Zero Hour

Last week I put my cards on the table and told you that I had plenty of opportunities and jobs that I'd applied for and plenty more in the pipeline if the current ones didn't work out. This is, in theory, a good thing and though the progress I've been making hasn't born fruit yet, it is still progress nonetheless.

By my calculations, however, this week will be zero week, but you can't really say zero week, so it's just a very long zero hour. Zero hour, for those who don't know, is the time when the clock ticks down to zero and something happens. I think it's a military phrase in origin and signals the time that an operation is due to start. But anyway, this week will be my zero hour.

I say that because I think that is when I'll find out about the majority of the current pending applications I have at the moment. There aren't too many of them, I count three off the top of my head, but they're the ones I really want - as in really, really want.

If feels like everything has so far been ticking down to this moment: the two near-misses with the phone interviews and the long hours spent waiting for emails back. I really feel like this week could be make it or break it in terms of getting my dream job anytime soon.

Yesterday I pondered the idea of righteous anger when it comes to a potential employer saying they'll call you back and then they never do. In it I mentioned my next zero hour - the really serious one - the fact that I told the Student Loans Company I would get a job by the next financial year. You see they're going to start taking back the money they lent to me because 1. I'm not on the dole and 2. I don't have a job. To them I literally do not exist.

Anyway I assured them I'd be in employment by then and so I've set myself a deadline that isn't that far away. When I turn my light off at night and lie down in bed this niggling doubt that I won't have a job by then does seep into my mind like the darkness. As a general rule I don't let it affect me and and instead set myself intermediary zero hours, only for them to pass by with little result.

But I'm sure this one is going to be different. It has to be different, because if I get rejected from the jobs I have currently applied for, I doubt I will be in a position to apply, have an interview, and take on something before my deadline of early April.

So readers, fellow bloggers in the blogosphere, this is it. We're about to count down to zero hour, and if nothing happens in the next week, or even the week after, then the next zero hour I count down to will be a whole lot more serious.