Ein AusLANDER

I have temporarily moved back to East Leake, near Nottingham. This is one of the hardest things that I have ever had to do in life because I was in love with my girlfriend. Emotionally, I didn’t really want to leave.

But I think it was the right decision, for three reasons.

1) I have been unable to get a job in Edinburgh despite applying for more than 240. I was not even getting to the interview stage. I was getting responses saying that they could not give me feedback because they had received 400 applications. This is in spite of having two degrees, great references and six years experience in my field. I was also applying for jobs outside of my field. These eight months of being unemployed in Edinburgh had a negative impact on how I was feeling about myself as I was not content with being unemployed.

2) My relationship was not working, for me or my partner. I will not go into details, it would be disrespectful to what we had. But in summary we wanted different things from life and to live in different countries. This is the hardest thing because I still love her and I don’t like the idea of being with anyone else. I would still hope one day it can somehow magically work out and that our stars can align and we will end up back together, but it’s difficult to see how.

3) I was technically homeless these past two months and this was also taking its toll. I was not homeless in the sense of wondering around the streets and sleeping in bushes but I was without my own place that I was in a position to pay rent to and I was crashing at a friends. But I knew I could not do this for too long and it was becoming more and more stressful as time went on.

The plan now is to apply for temporary work in Nottingham and permanent work in Germany. Either I am offered a job in Germany and I can go knowing that money will be on its way or I save a couple of grand here and fly to Germany knowing that I can survive for a few months whilst frantically searching for work. Whichever scenario gets me into the right position earliest I will go with.

There is one thing which could postpone this. Out of all of the jobs I applied for in Edinburgh there are one or two that are brilliant, and brilliant for my career and my CV. For example a one year contract doing research into the cognitive effects of aging. I would be working with people in their 90’s who have been tested on this issue throughout their entire lives. If I get an interview for that I would go to it and if I got it I would take the contract and use the whole year to save for Germany living in Edinburgh. This time with money and thus more positivity. However, based on my disappointing lack of positive responses in the past eight months this may be unlikely.