“Well, that depends. How big is it?”

I’m standing in the Apple store, cradling my dying laptop, asking a genius which external memory hard drive I should buy.

“I think its about seventeen inches” I say back.

I have never seen a man more erect with laughter. He laughed so hard he had to bring his co-worker over to carry out the purchase.  I realise now he was asking about the capacity of my laptop, not its physical size.

The next day, I waited for four hours alone in Westfield for an emergency appointment in Apple.

“So there’s a hardware problem?” He asks. It’s the same guy.

I yank my laptop it out of its Hello Kitty case, along with several stale Frazzles and a tampon that’s come out of its packet. He puts his finger in the charger socket and pulls out a piece of pencil lead that was lodged inside.

There are no words.

I’m wet.

“I’m just going to do a restart on your laptop to make sure everything works now”

We wait a few minutes. I tell him he’s really good at technology. Several times.

“Sorry, these models keep freezing” He says.

“That’s ironic because of all the overheating they do” I say, excited for what potentially might have been the most cleverest collection words that have ever connected as an impulse inside my brain and then shortly afterwards ejaculated from my mouth.

“There are people waiting” He says.

It’s been 135 days since I graduated from university, and I’m starting to think that maybe unemployment might just be my “thing”. Everybody has to have “a thing”, and unfortunately “having a job” was already taken by, it seems, every other graduate.

Me, trying to fit in with other, more capable graduates

What’s your secret, graduates? Are you all saying no when they offer you a glass of water? Is that what you’re all doing? Is that some kind of test? If you say yes when they offer you water are you suggesting you’re not thirsty for a career with their company?

Every job application I do is like the start of a Tinder relationship. You start to get your hopes up, and then they decide to send you a picture of a massive, turgid, veiny penis. I start out with promise, get maybe a little overconfident, feel ready to send them my CV, and end up violating another human being. I have yet to entice one single employer with my dick pic of a CV.

How many stand up gigs have I done in those 135 days? One. Were the executives of the NBC sitting in the audience? Maybe, I don’t know what they look like.

I get up at about 10, ferment a teabag in a cup of sugar water, watch three episodes of Bojack Horseman, make another cup of sugar, open up a word document harbouring a number of shitty sitcom ideas that I’ll never pursue far enough to actually write, and bash my hairy forehead against the keys. If I’m feeling particularly brave, I’ll open Outlook and have a look at my emails. And then the junk folder. And then I check my drafts just in case I forgot to send any of my applications. And then my sent folder, just to check the applications did actually did send.

If my life were a movie, right about now the montage sequence would start.

I didn’t write a 5000 word essay on Battleship Potemkin for this shit. What the hell, Eistenstein?

I’m going stir crazy.  I’m starting to have inside jokes with my cat. And I think he’s a little too into it.

Naturally, I turn to the comments section of my blog for encouragement.

Thank you, kind sir. I feel much better for your warm, nurturing words. You see, if you take the time to actually decode the multiple layers of his encrypted message, what he actually means to say is:

“Life is not yet begun its up. Even you, princess toughen; hard to fuck in the arse”

He’s right. Maybe I should be less frigid. But also, life might seem pretty shitty right now, but it will get better. Soon, it will begin its up. Maybe.