Pickles n' Tickles by JJ

In the midst of job applications, and I thought I'd detour since the laptop is already on my lap. It's just me procrastinating on the grownup things I should  be doing like looking for jobs, making lunch, cleaning the balcony, combing my hair and decluttering the common shelf - yes, the dreaded hidden clutter and it's not even a year yet since we walked into this house with just three luggages.  Do you know that I had applied for 155 jobs on LinkedIn alone  in the past 6 years ? Yet the two roles I held during the period were not from those applications. A whopping 155 applications and none materialised. Most employers don't even send rejection email - I don't know if that's kind or cruel but it sure is nice to get some form of feedback for the effort put into the tedious applications. Section  after section of information to fill in AFTER a resume upload along with a cover letter which already contains all of those info. Some applications even come with tests

Apart from my politically correct IG captions - it those count - and utterly grey SEO-compliant content at work, I haven't written anything much for my inner child in a millennia. Don't know what I've been busy with but since my last post I've lost people, lived through a pandemic, ran a bake shop, worked with my hands, dabbled in B2B writing, and moved to another continent. In between these, I might have lost that perky voice I thought I had on here. The inner kid has retracted deep into her Cancerian shell, and now will you help me smoke coax her out?  Lately, specifically in the last 4 years, I've been feeling detached from that side of me that writes. Sure, I've been distracted by life, but writing for myself has been an escapade ever since I could read. It began with a diary. Her name was Amanda.  She was a pretty hardcover  in pink and pistachio with a golden lock on her. When unlocked with a matching golden key, her A5 pages came lined in pink. I'd