Feeling Restless, Feeling Stuck, and Trying to Find My Way Back to Work

There are times when I feel like I am stuck in a bit of a rut, and at the moment, that feeling has become increasingly difficult to deal with.

My venous foot ulcer has now been taking more than a year to heal. When something has been part of your life for that long, it becomes more than just a physical problem. It starts affecting how you think, how you spend your days, what you feel capable of doing and, ultimately, how you feel about yourself.

I know that healing takes time, and I know I can't simply tell my foot to hurry up. But that doesn't make it any easier.

I feel restless

One of the hardest things at the moment is feeling restless.

There are days when I don't really feel like doing anything. I will go on my PC for a while, playing games or watching Youtube videos. Then I'll come off the PC and put BBC iPlayer on or watch a DVD. I watch an episode or two then get bored and go on the PC that usually doesn’t last long and I repeat the process.

And then I sit there thinking:

What am I actually doing?

It's not that there is anything wrong with watching television or having a quiet day. Everyone needs downtime. But when your days start feeling like they are simply going from the PC to the television and back again, it can start to feel as though you aren't really getting anywhere.

That's when the restlessness kicks in.

I want to be doing something.

I want to feel productive.

I want to have a reason to get up and think, I've got something to do today.

Instead, I can sometimes feel as though I'm just waiting.

Waiting for my foot to heal.

Waiting to find a job.

Waiting for something to change.

And that is a difficult place to be mentally.

The feeling of being useless

Perhaps the worst part is the way it can affect how I see myself.

I hate feeling useless.

I have worked for many years and I know that I have plenty to offer an employer. I have over ten years of experience working in production and manufacturing environments, and throughout my working life I've always tried to be reliable, work well with other people, pay attention to detail and take pride in doing a job properly.

But when you haven't been working for a while, it is very easy for those thoughts to get drowned out by another voice saying:

What if I don't find another job?

What if nobody wants to employ me?

What if I've been out of work for too long?

Those thoughts can put a lot of pressure on you.

The longer you are unemployed, the easier it is to start believing that being unemployed somehow means you are unemployable.

I know that isn't necessarily true.

But knowing something logically and actually feeling it are two very different things.

I don't want to spend my days doing nothing

This is probably why I have started thinking more seriously about finding a work-from-home job.

I don't necessarily need to be working from home forever. What I need right now is to find something realistic that I can actually manage and that gives me a sense of purpose again.

I want to work.

I want to earn money.

I want to have something to get up for.

I want to feel like I'm contributing again.

And I want to feel that I have a future rather than constantly wondering what is going to happen next.

Working from home could potentially give me an opportunity to get back into employment while also looking for something that is more suitable for me.

But there is a big problem.

Finding a REAL work-from-home job

Finding work-from-home vacancies sounds easy until you actually start looking.

There are thousands of websites and adverts claiming to offer remote work. But then you start wondering:

Is this actually a real job?

There are scams.

There are adverts that sound too good to be true.

There are jobs that require experience I don't have.

There are jobs that turn out to be something completely different from what the advert suggested.

And there are countless websites where you can spend hours searching without finding anything that actually feels suitable.

That is where I find myself at the moment.

I know I want to work from home.

I know I want a legitimate, genuine job.

But finding the right job is proving to be the difficult part.

I don't want to jump into the first thing I see just because I'm desperate to get back into work. I want to find something that I can realistically do, something where my skills are useful and something that can potentially become a long-term opportunity.

I have more skills than I sometimes give myself credit for

One thing I am trying to remind myself of is that being unemployed doesn't erase the skills I've built up over the years.

I have experience working with computers and Windows, as well as basic Excel and Word skills. I've used Photoshop, Lightroom, Canva and DaVinci Resolve. I manage my own website and have experience creating content, editing videos and dealing with the various technical problems that come with running a website and YouTube channel.

I also have years of experience from working environments where reliability, attention to detail, quality and consistency actually mattered.

Those skills haven't disappeared simply because I'm currently out of work.

Maybe I need to stop thinking so much about what I can't do and start concentrating more on what I can do.

The pressure gets to me

The frustrating thing is that all of this feeds into itself.

I want to work because I don't want to feel useless.

But because I haven't found the right job yet, I feel useless.

Because I feel useless, I become restless and frustrated.

Because I'm restless and frustrated, I struggle to enjoy the things I normally enjoy.

And because I am spending so much time thinking about work and my future, I put even more pressure on myself.

It's a horrible cycle.

I can spend a whole day thinking about getting a job without actually getting any closer to finding one.

Then I feel guilty because I haven't achieved anything that day.

And the following day starts all over again.

I am trying to change that

I don't want this blog post to be another example of me sitting around complaining about my situation.

Writing about it is actually part of me trying to do something about it.

I have decided that I am going to seriously look for legitimate work-from-home opportunities.

I don't know exactly what that job will be yet.

It could be administration, data entry, ecommerce, online sales, customer support, website-related work or something completely different that I haven't considered yet.

I'm keeping an open mind.

What matters to me is finding something genuine and finding something where I can use my abilities rather than constantly worrying that my lack of recent employment makes me worthless.

Because I'm not worthless.

I'm unemployed.

There is a difference.

I want to feel useful again

More than anything, I think that is what I am looking for.

Not just a payslip.

Not just a job title.

I want that feeling of being useful again.

I want to finish a day's work and think, I've actually achieved something today.

I want to have responsibilities.

I want to have something to work towards.

I want to feel that I am moving forward instead of standing still.

My foot may still take months to completely heal. I can't control that.

But perhaps I can control what I do while I'm waiting.

I can keep working on Daelpix Outdoors.

I can keep learning.

I can keep improving my skills.

And, most importantly, I can keep looking for that genuine opportunity to get back into employment.

It might take time.

It might involve plenty of applications and plenty of rejection.

It might take longer than I want it to.

But I don't want to give up.

Because I don't want to spend another year feeling as though my life is on hold.

I want to work. I want to feel useful. And I want to find my way forward again.