Being unemployed in your thirties

Things I have done to try and get ahead:

Taken a notary class

Excel

Quickbooks

FinalCutPro

Video Editing

Writing classes*I wrote my first novel at thirteen, and I’ve written a novel pretty much every year since then. That doesn’t include any fanfiction or poetry I’ve written.

At one point, I was trained to be a notary. I also took a digital court reporting class. I tried taking an ASL class, even. I ended up chickening out because I was too stressed with the social component.

In my twenties, I wrote serial fiction online. I made some money, but I felt like I had to write certain books in order to make money and became frustrated with it.

I have my associate’s degree in political science and I am working on my bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in screenwriting. I was part of the 2011 Disney College Program, where I worked custodial.

I’ve worked retail at practically every store possible.

I’ve also done customer service over the phone jobs. Pre-COVID, while I had anxiety, I could still function pretty well. Post COVID, the social components of work stress me out and I find myself getting overwhelmed a lot of the time.

I don’t do well in fast paced positions. I get irritated quickly and struggle to focus if there are too many things going on.

Honestly, I thought by this time, I would have already been a writer. That was always the plan. In the 90’s, I grew up seeing writers going on book tours and appearing on talk shows and in the 2000’s with the YA boom and everything getting turned into television shows or movies, it seemed possible.

Also, the internet meant I didn’t have to be in New York to be a writer. Anything was possible. But now, if you search for publishers online, it’s not like it was a decade ago. There are fewer and fewer options.

And while self-publishing has become socially acceptable due to the lack of publishers, that takes money. That’s also something else I’ve tried and if you don’t have any kind of advertising budget, you make a maybe a few bucks and then you’re reliant on Amazon who is now in the habit of shutting down accounts for no reason.

I came from the last generation that was told they could do anything and be anything. We were the MTV generation that was raised on teen movies that told us all we had to do to succeed was believe in ourselves. While I do believe in myself, that doesn’t change the fact that I am clinically depressed and have health issues.

Or that I live in the middle of an art job desert.

Any job I might succeed at, doesn’t exist where I live. Which means I am continually rotating through low-income jobs and due to my learning disability, trying to move up makes it impossible.

I don’t know what the future holds for me. I’m still hoping to be a writer. But what that looks like, who knows? Either way, a girls got to pay the rent. Just have to figure out how.

With love,

Diana Crescent