Job hunting is a full-time job that doesn’t pay

I am sitting with my laptop, 47 tabs open, 3 different browsers, reading another “dynamic self-starter” requirement. I’ve been applying to so many jobs lately;  obsessively, exhaustingly, methodically; and the silence in return has been deafening. Negligible callbacks. No feedback. Just form rejections or, more often, nothing at all. Every application feels like bottling lightning with a cover letter. I keep rewriting my story to fit a box someone else built. I keep telling myself, “You’re not lazy. You’re in limbo. And limbo is a battlefield.” What does one even do to get a job anymore? Apply? Network? Manifest? Beg? Burn sage? 

As a certified daydreamer, I sometimes stumble upon a job listing that feels like it was written for me, like the universe whispered it into existence. And I let myself believe.

I imagine the version of me who gets it: cool, confident, caffeinated. I reshape my identity around the role. I draft mental tweets about the work I’ll do.

And then? Silence. Not even a polite no. Just the usual ghosting. Rejection doesn’t just hurt my chances. It hijacks my identity. I start asking not “Am I good enough?” but “Am I anything at all?”

I do this monthly, by the way. Like a ritual. Spot the dream job, fall in love, get ghosted. Repeat.

And in this sacred cycle of self-inflicted heartbreak, I haunt the LinkedIn profiles of people who did get those positions. I compare and contrast their every achievement, line by line. I zoom into their credentials, the photos, the internships, the polished summary paragraphs.

I make mental notes of where they went right... and where I must’ve gone wrong. It’s not envy, exactly. It’s more like academic grief. A post-mortem of opportunities that slipped away.

What is a job? A paycheck? A place to put your brain on weekdays? A badge of worth? Why does it feel like I’m chasing a ghost version of myself in a blazer and imposter syndrome?

There’s no safety net. Just this quiet panic under my skin. Hopes and dreams feel like they’re flying farther away from me each day. Some mornings, it feels like my competency is slowly leaking out of my soul.

But... The waiting, the rejection emails with no feedback. Talk about interviews that felt like interrogations. Or worse, hope-laced silences. And then I scroll through another “I’m thrilled to announce…” post on LinkedIn, with a sad, lumpy blob of jealousy rising in my throat like bad tea. I want to be happy for people (and I usually am!) but some days it stings. I feel like I’m getting erased while the algorithm cheers someone else on.

That exhaustion from LinkedIn (LinkedIn is an unnecessary evil, by the way!) trenches or getting ghosted by HR has been teaching me so much. I’m learning that job hunting is less about skills and more about performance. How well can you mask exhaustion with enthusiasm? How many times can you pitch yourself before you forget who you’re selling? How long before “professional” starts meaning “emotionally numbed but high-functioning”? There’s this impossible bind. Be ambitious, but don’t burn out. Work hard, but rest. Hustle, but heal. I feel like I'm always choosing between being well and being seen. And if I dare to pause, it feels like the world moves on without me. Reading most job descriptions now feels like reading aspirational fiction. I don’t even need to feel guilty about not reading books anymore. 

Sometimes, I feel like my real dream job is the one where I wouldn't need LinkedIn. A role where I could show up as myself, not a clickable summary. Where I’m not forced to compress my soul into a headline. No “culture fit,” no personal brand. I don’t want my life to be reduced to KPIs and key deliverables. I want work that lets me breathe. Just real work with real meaning, without having to turn myself into a walking pitch deck. I’m not asking for ease. I’m asking for respect. And honestly? Rest shouldn’t feel like a rebellion.

I keep hoping side projects count (even anonymized poetry that nobody knows about!). But, my question is: why is “the right job” feeling like I am applying to be someone else? the right job should feel like recognition, not reinvention, right? This is exactly the marrow of the modern job hunt: we are not just searching for work, you’re clawing for dignity in a system that doesn’t even remember we exist. The modern job market isn’t built for poets or dreamers. It isn’t built for thinkers. Or for care. It was built for efficiency theatre, the kind that rewards polish over potential and pedigree over passion. No, it’s not a meritocracy. It’s a visibility contest: loud, relentless, and deeply unfair. It favors the glossy, the networked, the already-known. And those of us who are real? Who bring depth and devotion? We’re made to feel like we’re “too much” or “not enough,” never the right shape for the job-shaped hole.

Some days, I feel like I’m grieving the version of myself who could’ve done so much, if only the world had noticed. If only systems weren’t so rigged. If only potential mattered more than packaging. I’m not loud. I’m not always "on." I don’t speak in bullet points or market myself like a brand. But I show up, I think deeply, I care hard. It’s just that no one seems to notice unless you shout. And, as usual, shouting doesn’t come naturally to me.

I don’t know what the dream job is anymore. I’m still looking. I’ll keep applying, yes. But I’m done apologizing. The job is not to chase jobs. The job is to build a life. Job applications are a tool. Not the temple. I’ve decided to stop shrinking to fit. I’m done editing my soul to sound more like synergy. Whoever hires me next doesn’t just get my labor. They get my loyalty, my integrity, my fire. And, I've decided to interview jobs as much as they interview me. Until then, I’ll keep writing. I’ll keep dreaming. And I’ll keep becoming the version of me that doesn’t need to be picked to matter.

Here's the context behind the urgency: I just switched jobs this year. I ran; ran; from a soul-sucking, peanut-paying corporate job that drained the joy out of everything. I thought I had made it out. I joined the social sector. First month? Euphoric. I felt like I could breathe again. But then... the cracks. Salaries delayed. People started leaving. Then the firings began. The office turned into a ghost town. And I’m stuck again: overworked, underpaid, overwhelmed. And it’s scary. Burnout isn’t a side effect anymore, it’s the entire atmosphere. I’m tired before I even start my day. Rest feels illegal. Rest feels like laziness. Rest feels like losing. We’ve normalized being stretched thin like it's ambition, but really, we’re just running on hope fumes and broken sleep. And honestly? The grief of working in the nonprofit world hits different. It’s heartbreaking. It’s lonely when you didn’t come from a utopia-coded progressive uni or have the ‘right kind’ of pedigree. Trying to find a fair-paying nonprofit job feels like breaking into a club where the bouncer keeps telling you your vibe is too real. Meanwhile, the cause is real, the stakes are real but the support? Nowhere to be found. It’s wild how even purpose-driven spaces expect you to martyr your sanity for pennies. I thought nonprofit meant values-first, but it feels like capitalism wearing an empathy costume. The mission is noble, but the machinery is broken. And I’m caught in the cogs. 

I think part of the problem is that I never really had a “dream job” in the first place. Not in school. Not in college. I was too busy studying, trying to survive, or writing lonely poetry in the margins of my notebooks. I didn’t dream of corner offices or five-year plans. I didn’t grow up dreaming of a title or a salary. I dreamt of being seen. Of not feeling invisible. Of not being lonely. Of doing something that didn’t make me feel like a background character in my own life. Of having a life that made sense. We were sold a linear fantasy, but the world zigzagged. The real dream isn’t a job title, it’s dignity, it’s meaning, it’s waking up without dread clawing at your chest. The right job shouldn’t make you shapeshift; it should recognize you already are the shape. It should feel like resonance, not reinvention.

Sometimes I feel haunted by a future that was built for me by other people. As kids, we’re spoon-fed this shiny, linear story: study hard, get good marks, pick a respectable job, climb ladders, get promotions, buy property, smile in family WhatsApp groups. The “good life.” But I don’t think I ever wanted that future. Not really. While everyone else was dreaming of MBA programs and big company perks, I was secretly imagining that some rich, mysterious publishing house would stumble across my lonely little blog and offer me a book deal. I dreamed of writing barefoot in cafés in Scotland. Of giving readings in bookstores that smelled like old paper and ambition. Of wandering around the UK on a budget and a prayer, soaking up rainy streets and secondhand stories. I didn’t want a career. I wanted a life I could feel inside my body. But then came the expectations. The "be practical" warnings. The polite discouragement dressed as love. Slowly, I started shelving those dreams, one by one, to make room for a future that felt safe. Probable. Professional. Predictable. And now I sit here, years later, wondering if those dreams are still waiting for me somewhere, or if I buried them too well. Maybe that’s why job hunting feels so violent. It’s not just work I’m chasing, it’s a life I never gave myself permission to want.

Maybe that’s why the job search feels so personal. It’s not just about getting paid. It’s about asking, “Is there a place in the world for someone like me?” And when the answer is silence… it stings deeper than we let on.

Everyone says “impact over income” until the rent’s due. They still follow the same tired meritocracy myths. Fancy degrees and elite circles? Still the key to the door. Passion? Lived experience? Grit? Not on the job description. It’s not about values. It’s about proximity to prestige.

Sometimes, I put in so much efforts while applying for jobs. I’ve sent my soul with my resume... and they still ghost me like I sent them spam. (Also, no. I don't want to write a 500-word highly-tailored cover letter for your excel job. It's a job application, not an odyssey. I am NOT a culture fit and that's a compliment!) But, they all feel like a silent scream in a crowded room. I feel like people make a huge fuss about ATS or AI or AI ATS or whatever. Like, I can say: “I have 7+ years of experience in breathing,” and still will make the ATS (or, won't... I don't know!). And, those entry-level roles requiring 10 years or the unpaid trial projects? We all joke to cope, but that laughter is doing the heavy lifting of grief because beneath that is fatigue. And fear. And a constant rewriting of our self-worth. The job search itself is unpaid labor. Emotional labor. Cognitive labor. Soul labor. Sometimes, I apply to a ton of jobs, diligently, completely. I burn through tabs and tweak resumes until I can't see straight. Then I pause. I wait. I tell myself, “Let the responses come.” But they don’t. And while I rest, the listings keep moving, the deadlines pass, and I miss out on those. I sit there with nothing but silence (and shame...). And slowly, I just… give up. Not forever, but enough to feel like a failure in limbo.

We call it “looking” but really we’re building a full-time brand campaign for ourselves, for free! No one sees the spreadsheets. The follow-ups. The cover letters that take pieces of our souls from us. No one counts the time spent watching hope slip through algorithmic cracks.

There are moments where I’m pumped, eyes wide, heart racing, excitedly applying to jobs that feel right. The kind of roles that make me whisper, “Maybe this one. Maybe finally.” But that hope? It gets shattered. By a nonresponse. Or a generic, polite rejection. Or just my own self-doubt, circling back like an unpaid intern whispering, “Who do you think you are?” The crash after the high is brutal. Like sending love letters into the void and getting echoes back in Times New Roman.

I am not desperate. I am discerning. And that’s my new job title. Sometimes, I even feel guilty for thinking about what kind of job would suit me. Like I should just be grateful for whatever comes my way. Everyone says, “Just be grateful someone’s hiring.” But grateful for what? For burnout? For unpaid test assignments? For having to beg for dignity in exchange for labor? Gratitude without boundaries is exploitation. And, I’m bound by family expectations, by society’s timelines, by this blurry, unpredictable future. I’m scared to dream too specifically, too selfishly. And then there’s that cold jealousy towards people whose jobs make sense, whose paths look linear. It’s not that I want their life. I just want mine to stop feeling like a question mark.

I keep wondering: if I’m doing everything “right,” why does everything feel so wrong? Why do so many brilliant, kind, competent people end up in the waiting room of their own lives? And why does getting a job feel like being picked for a secret society, not a role? So many like me are stuck in a waiting room to live our lives. Just sitting there, waiting for a “good job,” a well-paying one, or any escape hatch far from home. We tell ourselves: once that job comes, then we’ll start our life. Until then? Our careers feel reserved for the frosted-glass club chilling at the top, while we pace below, carrying portfolios and hope like offerings. You can be both highly skilled and unemployed. But, where do the unchosen go? And what about goals? What are they? What are mine? Aspirations? Needs? Life? What even is the plan anymore?

If you’re out there job-searching too, still reshaping yourself for job listings, still whispering "maybe this one": You're not alone, this post is for you. You’re not failing. You’re enduring in a system designed to wear you down. It’s not that you’re not trying hard enough. It’s that the effort has become unsustainable. And you’re still standing. Still sending hope notes into the void. Still dreaming despite the ache. You're not lazy. You're not lost. You're just in limbo. And limbo is a battlefield.

Okay, I have to go and write a six-page research note for a job application, formatted to impossible perfection because nothing says overqualified, underpaid, and barely surviving capitalism like being expected to smile in Arial 11.

- Oizys, currently emailing cover letters into the abyss.

UNBODY PART 3: (Un)kinking my libido because that cunt is a big, fat liar

Before the fantasy, there was the fear. Before the kink, there was the monster. Before I touched myself, I touched silence. Before I untangled my kinks, I had to name the monsters. Now, this isn’t about “knowing what I want.” It’s about sitting with the mess of it. The contradiction. The arousal that makes me ashamed, the shame that makes me aroused. So, I go in with Freud and come out with feral grief. I try to separate what I want from what I was programmed to want. My self-desires feel assaulted by their implications, insertions, and insinuations on this body that I carry. My want crawls out of me like a feral animal, dragging its placenta of shame behind. The weight of every gaze, every script, every inherited moan, every graze of touch lives here. My fantasies feel like archives of other people’s appetites planted like traps in the folds of my own want. And the wires don’t come apart. They peeled me open like overripe fruit and called it foreplay. My cunt remembers. Not names. Not faces. Just the weight, the trespass, the exit wound. Every orgasm I fake is a funeral for the ones I never owned. I arch not from pleasure but from reflex like a body flinching in a morgue drawer. Desire drips from me like pus from a healing wound: necessary, but never clean. He said ‘relax,’ and I became water: flooding, drowning, disappearing down the drain. There’s a graveyard between my thighs and every lover’s name is etched on the tombstones of my cervix. My libido limps. It limps like it’s been chased for years and never offered a drink of water. I didn’t come. I combusted. Like a chemical spill, like a fire they lit and blamed me for burning. I bled into their hands and they called it affection. I hemorrhaged and they said I was dramatic. This body is a reliquary of rot. Desire stinks in me like something holy left too long in the sun. My orgasm was an exorcism, and I didn’t even get to keep the demon. I have licked the fingers that hurt me, thinking maybe the salt was love. I don’t open. I rupture. And still they enter, like maggots looking for meat. I touch myself and it smells like rot under skin decaying and desperate for light. Even when I ache, I don’t reach for pleasure. I reach for proof I’m still punishable. I spread not like petals but like an autopsy: unzipped, pinned down, catalogued. They never touched my soul, but they left bite marks on my will to live. My thighs are crime scenes. The DNA still lingers in the sweat stains. My moans sound like prayers no god wants to answer. I’ve mistaken bruising for blooming so often, I now call violence foreplay. Desire has hands. They are not mine. They grip my throat from the inside, not choking (...?), just holding like a hand waiting for the right word, just hovering like a threat paused mid-sentence, just lingering like it’s waiting for me to consent, just watching like a hand sculpting silence. I knelt like a statue of a good girl martyr, but they came like a firing squad like I was a scapegoat. My cervix carries the muscle memory of the trespass, trembling, repetition, and rupture. I wasn’t aroused. I was performing survival, translating pain into porn, trying not to remember. I held my own ankles like a hinge begging not to snap, the pages of a manual written by them. There are moments I feel "empowered" and start building a cathedral out of cunt, contradiction, and carrion. But, each time I moaned, a little girl in me cried in a locked room. I was always wet not from desire, but from the leaking wound of needing to be wanted. My nipples stiffen like corpses going into rigor mortis. Still, they call it arousal. This body doesn’t open: it unravels. Spooling shame like silk from a slit throat. I came, yes. But it felt like being split by a scalpel dipped in honey: surgical, sweet, and cruel. There’s a scream tucked in the folds of my labia. I press, and it almost sings. Even my fantasies feel like trauma dressed in drag. Sexy like a noose in satin. I’ve learned to ride my pleasure like a wild dog: foaming, limping, but loyal. I ache like an infected socket where trust used to be. This isn’t a fantasy. This is memory wearing lingerie. My body mid-fantasy? It’s not glistening and parted like a magazine centerfold. It’s itchy. Leaky. I’m on the brink of climax but also wondering if my tampon string is visible. My mouth goes dry. My thighs rub raw. My stomach makes digestive sounds like it’s adding commentary. And somehow, I’m supposed to feel “in my body”? My body is everywhere. Too loud to be background. I open up my browser history like a crime scene. That story I reread ten times. That video with the dom voice that makes my breath hitch. I try to be clinical. Objective. But the fantasy won’t hold still. It bleeds into memory. The power play, the degradation, the faceless hands, the roughness… It rams into me: from clinical to confessional to carnal to corpse-cold: all at once like a nosedive, with no cohesion, a descent with no map, no mercy, no meaning. Just collapse. And suddenly I am not aroused, I  am remembering. And I whisper: “Wait. This isn’t mine. This was done to me.” But my body? It’s still responding. And now the shame is wearing lipstick. Sometimes I start fantasizing mid-cramp. Lower back spasms. A heating pad on, vibrator off. My pelvis throws a tantrum every time I try to feel good. There’s lint in my navel and a rogue chin hair I keep forgetting to pluck. I’m trying to get off while also wondering if I remembered to floss. “My thighs don’t glisten. They squeak when I sweat. There’s a patch behind my knee that smells like anxiety and unwashed denim. I think about my stretch marks and how they look like claw marks on bread dough. Sometimes I run my fingers over them mid-touch, like reading Braille for grief. My libido shows up in ugly places. Right after crying. Right before my period. When I haven’t shaved in weeks and my underwear looks like a crime scene. I’ve come with a cold. Sniffling, wheezing, praying the snot doesn’t drip onto anyone. I’ve orgasmed while congested: snot pooling, breathing ragged; felt both euphoric and mucus-filled. I’ve moaned with a sore throat. It came out like a dying frog. He thought it was sexy. I thought it was phlegm. I tasted mucus. My skin collects stories in patches: razor bumps, dry elbow maps, rogue chin hairs. There’s a patch behind my knee that smells like my ex’s laundry detergent and regret. I want to come, and all I feel is my belly folding over itself like a closing curtain. I’m not ashamed of it. But it refuses to perform. Sometimes my discharge smells like guilt. Sometimes I smell like old T-shirts and regret. Sometimes I just smell like skin, and that should be enough. My arousal has stretch marks and friction burns. Sometimes my vulva smells like vinegar and despair, and I still ache. He thought I was panting. I was trying not to drip. So, I start sorting: “This one’s fine.” “This one’s from trauma.” “This one’s just porn.” “This one’s mine... I think?” But it all collapses. Because every fantasy is both a choice and a scar. A kink and a ghost. A desire and a warning. I like this. But I also remember flinching. I fantasize about being taken. But what if that’s just how I survived being never asked? On all my fours exposing my libido like a fresh wound: a wanting that was never mine but performed anyway. I wanted to be dominated. Not destroyed. I liked the pain. But only when I controlled the script. (Or, maybe I just hated and was manipulating myself because I was helpless?) Not when it felt like being opened with an incendiary crowbar of their gruesome desires. I’ve begged in bed and hated myself for it. I came, gaping. Open from every orifice, every pore, every node, gushing out their filth to rejuvenate this injury of obedience. I came to the sound of violence. Then threw up. I still want it. And I hate that I do. Suddenly, nothing is safe. I can’t tell what’s hot and what’s harm. I am turned on and betrayed at the same time. I am fantasizing and crying at once. I am imagining someone choking me gently, slapping me lovingly and sobbing because you don’t know if it’s love or reenactment. I touch myself and flinch. I come, and then I cry. I think I want it rough... but I’ve never had it any other way. I try to finish the thought. The fantasy. The sentence. But my hands stop. My breath catches. My libido is laughing. That cunt is a liar. Afterwards, it’s quiet. Not romantic quiet. Not soft-lit, wet-sheet cinematic quiet. No. It’s hunger curdling in my bones quiet. The kind of quiet where your cunt still twitches but your chest feels hollowed out. Like you came and left your ribcage behind. There’s no healing here. Only the throb of unfinished business. The stench of sweat and self-doubt marinating in my sheets. I’m not glowing. I’m leaking. Salt, blood, mucus, regret: the holy quaternity of womanhood. My hand is still wet. Not with pleasure but with proof. My breath is a confession. My thighs are witnesses. I am the scene of the crime and the investigator trying not to flinch. What happens after the orgasm, when the script forgets its ending? When the hands dissolve, and I’m stuck with my own scent, my own questions, my own filth? No one talks about this aftermath. The part where your legs ache not from pleasure but from holding in ghosts. The part where your nipples stay hard but your spirit crumbles. I touch the stain on my bedsheet like it might spell something. It doesn’t. It just smells like old shame. Like something done to me, even if I did it myself. I stare at my fingers and wonder if they’re traitors. They knew where to go. Too well. Did they lead me to freedom, or back into the jail cell of memory? Integration is not healing. It’s gutting the fish and eating it raw anyway. It’s not peace. It’s pestilence made tender. It’s inviting the ghosts in, not to forgive them, but to watch me bleed and still stay standing. I try again.  A new fantasy. One where I’m asked. One where no one flinches. One where I don’t apologize for making a sound. It’s awkward. It stutters. It doesn’t fit right. But I keep going. Because I want to know what it feels like to touch myself without flinching, without fearing, without a man’s breath hanging in my ear from 2008. I want to want softly. Not because I’m delicate, but because I’m done with violence being the only language I know. I want a desire that doesn’t echo with footsteps behind me. I smell like anxiety and old laundry. I sound like grief with an orgasm. I am stretch-marked, snot-nosed, salt-crusted, chin-hair-grown. And yet: I smile. A feral, cracked, crooked smile. Like something wild that’s finally stopped playing dead. This isn’t healing. It’s a resurrection through rot. It’s a truce not with the world, but with the version of me that still begs for softness. Tomorrow, I might ache again. Might scroll through the same video. Might get turned on by something I swore I buried. But tonight, I masturbate like I’m reading scripture I wrote in blood. I come like a question mark. And cry like an answer. And tonight, I leave the light on. (Yes, I’m sleeping with the lights on.) Not because I’m afraid. Because I want to see everything even the parts that still twitch. Maybe I’ll never know what’s mine and what’s inherited. Maybe every orgasm is a reenactment and a rebellion. But I won’t lie about it anymore. This is not closure. This isn’t healing. This is a standoff. Me vs. every fuck I was programmed to crave. Me vs. the shame in lipstick. Me vs. my own tongue. My desire isn't dirty. It is haunted. It is bloody. It’s blood-wet, grief-slick, alive. So, I am letting the body speak in tongues, letting the cunt testify, letting the flesh curdle, letting the shame leak like milk blister pooling on the areola. Tomorrow I’ll still want. I’ll still ache. I might still touch myself and not know why. I’ll still wonder if the ache is mine. But tonight, the shame sleeps on the floor. At least now, I’ll be looking. And for once, it’s her who can’t look away. She does stare back. Not to forgive, but to remember. (Or, maybe to ruin everything softer that came after.)

- Oizys.
[Goddess on all her fours: gaping, growling, surviving. On her knees, in labor, bleeding through silk, scrubbing the temple floors of blood, bile, and bile-bathed scripts they once called seduction. She cleans with her own spit and grief, with ragged nails and ruined prayers, clotting her divinity. Not for absolution. Not for redemption. Just so no one slips again.]