I was looking for a job, then I found a job, etc.

I'm not working at the moment but I'm not claiming benefits either.

How do you live? You may well ask. Mind your own business, I may well reply. But, as you've probably guessed it's personal charity and it adds to my shame.

I have been applying for jobs, but very rarely do I even get a reply to my emails and when I receive application forms I'm in such a fug of despair and so firmly rooted is my belief that I won't be able to cope with the job that I seldom fill them in.

I've done odd bits of freelance writing and some helping out for my girlfriend's company.

But on Friday (I know something must have happened) I got a phone call from a long-forgotten company offering me a job.

Now, I'm a journalist by trade, but I'm not too fussy about what I do. This is call centre work, which doesn't have the best of reputations for job satisfaction and so on. But it's only 15 hours a week and I do believe that work will be good for me in terms of confidence and reducing the dreadful sense of futility and isolation I've been feeling. Then there's money too.

So, I've just rung them back and accepted the job, the training for which starts next Monday at 5pm. It was my girlfriend who demolished my self-erecting barriers to doing anything (as she so often does). But, I am concerned. I've got my drinking back to 4.30pm and this will require me to stay sober till 8pm. It's not far off 4pm now and I'm already getting twitchy. I also haven't told my prospective employers that I am a practising (very proficient in fact because practice makes perfect) alcoholic on a waiting list for a detox - although I have said I'm on a waiting list for 'something' medical, how they will react if and when I do tell them I don't know.

So, from now to Monday I'm going to have to practice. And, this is undoubtedly a good thing. The later and the less I drink the better. It goes without saying I'm absolutely petrified by the whole thing, but work is good, right?

I hope so.

I've also got a meeting about volunteering for the depression charity, Journeys. Next Wednesday. Let's hope something comes of that too.