Where are we now?
Click to viewIndeed, where are we, as Bowie once put it.
The answer is, I don't know.
Not being dramatic, but as someone who next month is probably going to have my official status as self-employed pulled by the DWP (our benefits agency that helped me go onto the enterprise scheme I am on that started just before the pandemic) - or indeed forced to 'look for work' that I don't know is there when I'd rather do my art work...that uncertainty is almost a taste at this point.
It's fine, with the pandemic and everything I have decided not to freak out and have been saving like crazy over the last few years, storing art materials, and accepting that me and the DWP will have to part ways at some point.
Not being an artist and going back to the hell that was three years on the dole is not an option (after my mother's inheritance ran out, I was forced to move from my old flat in with John and sign on; it's soul destroying and social genocide basically, they try and make you ill or make you angry so they can sanction you. It's very Orwellian).
I've tried the other things, trying to get jobs in ALDI and Waitrose and in my former industry - some close calls, but it was all for naught and just made me quite ill with stress and depression. I, Daniel Blake is pretty much a documentary - one of the bad things is you can NEVER show weakness. If you do they seize on it. It's brutal.
So out of that a positive decision, to keep going no matter what. It's what I was trained to do, and it seems my old industry (advertising, video, production) is tearing itself apart and downscaling like crazy. I hated working on stuff I blocked in my own browser! Not good.
But things are fucked anyway cos of the pandemic....so I feel that they can go fly with trying to force me to work in a Christian-owned toy shop that hates queer people (I am not lying about that one, that almost happened, partly why I ran away to join the circus of being a 'business owner' to get away from a bad job coach and that scenario several years ago - forcing people to work in toxic workplaces on secondment with the threat of taking their benefits away never works well)
As Bowie says:
As long as there's sun
As long as there's rain
As long as there's fire
As long as there's me
As long as there's you...
Weirdly hopeful, even though I have no right to be.
The title has another side, where am I with the people I see in my friends list here - some sadly gone, some still around (cue Pet Shop Boys)?
The people over at FB or Twitter bar a few I regularly talk to? That's also don't know....even the people I saw over the last week in person. My podcast audience? I feel disengaged from a lot of that too.
That's the pandemic, everything is up for grabs (or re-evaluated).
The uncertainty of posting here is the worry of re-awakening a few bad memories, or indeed finding I am not the new person I think I am now, and refind myself back to who I was *shudder*.
Or to be dragged screaming there by a couple of people who Will Not Be Named.
I was looking at the friends list - I can't remember why some people aren't friends on here, and I remember all too well why a couple of them aren't.
Note: there are some people who piss me off and it fades, that's normal, I could have been me being a dick, or just people being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That one is not an end point, I have reconnected with people years later that I unfollowed or unfriended, and wondered what it was all about...
And others I remember, and if I remember after 10-15 years then you fucking bet it's not minor, nor was it likely my fault, cos if it is I will eventually feel shame forever, cos that's how I roll. I replay all my mistakes in my head frequently. The mistakes haunt me, but if the AVOID sign still burns like a biblical fiery symbol then I know it's most likely not my fuckup, or not entirely - it takes someone else keep that sort of beef alive, for that length of time - I just get bored or lose interest. I'm not sociopathic nor bitter, I usually just avoid people.
But there are two people who are here - well not entirely here here but on a compatible site yet comment here - who have waged nasty stuff across other platforms so frequently I have to pre-emptively block them on every single new platform for my own safety. It's that scary and weird.
So even being on the same site they comment on at all is kind of worrying - and yes, they kept it clean on here and sweet-talk people and keep their insane shit for private comments and other platforms....
And the weird thing is, I'm not sure what I've ever done to them? Disagreed once about a hot button subject they didn't want to talk about yet blogged here (power ploy 101)? Made a joking comment once about a photo? It's basically that. That doesn't explain the frankly sociopathic stalkeriness and harassment of the last 15+ years.
This was part of my moving away from LJ, cos the great thing about FB and Twitter is you can completely block people. Here you can only block their comments. So yes, I'm telling you this because I'm not sure I feel safe here, but the only way to be safe is open about what happened as a sort of insurance if the Tut Tut Twins come-a-calling. Their shit survives on silence of their victims, it seems.
(If you can comment on this, or are on my FL, that's most definitely not you).
That said, my door is open to everyone else, if you want to engage. Even though I have no idea where I am now either. Maybe we could work it out together?
