Articles by Amanda Austen

The grim news is that there is going to be another recession (goody, but when exactly did the last one finish?) which means that there will be even fiercer competition for jobs. So it is little wonder that people have started to go to extreme measures to stand out from the crowd like this guy [...]

“You’ve got to have a different mindset.  You are not unemployed, but self-employed,” my English friend Michael said after I told him about my first ‘Tilting Head Episode’ a couple of years ago. A tilting what? Let me explain. The episode happened when The Englishman’s Ex came over to drop the kids off at his [...]

In this redundant wasteland, I have developed some very bad habits. One of them is to refresh my emails all the time in the hope I would receive one that will magically transform my life somehow.

On my first jobless Monday morning, I felt like I was free-falling. I suddenly had nowhere to go, no structure, no chats about the weekend with colleagues in a grubby office kitchen area while making the first cup of tea of the day. I had become institutionalised and really missed a schedule.

The axe had been poised over my head for months before it fell across my neck three years ago. I should have seen it coming, but the changes in the television industry over here had crept up on me while I was safe in my monthly pay cheque bubble I had become complacent and assumed that I would be the one to decide when I was leaving.