There is something uncomfortable about projecting some experience and trying to understand this experience through a silent medium, not because of the mere anonymity of it but because what we have to say has to take a narrative form without the luxury of the communicative exchange. It requires that we tell ourselves something about ourselves that we may not have known before. How ready can we be to face our own disclosure?

I have joined the ranks of the unemployed of Great Britain some six months ago, before the winter, before Christmas, before the harsh month of February, before the end of winter, before spring started. The great ranks of the unemployed of Great Britain (it has to be great for something in times of difficult struggle for world domination). It is not a pleasant situation. Not so much because of the economic situation in which all of us employed people struggle, but because contrary to many of the people who are doing the ‘right things’ we need to be self-critical, and we cannot be complacent because the feeling of failure allows no excuse, mitigating circumstances or floppy apologies.

And a failure it is. I was the first of my (extended) family (that’s including cousins, half cousins) to gain a university diploma. In fact, the first to study academic subjects, slowly going through each step of the university “ladder”. My parents did not do too bad in life and they are enjoying a happy retirement. Yet none of them reached the A-level degree of education. My father can hardly write and struggles reading or counting. My mother is a self learner. Her own mother was the youngest daughter of an immigrant family who worked in a car parts factory all her life. When I gained my undergraduate diploma, my mother thought I had achieved more than she could ever have dreamt. She would sit at the kitchen table on warm summer days and ask me to say something intelligent to her, to teach her something. She glowed of admiration and respect for my hard won academic recognitions, without any help, without any close example to follow, no aspiration to communicate and no support in difficult and self doubting times.

Because I was not doing too bad (but not brilliantly either), I continued my course of studies, taking history as my subject. I slowly improved my academic records, becoming better and better at studying, then at researching. In the meantime, my family became more and more alienated by my succesful results. I had friends that could understand me, colleagues and academic peers, They, on the other hand, felt that they could no longer understand me. My father never really knew what subject I was studying, or refused to listen. Yet I was never, or very rarely, talking about university, my exchanges with my family had always been about love, not about excellence and achievements. I was working part-time and even when I obtained a full scholarship I still had a part-time job, sometimes two but I was seen through my university activities, first and foremost. Days were long, holidays close to non-existant, all the spare time that I could secure was for intimate time with friends and family.

I eventually obtained my PhD and then gained a post-doctoral research post. My surrounding thinned out. My friends had difficulties relating to me because my day’s work and activities had nothing comparable to theirs. My colleagues now considered me as competition. My family became self depreciating as they thought themselves irrelevant to the so-called bigger questions I must have been asking myself, thinking that everything they were saying or doing was trivial. Those so dear moments at their side started to weigh heavily as they lost confidence in their ideas, words, views and I feared mis-pitching my replies.

However, while researching, I was delighted to have the privilege of doing something I enjoyed intensely. I wished it would never end. But it did. The project I was working on ended. “I am not worried for you, something will turn up” was the answer coming from all sides. So I didn’t worry, instead I grieved for the one thing that I loved doing now no more to be, the daily purpose of my professional life. I turned to the jobcenter, have returned there every fortnight for the past six months. Now I worry, nothing is “turning up” and nothing allows me to hope that it will.