I began the last blog saying things move fast, they do. At a point yesterday evening I was on the phone to a friend of mine talking about what I'd been doing on Sunday. I'd been to a topical comedy show at lunchtime, it was fun although I made the mistake of making an early contribution and inadvertently provided the panel of comedians more mileage than the whole of the Sunday newspapers could manage. That's comedy, I guess. It was fun and it did somewhat remind me that there are times when my skin may still be thicker than the transparent thing I think it has recently become. Recalling that was like recalling something which had happened weeks ago.
Things this week have changed so much I am almost unable to say what is going to happen next. I went to casually check on my claims after signing on and discovered that the whole thing had not gone even remotely the way it should have done. I was so dazed I couldn't even think of going to see about storage. I felt knocked sideways again and utterly unable to even think straight. I went down to the place and just wandered around near to the place without ever going to discuss storage because if I'd gone and done so I'd have either rented something the size of a box, or an air hanger and I probably couldn't have told you which a couple of hours later. Instead I had to fix the problem I had so that I actually end up with some of the money someone told me I was entitled to but not getting because of the sheer utter bureaucratic pettiness some officials have in "doing their job" and actually then not admitting they are wrong, when they are. I wandered around before this contemplating walking into the traffic and doing everyone a favour. Fortunately none of it was travelling fast enough to make that option even remotely worth the slightest consideration.
This week began as the first step in a personal healing process, something I need to do for me to change things. I need to sort a lot of stuff out in my life and I'm beginning to realise that I probably can't really move my career (if that's what going to work has ever been to me - something I actually doubt) forwards. Without this I probably won't ever feel I've succeeded in my life at all. Yet all that has been put aside, the landscape totally metamorphosising before my very eyes, not once but about 3 times. I'm almost at the point where I think concrete planning days ahead isn't possible, not because I can't face them, but because that won't be what I'll be doing. Something else will come up. I just have to keep finding more and more to do this just to survive through to the next day. It's bloody hard now and I really don't know when it will stop. Everything seems so relentless at the moment. This has been probably the worst period of my life. I've dealt ably with things before this but now I feel like I spend so much time fighting just to stay on my feet as I'm battered by a constand flood.
I've realised something about the last few weeks of writing this. The darkness that has descended on my life is affecting me in so many different ways and its odd the way its affecting me. I've always been quite guarded about what I tell people. I don't share emotions easily unless they're about art, music, politics, theatre, sport, or some abstract idea or viewpoint. Then I have passion. The people stuff is empathy and understanding of what I think about other people but it is seldom about how I feel. That's the healing that needs to take place. There are people I know who are reading this who I cannot face and tell what I write here. Some of them I don't actually think want to hear me say it, but they can read it here.
All this stuff has cost me one friendship so far. That person doesn't know how deeply affected I am about that, and probably never will and I don't even think they care. They felt I wasn't honest. Everything about me, I built it all on lies. I do that to survive, to get through the day and it's what I've always done. There are people I am now being honest with face to face. Then there is blog where I can face up to things in a different way. Perhaps I am this unfeeling monster that just takes the bad stuff and buries it in a box. I told someone that the other day and they said that it would mould and eventually this would grow so much it would push open the box and then the mould would be outside and would need to be dealt with. Perhaps that's what I am realising now.
Then there are the pressing issues. The next is sorting out what I am going to do for work. I have to sit down with the career coach sometime in the next couple of weeks and construct something which will give me the opportunity to get some kind of work again. This won't be so much a case of "think outside the box", more build a new box out of the bits and pieces of experience I do have from years of doing all kinds of strange and wonderful things. The only issue is getting anyone to want these fairly unproven talents when the jobless figures jumped faster than they have ever done. I'm part of that record but I don't think it's going to stand all that long. 23,000 people a week are being made redundant in a time when one financial institution celebrates its recovery by returning to old fashioned reward system. These are difficult, different times.
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