The constant insult of unemployment is a personal thing.

How anyone ever got the idea that unemployed people are on some sort of holiday is incomprehensible, a lie in social folklore. Anything further removed from the reality would be hard to imagine.

To make it worse, the scripts usually don't work. We've had countless people on our site, telling us about how hard they try to find work, the things they have to endure with unemployment, and there's always some new problem. It's either some unintelligible form of interview, where they don't know what they're supposed to do, or some new ritual in just applying for work.

The whole paradigm of unemployment, as a way of life for human beings, stinks. People find it unbearable, for the very good reason it's intolerable.

People react badly to interviews and unemployment generally, because they're always trying to guess what the interviewers want, and what they're supposed to be doing. It's like an identity crisis, as if you were suddenly someone else, and it's not good for people's peace of mind.

Individuality never gets a mention, let alone becomes an issue. If employers were hiring robots, it'd be a lot more workable. Instead of going for an interview yourself, you could just email them a database.

Actually, being yourself is a real asset in job hunting. You'll find in older stories about employment that individuality was a quality which mattered. Personal identity, at an interview, was a really major component of getting a job.

It still does matter, very much indeed. The person that gets the job is the one that stands out, not the anonymous guy whose name doesn't even get remembered by the panel. If you think of job hunting as marketing your skills, the basic principle of marketing is product identity. Brand X is the one nobody buys, the inferior product. Employers want people, not actors.

Being yourself is much more important for coping with stress, too. Trying to fit in anywhere just doesn't work if you really don't fit in there. That can cause enormous stress. It's a form of self-induced pressurization on your sensitivities.

If it's an environment you don't like, you can't be surprised if it's practically impossible to put up with it. Unemployment, which is the modern society's version of jail without a prison, is an environment which is universally hated. Nobody fits in, or wants to fit in.

One way of handling the situation is to start things moving for yourself, in areas where you are interested, preferably genuinely enthusiastic.

If you've got some particular area of interest, that's your best shot at being yourself. It might be a sport, or some The added plus is that you have some knowledge, as well as being able to be wholehearted about what you're doing.

Even if you can't turn your interests into a job, you can short circuit the constant intrusions of being unemployed. Don't ever write off the idea of getting work in your preferred fields, either. That's a concession you just don't have to make, ever. Keep your dreams working, too, because that's very much a part of being yourself.

Being yourself is a big part of the solution to unemployment's insults.

Never allow the repulsive experience of unemployment to take away your hopes, your individuality, or your personal aspirations.