career_and_future_in_tatters

I'm at the end of my rope with my seemingly doomed career. I'm exhausted from trying to put a brave face on the fact I have been enduring the mother of all losing streaks for the best part of the last decade. I have no self esteem left and I'm watching all my medium and long term possibilities going up in smoke before my eyes. I'm single, male, pushing forty on the verge of having to move back in with my parents having already spent most of my thirties living at home. I have no job, savings, pensions, investments, property. I have nothing but my €1,000 car and little else to show for a decade of toil.

I was spat out of construction in 2011, where I worked in stores and warehousing but later junior admin but basically failed to get skilled or qualified in any kind of transferable way. The boom was no benefit to me. I went on to extended periods out of work and doing casual labour for little money. I went to get a minimum wage back-office job in a call centre while I took a four year part time degree course in an attempt to dig myself out of poverty. A tutor that liked me got me a trainee job where he worked but I became aware that my 'mentor' had a terrible reputation and had no intention of training me or even assisting. As soon as it was off her desk, she didn't want to hear about it and I really had no one else to help. Even my tutor sympathised and tried to intervene but she was determined to remain unhelpful to me. I endured what I could and I was so desperate to try and make it work, they fired me after the fifth month. This was my first time every being fired and I took it quite badly.

I spent a large block of time out of work then but I finished college in the meantime, I eventually got another job but lightning struck twice. I spent months exhausting myself trying to learn enough to mop up after the chaos that multiple predecessors had left behind - once again, I was hired as a trainee but the only inputs from my 'manager' in this job too was pressure and criticism. She expected me to know subjective things that no one could have known if they didn't work in that exact office I worked up to 70 hour weeks while my mentor sauntered home at five. I did everything I could to get around this individual but in the end I just gave up and handed in my notice, exhausted, battered and defeated. I was close to mastering the job but I had six months of dread and fear in my stomach going in there every day and for my own self respect, I really felt I needed to stand up for the way I was being treated.

I have had a lot of jobs in my time and I'm very used to being held in regard. I've always left desks better than I've gotten them and if I were to define my career, it is a parade of me leaving the place significantly better than I found it. I normally get on well with people and I'm a team player. I truly believe I've done nothing to deserve the way I've been treated and all of this angst was just born of bad luck on finding harsh colleagues.

Right now, I'm personally aware of no other person who has done as much to advance their career and their life and end up with so little in return. I am of sound mind and body but I'm stuck in this epic losing streak with nothing to give me hope of salvation. I've appealed to my family and friends. I've exploited SW services to try and help. I've become an expert on LinkedIn but all I seem to get is punishment for the 'mistakes' of the past. I've been penniless and futureless for the last decade and I'm just baffled at how everyone around me, many who don't have comparable traits, grit and credentials just seem to be moving through life incredibly easier. After a decade of mediocrity, exhaustion, pressure, hard bloody graft, I've seen my frustration, temper, outlook and hope permanently altered. I'm becoming a permanently angry, frustrated and bitter person, particularly after 8 months unemployed, literally hundreds of job applications (I've gotten just four interviews and feedback usually remarked about why I left the last job) failing to get jobs like I used to take for granted like forklift driving jobs.

I don't know how to break the cycle. I don't know where this is going to end for me. I've become overcome with shame and guilt. I am a burden to the state and to my parents and I can see the contempt that people close to me are showing. I hate to regard myself as a victim but I'm sick to death of subtle accusations that I have done or am continuing to do the wrong things - victim blaming. The call centre job was for a famously crummy employer and it was probably one of the best jobs I've had, such is the harshness of the places I worked before and after. Everywhere I've been since were simply hostile, contemptful places where I was handed to the office c*** to fend for myself and now I'm being treated by recruiters and employers like I'm tainted because of the hostility of others. These jobs are behind me but I'm still suffering as a result of them. I have no idea where to go from here. Even going back to the minimum wage call centre is starting to seem like a reality