In the last few years I have been lucky enough to undertake some trippy adventures through India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. I have also undergone many journeys of self discovery which are outwardly much less interesting.

But to me this is what life is all about – adventures, journeys, learning about who we are and, hopefully, reaching an acceptance of that. This includes the good, the bad and the downright confusing and bizarre.

In the last few years I have discovered that I am a worker bee. My comfort zone is working. I love working; having a job which is challenging and rewarding and even comes with a regular pay check. I like the deadlines and the pressure. I love learning new things and expanding my horizons. I don’t even mind the waking up at 3am questioning whether I did a good enough job on a story or formulating a new intro to a story which had already been published.

So the journey of unemployment I am currently riding well, for someone like me who needs to be challenged and to interact with others on an intellectual level, really sucks.

The first couple of months were sweet, sweet relief. I was tired and run down and loved that I could sleep for hours and hours and hours. There were no alarm clocks. No deadlines. No one else’s demands.

I live in paradise and the beach is just down the road. I have been able to watch dozens and dozens of docos on SBS on Demand and ABC IView. I have sorted out a couple of health issues and have spent a great deal of time rebuilding relationships which slipped a little while I was working crazy hours under crazy pressure. My cat is enjoying the attention as is my small garden.

And the timing has been good. The cricket and tennis have been on. I even get to see the NFL Super Bowl on Monday because I don’t have to work.

I love these things. I really do. But boredom has started to kick in. And my finances are somewhat drained. I have toyed with the idea of selling my house and wandering around Nepal and India for a year or so. But I am built to work. It is a large part of who I am.

I have been applying for an average of 10 to 20 jobs every week. Each week I get about five rejection emails. I’m not sure what is worse – the rejection or the deafening silence from prospective employers who don’t realise or care that they are leaving frustrated jobseekers in limbo.

It rocks your confidence when you see a job you know you would be perfect for and could do really well only to get a rejection letter within hours. Apparently many employers don’t even read applications now; they just run them through a computer program which looks for key words. As someone who has always been uncomfortable with the growing power and intelligence of artificial intelligence, this is utterly unnerving. And annoying. Read the application guys.

And then there are the job applications which compiling are basically a full-time job in themselves. I guess I am, at the very least, refining more skills writing all these applications. There is always a silver lining, and I can see it most of the time. Occasionally I need to remove my sunglasses and look hard for it but it is there.

I know this is a journey I am not undertaking alone. More and more people in Australia are finding themselves travelling the same road. Some have chosen this road, many more have not. It is pretty scary not knowing what will come next.

When the fear sets in, I try to remind myself what the Sri Lankans say “all is as it is meant to be”. I’m sure they are right and the current shake up in the Australian employment market will see those of us on the unemployment road landing in the job we are meant to be doing. Let’s just hope it is soon.

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