Bright Aboagye

A Job is a Lullaby to the Ears

I have seventy-eight cedis in my GCB account and nothing in my Fidelity account. Zero. I have forgotten the other account numbers and whatever may be left in them. I stare at my phone screen for a while, refreshing the banking app as if the numbers might change by miracle. They do not. They sit there, fixed, mocking me.

In front of me is my vision board. It lies against the wall, a collage of dreams that was full of promise. Now, it coos affectionately and in mockery, as if to say, You thought you could do all this?

I feel it smirking at me, a witness to all I planned and failed to do. The man I wanted to become has become an unfinished sketch, and his face is fading behind the bold colours of ambition. I sit back, irked, restless, unable to forgive myself for not becoming what I said I would be.

The mattress lies flat on the bare floor. There is no bedframe, and no comfort. The heat in the room has grown unbearable. It rises from the floor and pushes on my skin until my whole body feels suspended in a slow suffocation. The air moves as though it is a restless animal, brushing across my face with the feeling of my own exhaustion. The heat holds me down. It feels like being lost inside a fire that does not burn, a flame that only dries and drains. I lie there, my body damp, thinking how this heat mirrors my life; it is a constant force leaving me stuck in a pause between desire and defeat.

In 2024, I wrote on that same board that I would complete my master’s degree, find a well-paying job, and finally build a stable life. I had plans to save a thousand cedis every month. I would spend seven hundred on transport and another thousand on the things I needed: clothes, shoes, a microwave, skincare products, small comforts that would make me feel like I was living, and not surviving life. I would help my mother with the household bills and pay part of my younger sister’s school fees. She deserves more than I do. That was the plan. I remember how proud I was of that plan; how sure I felt that education was the key that opened every door.

And here I am, sitting on a floor mattress, broke, sweating, and wondering why a degree feels more like a stone around my neck than a blessing.

It is sad, almost cruel, that after all these years of studying, of staying up late to submit assignments, of finishing my dissertation, this is what I have become. I believed that a master’s degree would guarantee something. Isn’t that what we were told? That if you learn hard enough, if you do the work, you will be rewarded? By December that year, I had set out new rules for myself. I told myself that the new year would bring something different, that maybe the sun that scorched me through 2024 would turn into rain and soften the ground crushing the soles of my feet.

Life, as it turns out, does not follow rules.

Now it is 2025, and I have become too used to rewriting. I rewrite everything: cover letters, CVs, emails, apologies, explanations. Sometimes I rewrite the same cover letter three times a day, hoping the next version might sound more confident or more employable. I have three CVs, each with a version of myself tailored for survival.

The first one is for corporate jobs. It says I have worked as a copywriter at my mother’s shop. It sounds better than it is. Her shop is small, struggling, a survivor on its last breath. I update her website monthly so that I can say I am “handling communications.” It keeps me busy and gives me something to write under “work experience.”

The second CV is for what I call the “low jobs” and for the ones that do not ask for a master’s degree, where I must make myself smaller to fit their needs. I strip away the education and keep only the work that makes me seem obedient, capable, and cheap to hire. It is a painful performance of humility.

The third one is my expertly written CV, the one I send to high-end places. I copied its format from someone who works at the UN. It looks sleek and important, the kind of CV that belongs to someone who takes business class flights and wears perfume that costs more than a month’s rent. I tell myself that maybe one day I will become that person.

But I never hear back.

Jobs are hard to get. Even harder to keep dreaming about. Sometimes I think this is my punishment for walking out of a school that offered to pay me 1,200 cedis after national service. I remember how proud I was then, too proud to stay. The school was located in East Legon. I remember watching a V8 saunter into the compound while I sat at the reception waiting for the interview. The sight of it felt like an insult. That car belonged to someone who had made it, someone who would never understand how little 1,200 cedis felt to a graduate trying to survive Accra.

I walked away from that offer. I told myself I would find something better. I never did.

After that, I began applying for every job people shared on WhatsApp. Sometimes I would stay up all night reading descriptions and sending applications until my head felt pain more than ever. I did not know how hopeless it was until I discovered LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a strange world. It makes you forget there is life beyond it. I scroll through my feed, and it feels like walking through a city of people who are always achieving something. There is always someone announcing a promotion, someone celebrating a new role, someone posting a story that begins with “I am humbled to share…” It is like watching a parade you were never invited to join. The platform coos with false encouragement, screaming that success is one more connection away, one more message, one more “apply now.”

Sometimes I think LinkedIn is just Instagram wearing a suit. Corporate workers flaunt their milestones there the same way influencers flaunt their vacations. I have never posted. I only search for jobs, sometimes leaving small comments on posts that make me feel invisible.

I wish someone had told me years ago that I could be a copywriter. A real one. I wish someone had taken my hand and said, “Bright, you can do this. You just need to start small. Join an agency. Learn.” No one did. I had to teach myself, building a small portfolio from scraps of unpaid work. It got me a few interviews, enough to keep the hope alive, but not enough to live on.

On some days, I message HR managers directly. I introduce myself politely, attach my CV, send a few samples of my work, and wait. Most times, they do not reply. When they do, it is usually to say, “We’ll get back to you.” They never do.

Once, I got called for an interview at a place called Insel. I used the last of my transport money to get there. The director’s office looked expensive, smelled classy and he was comforting. There was another feeling that announced authority. He looked at me with the same tired politeness I had seen too many times before. During the conversation, he said something that still rings inside me: “People usually come into this job begging for placement, but once they are here, they cannot perform.”

I knew he was speaking about me even though he didn’t know me. The words entered me like a wound. He was right in his own way. I needed the job. I needed it so badly that I would have done anything. That need felt like shame. I smiled, nodded, pretended not to care, but I kept his words in my veins as I walked home that evening. A group of boys passed by laughing, one of them pouting dramatically as his friends teased him. A mother fussed at her crying baby near the roadside. The world seemed to move easily around me, full of people who were just living while I bore my invisible failures home.

I reached the junction and stood there for a long time, feeling foolish about spending my last coins on transport to an interview that left me emptier than before. I thought of all the things I could have said differently, all the clever ways I could have described myself. I thought of how I could have written a better call to action on my test. The words haunted me like ghosts. Sometimes these jobs make you feel like you owe them your entire being. They make you feel as if you must sell your soul for a place at their table. I have felt that I am always auditioning for life and always being told I am not good enough for the part.

There are many jobs I have interviewed for that have left me feeling used, as though the whole process was meant to mock my efforts. I remember walking to Ogilvy after they had changed the interview from online to in-person because the network had been unreliable. I had dressed in my best shirt, ironed until it felt crisp between my fingers, and printed out my portfolio with an assured pride. I arrived early, sat in the reception where the TV wared my frustrations and waited for my name to be called. When they finally ushered me in, the room seemed too bright, too perfect, the kind of place where ambition lives comfortably.

The interview went well. They smiled at my answers, nodded as I explained my ideas, and said they were impressed by my portfolio. For a brief moment, I felt seen. I felt that maybe this was it, the moment my life would take a turn. Then they thanked me and said they would get back to me. They never did. Days later, I sent them an email. I wrote carefully, explaining how I would appreciate a simple message, even if it said “unfortunately.” I wanted closure. I wanted proof that I had been considered. No reply came. That silence hurt more than rejection itself. Then there was another interview with an advertising agency whose name I have forgotten and whose boss I have since blocked on LinkedIn. I had longed to work there. I had imagined myself in that office, creating campaigns that mattered, writing scripts that people sang along too, doing something meaningful. Nevertheless, the process ended abruptly, like a song cut in the middle of its chorus. I never went back to their page again.

There was BTL Africa, where I applied for the position of community manager. An NSS girl had sent me a message on iMessage that I was to be interviewed that same day. I joined the session, nervous but hopeful, only to be swallowed by silence afterward. They never reached out again. Sometimes I see Jeff, one of their staff, posting on LinkedIn about the company’s new campaigns. He celebrates their wins as if they belong to all of us, but I cannot help remembering how he forgot to send a single message after that interview. I wonder if he ever thinks of people like me who wait on the other side of his announcements, refreshing our inboxes until the day ends.

It might be advertising agencies in general. They have a strange relationship with rejection. They never tell you that you are not the one. They let you hang in midair, uncertain whether you failed or were forgotten. Tibule Advertising once picked me for a senior copywriter role. They sent me an assignment to complete. I worked all night, pouring my heart into it, revising each line until it signaled perfection, my desire if I put it to words. I submitted it early the next morning and waited. Weeks passed, months even, and there was no response. Not a word. Not a sign.

In moments like these, I turn inward and start to blame myself. I think of all the interviews I missed when I was in school. My master’s program required me to attend class every day, and by the time I returned home, I was too tired to show up for anything else. I tell myself that maybe if I had managed my time better, I would not be here, sitting in a room filled with unfinished hopes.

There was Perbi Cubs, whose interview I forgot one Monday. I wrote an apology, and they told me to come still. I did not go. The guilt from that still remains, a reminder of how easily life can slip through your fingers. Then there was Farming in Africa. I had wanted that job, but I did not even have enough money for transport to reach their office. I stayed home that day, staring at the ceiling, trying to convince myself that something better would come.

There was another opportunity, a publishing job at Dansoman. I remember calculating the cost of transport from my home to their office and realizing I could not sustain it even if I got the position. The thought of travelling that distance every day felt heftier than the job itself. So I stayed home, choosing survival over ambition. These decisions haunt me sometimes. They live inside me, rising now and then to remind me of what could have been.

Some companies have seen my resume so many times that I am sure their system recognizes my name before I even press send. Echo House Ghana must be tired of me by now. Pulse Ghana too. I send my resume each time they post a new role, hoping this might be the one. It never is. Sometimes I joke to myself that I am cursed in that painful way life can seem to crush all your efforts.

As for Social Ghana, I no longer know how to think of them. Their boss once searched for my name, visited my blog, and read my pieces. That alone gave me a brief rush, a false hope that maybe I was being noticed. And nothing came out of it. No offer, no conversation. Just another unfinished encounter in a line of many.

Still, I must admit that not everything has been hopeless. During my remote internship with ASEC Ghana, I met Seraphine. She was the kind of person who was calm wherever she went. Her voice could soothe chaos. She helped me refine my CV and often sent me job links she thought would suit me. She believed in me at a time when I was beginning to doubt myself entirely. She told me to focus, to build gradually. Because of her, I learned to organize my portfolio and to write about my experiences with honesty. Sometimes I visit her profile and look through her portfolio. Her progress fills me with both admiration and envy. I recognize the distance between her life and mine, and I cannot deny how it hurts to see someone move forward while I am still struggling to take a step.

Then there is the copywriter I often think about, Lord Adansi. He works at Echo House, creating content that travels across platforms and lives inside people’s minds. I want to be in his shoes out of longing to see what it feels like to be needed for one’s talent. Sometimes I imagine him sitting behind his desk, working on a campaign that will make people laugh or cry. I imagine him leaving the office after a long day, feeling fulfilled. I wish I knew too.

I counted my applications recently. 432! is how many times I have tried. I keep a folder in my email where I store them all. When I opened it last night, I found one application that made me pause. The subject line read: Please hire me because I need a job. I stared at it for a long time. It was both funny and heartbreaking. I had written it out of desperation, and now it stands as proof of how far I have fallen into the banalities of hope. There is something humiliating about begging, even silently, through a computer screen. And I still do it because I must.

My friend said the other day that people change jobs all the time and that you only need to know someone. I smiled when he said that, a small smile that tried to hide the misery behind it. I do not know anyone. I am not sure I even care to know anyone anymore. Connections feel like a language I was never taught. I say this often on Twitter. I write openly about not having a job, about applying again and again and still receiving nothing. It is my way of breathing through the disappointment.

Sometimes I wonder about those organizations that claim to help people find work. They gather your CV, send you automated messages, and make you believe they are bridges. And every time I apply through them, I still end up in the same waiting room. It feels like warring forces inside me — one part refusing to give up, another ready to surrender.

I admit it now. I am jealous of successful people. I want what they have. I want to wake up in the morning and go to work, to sit behind a desk that belongs to me, to talk about projects and deadlines, to write about my job on my blog. Not to boast. I want to finally say, I made it. I want to write about the exhaustion that comes from doing something meaningful. Further tell jokes about my colleagues and my boss.

My friend David seems to be doing well at his bank job. When he took me out recently, I sat across from him and felt small. The restaurant lights reflected on his wristwatch. He spoke about investments and targets while I tried to hide the sting of greed that rose in me. He paid for everything, and I thanked him. I could not afford anything on that table. It was not the price that hurt but the reminder that I had no place in that kind of world.

As I finish writing this, I do not expect anything to change. I am writing because I need to release the burden. If someone will read this and understand, then that is it. Or they will see my life and how I have tried, how I keep trying. They will reach out or they may not. I have learned not to expect help from anyone. The world has a way of moving on while you remain immobile.

Because even in the wreckage of all these failed interviews and unanswered messages, I still want to believe that life might turn its face toward me once more.

Bright Aboagye counts Aja Monet and Akwaeke Emezi amongst his influences. He dreams of becoming a surrealist blues poet, writer, and restaurant entrepreneur. Bright hopes that his work inspires and gives hope to all who engage with it.  He can be found: Twitter: Bright_Abo9gye, Medium: https://medium.com/@briswift34, Blog: http://tayyashh1912.blogspot.com/ and LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bright-aboagye-1990552b7