'If you're not happy with where your direction is taking you, turn around.'