We have to get up early in the morning: Béatrice starts her school day  in the international school in Sophia-Antipolis at 08:00; Marianne & Samuel start at 08:30. Yet it is not easy to get out of bed in the morning when you don't enjoy your job: when you are unemployed.

Unemployment is a psychological menace ruining the best laid plans of men. It has nothing to do with the employment of time, quite the reverse for a serious unemployed person must spend far more time than his employed contemporary, relentlessly seeking a new position to the detriment of living a “normal” life. In this uncharted voyage there is only one winning solution, every other experience falls in the shallows.  

Thus everyday is preoccupied in the pursuit of  continuing one’s career, for one cannot expect to maintain one’s lifestyle having falling from the ladder, one must get back on where one fell off, even higher if possible, but under the economic current climate, that might seem high fantastical; there seem to be more snakes than ladders on the board.

So one's day starts by turning on the PC, exactly as one would do if employed: I check my diary and my e-mail and glance through the Financial Times, and the Sophia News site, if a company is budging it will be there. 

My PC is my personal CRM, it holds my strategy and business plan, not with customers, but with my réseau, my network that has to be kept alive offering advice, ideas, information, simple contact, encouragement, but most of all help. Managerial positions in France are gained through one's réseau not through one's CV. 

I attend all the forums and conferences in Sophia relating to my spheres of interest: e-commerce, teleco, wireless, semiconductors, project management, start-ups; more the business side than the real techy stuff: I am most interested in how these things effect the end users. I would say that over half the attendees of these conference are also out of work, but we all pretend that we are consultants.  

It is essential to remain "active", to have purpose, and above all courage, for at times when all else is gone it is all that one has left. Should we confuse courage, with hope, with faith, or even chance? I should not wish to say. 

Work is such an integral part of society that it can be compared with, and take on, an importance close to that of love: are we not often what we do, and who we love? If not, then in the classic form, these can only be replaced by what activity we have other than work and what passion we have other than love. I often return to this comparison of the obsession and desperation of lost love, and the total change that finding it again can bring.

Without clear work objectives one finds oneself unable to plan ahead and consequently life looses it's points of reference: options and opportunities are there yet a sort of sclerosis sets in along with a genuine fear of making more wrong moves. There is the irony that one has more time yet achieves less, jobs around the house are no longer prioritized, they just slowly get done, or not. I have alternative work ideas, often related to property and property management, but somehow my audacity has been tarnished.

I have resisted all attempts by Elisabeth to instill a household routine into my life as that would somehow indicate that I have become a househusband; not that I have anything against that occupation au contraire, just simply that Elisabeth isn't earning sufficient in order to become the breadwinner, and the Money God must be obeyed. But of course I have an unofficial routine that takes into account the school runs and watching Working Lunch on BBC2 whilst having whatever leftovers I can find in the fridge along with a glass of €2.10/litre Côte de Lubéron from the local cave; this daily treat allows me to believe that I have not reached rock bottom (although I can imagine how one's consumption might go up rather than down if such a point was ever to be reached).

I know that I should also do the odd DIY job in the day, but that means changing out of my comfortable house clothes into my dusty work clothes, so the compromise is to only do DIY on Wednesdays and the week-ends, apart from those urgent and even occasionally planned jobs. If I allowed myself I know that I could fill every day for the rest of my life improving the house and garden, a pleasure that I cannot afford. 

The tragedy of this dreary lifestyle is that the children probably see less not more of me, and I am often grumpy because the evening comes and I am still without a job; Fridays are the worst: AFF as we say (the A stands for another, and one of the Fs for Friday); the day of the week when those in employment look forward to the week-end and spending time at home with the family; for the unemployed it is as useful as a bank holiday. Worst still, one finds oneself still "working" in one's "leisure" time; it is hard to switch-off from being unemployed. I often continue to send my e-mails and unenthusiastically surf the job sites in the evening, straying down virtual blind alleys instead of relaxing in front of the telly with Elisabeth. For there is always the network that must be fed: friends are no longer just friends, some are down-graded because they have not been supportive, others have shown new qualities, that wont be forgotten.

How cruel and unthoughtful are those friends who tell you how busy they are: they are saying that they have full lives, that they are in demand, and of course their families would like to see more of them but what a perfect excuse for everything and anything: "I have to work, I don't have the time, je suis débordé", what it really means is: I'm alright Jack, and I have my life and my family under control.

And then there is the waiting for people to call back, for people to be back from leave, for someone to speak to someone else, for some vague thing to happen to the company in the future, for the contract that never arrives. When you work, there are delays to respect but seldom real urgency, when you are waiting for work it is as if life itself is being wasted; ironically life does not drag, it does not stand still, it rushes by: yet another day, another week, AFF and still no job. 

Because I am not being stretched in the day, we often go to bed late, and then I have dull nightmares. Yet I know that like lost love, one loves again, the miseries soon forgotten.

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