There’s constant talk about how youth unemployment is high, higher, highest. Politiicans, agencies and economists are horrified over the numbers. We are not horrified at 365. We have different figures. We have: “Seven things you can do if you are unemployed”.

First, I moved away from home to become a poet. Then I drank wine and wrote poems. Two years later I moved back to my hometown again. I had applied for a writers' education and made up my mind early on that I’d get in. I didn’t. Instead, I stood with the rejection letter in my hand and kicked a wall so hard that I got a crack in my big toe. I was in pain, and angry. For several months, I had an ulcer and debts. Eventually they got enough of me at the employment agency and said that I should take any available job. I refused. Then they suggested that I become an intern. That sounded good. I got an internship at Göteborgs-Posten. Then they thought I should get a new internship because the one I had managed to get was in the wrong area. I promptly changed employment agency.

At the new employment agency, birds chirped and I could take off the bandage from my big toe. My supervisors were two young girls, and they praised me for my initiative and for that I had managed to get an internship so quickly. I wondered if it was okay despite being in the wrong area. They laughed and wrote something secret in their papers and said that now it was okay. I worked three months at Göteborgs-Posten and learned a lot. Then I got a job at a radio station because they had read something I wrote in the newspaper. Then I got an apartment because I was working on the radio. Then I got a record deal and a girlfriend. All in one week. I should move away from home more often.

Text: Navid Modiri