I have been unemployed for a little over 6 months at this point and believe this warrants another NEET update. I'm also now in my second week of my second nursing internship, which I will also talk about at length.
Being unemployed was pretty nice in March, where I mostly enjoyed it as I would a regular vacation and could do so in good conscience in anticipation of my first nursing internship.
Then starting in late April throughout May and even June, I spent most of my time learning about Christian theology and bootstrapping myself in the faith and practice of roman Catholicism.
Starting in late June, following through most of July, I sent out a couple of job applications for IT support positions coinciding with a job coaching that I got financed by the German Bureau of Unemployment. It is not that I was unsuccessful in my pursuit of IT support positions, in fact, I got invitations to the interview for a majority of the applications I sent out. But to put it delicately, the positions were dishonestly advertised at best requiring travel for work, with them raising their eyebrows at my absent driver's license and even containing a significant amount of work that I claim falls outside the responsibility of an ordinary IT support agent.
Getting fed up with it, I made the resolution to, once again, pursue nursing. Over the course of last month, I managed to secure a seat in a school offering the theoretical half of the nursing apprenticeships starting in April of next year. I also updated my spreadsheet and contacted several of the facilities in my city that are convenient to commute to and even lined up an internship which I'm now in the second week of.
Regarding the internship, I can so far confidently state that nursing in this facility is a lot more joyful and welcoming than it is in the previous facility I got to know in March. At least with regards to elderly care nursing, I can also say it feels like a very non-bullshit and even distinctly human activity, and I like that it puts its drawbacks right up front.
I don't think anyone is surprised to find out that in nursing
you have to do shift work and you have to deal with human excrement and be witness to
people suffering.
Contrast this with your average 9 to 5 office bullshit job where you may go in expecting
to engage with your subject material for 8 hours a day and to be able to, to the best of
your ability, produce quality outcomes but are ultimately faced with heavy bureaucracy,
endless meetings and economic constraints that force you to compromise on the quality of
your labor as well as compounding inadequacies that are so common in legacy code bases to be specific.
Yes, I am biased here, but am I not speaking the truth?
In fact, with regards to computer science specifically, I can very much do without the
constant reinventing of wheels and ever-growing towers of abstraction.
The human body, while certainly complicated and all, is rather constant.
I would be surprised if we, in the next decades, find out about a new organ, or invent the
liver 2.0. That just doesn't happen.
And especially in the role of a mere nurse, your primary responsibility is to keep people alive, medicated, clean,
fed and clothed.
It's not rocket science.
This brings me to the present. while interesting and kind of fulfilling, nursing is still work and right now I have all my needs met by the German welfare state (arguably socialism). I believe this is the definition of the welfare trap. The certainly subjective notion that going and working yields an increase in pay that is disproportionate and perhaps not even worthwhile compared to the increase in workload and of course the coinciding decrease of general quality of life.
I am not seriously proposing I stay unemployed indefinitely but given this situation I do appreciate that the apprenticeship will only start next April and that I can basically reap the benefits of other taxpayers' money for another several months. Something I am pretty sure I will not be able to do in another 10, 20, 30 years when certain demographic and economic realities materialize in Germany as well as many other nations around the globe.
I'm alive, I'm Christian and I'm doing pretty well.
After months of unemployment, I am now pursuing nursing seriously again and have everything
lined up to start the apprenticeship next April.