Unemployment Means One Has a Lot of Time, What’s Yours Spent On?

Cyril Skosana

@McCyrus_Skosana

Three years ago, you were a different person, enthusiastic about your new venture. Call it a commencement of hope, not only for you, but also for those who look up to you, especially your siblings. You are their hope after all. 

It was a start of a new life with promises of a brighter tomorrow. However, a year if not few months ago, your dreams met with “the reality” of this world and you felt let down by your hopes, ambitions and passion. Really, this is when you began questioning your decisions. “Why did I choose this course?” You are not alone, and there’s still more who will feel like kicking themselves after a brief moment of self-introspection. My friends do not squirm in despair. 

Hi, my name is Cyril Skosana (21), originally from Mpumalanga, currently based in Mabopane, Pretoria. I form part of the Unemployment Statistics of South Africa. I studied a three year National Diploma in Journalism at the Tshwane University of Technology, which, according to the United Nations, is one of the four best institutions to study journalism in South Africa. 

As I write this piece I am having what has become a normal day for me as I am listening to music on my laptop with the television on mute. Before I started writing, I was watching a movie. Here is what made me to write this piece. As I was watching the film my mind wandered to various parts of the world that I’ve never seen before, I thought of the past and that is when reality hit. I realised that we, the unemployed bunch, waste a lot of time.

The term “unemployed” sank into wrong divisions of our brains, it definitely did on mine. Some people have allowed the term to define them, others have let it complete them and there are those who have been jailed by the term “unemployed” and they think “employment” will free them.

At this point you are probably asking why I wrote about time and unemployment without explaining the relationship between the two – wait that bit is still coming, keep on reading.

The Free Dictionary online explains time as a non-spatial continuum in which events occur, apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future. That’s a basic definition and I’m sure there are others from other dictionaries. The dictionary I consulted says events are supposed to occur in this spatial continuum called time. 

The wise and cultured ones will always advice the young ones to worry not about what they don’t have and focus on what they do have, and what we have. What we don’t have after the completion of studies is “employment” but we do have “time”. So what are we doing with the time we have?

Do we spend our time complaining about being unemployed, do we spend our time starting new businesses to employ others, do we spend our time on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram? Do we perhaps spend our time reading or sleeping, watching movies like I do when I could be blogging which would help me with my writing as a journalism graduate, maybe reading or getting involved in community projects?

How about we use the time we have to pave the way for our dreams? I bet there’s no rule that says one can only succeed by being employed in a field they studied for! Think Mark Zuckerberg who, while at university, worked on coding Facebook while his university friends were spending their time partying – he didn’t need to be employed to achieve his dreams. 

Here is my three-minute task for the unemployed bunch, think about where you spend your valuable time and whether what you do during that period is worth the time? Remember, time is irreversible. If you’re not up to this task, well sorry for suggesting that you waste your three minutes.