It's an 'end of the rainbow' sort of deal

 The 12 letter prompt of 'housewarming' today brings me to 'm'. After hesitating for half a week I've decided to go for 'me' and essentially update my 'intro' post from 3 years ago.

I am [about to turn] 36. I work in a 'prestigious' university in the south of England. I put prestigious in inverted commas because I am deeply critical of the system of university rankings, and things like 'Russell Group' which ensure money and resources flow around a ring fenced group of already over-funded institutions who select students from selective schools and...it's a pyramid scheme. I have worked at less prestigious universities which do better, more exciting research with less money, and make an objectively bigger impact in the lives of their non-elite students than this one does. I work here because they hired me for a permanent role and the lookout for careers in academia right now is terrible. I like my colleagues, I like many of my students, I work hard (sometimes too hard) for the community I am part of but I am never going to toe the party line on being 'world-leading' simply because of what some dodgy metrics say about the institution as a whole.

I am a cis woman. I think gender is a trap. I have always, as long as I can remember asking questions, been baffled by binary conceptualisations of gender and I have never easily fit either 'girl' or 'woman'. Woman, right now, is a word I choose. But more often I like to roll my descriptors of gender and sexuality into one and use 'queer'. I like the indeterminacy of queer. I like the history of that word and how it still needles at the norm, how it says 'I am against and across and strange and uncomfortable and making you uncomfortable'. I find it fascinating how and when I get misgendered and I find it fascinating when I get called "lady". The latter makes me more unhappy than the former.

I also use bisexual to describe my sexuality. A word which I painfully tore out of me and presented to the world when I was about 15 and which I clung to in the face of all the horribleness that can attend coming out. For a number of years I dropped bisexual because I had internalised too many negative stereotypes and associations with that word. Recently, after an inspiring keynote address entitled 'lesbian nation' by Campbell X at a conference, I claimed 'lesbian' as a word I had a right to. I mix my words all the time. Did I mention I like indeterminacy? I don't owe anyone a box to put me in. The words I use are expression, not definition.

My work mixes my life. I do research about LGBTQ people, families, childhood, gender, relationships. I don't write about that in much detail as I try to maintain some division of my professional and personal online existence.

One of the roles I have in my job involves supporting students who encounter a range of difficulties during their studies; I am determined to do all I can to kick open the door to Higher Education and use my entire body to stop it slamming shut on people. On some occasions this is harder to acheive than at others. I am continually learning about doors I didn't even know existed and how they exclude people.

I have a long term mental health issue. I write about it in more detail on my wordpress blog. I write about it here too, but typically in less detail. It's a useful background piece of information to have if you're coming to read. I am, as mentioned above, hitting my late 30s. I've been told that this stage of life often includes a worsening of bipolar spectrum disorders, that's something I've been wrestling for a while now. I've also been told that it kind of shakes out by the time you're 40 and you can just get on with it - whatever level you end up at. I hope that's true. I work hard to be well. My success on this front is, predictably, variable.

I am fortunate to have a huge range of people in my life. I have a biological family who live far away and who I have limited contact with, this includes three brothers, and two parents. I have a chosen family of friends who live much closer and who fill me up with love and kindess and sometimes beer. I am [recently] poly after being single for a decade. I got to poly through a lot of reflection on what I can and can't do in relationships and how I want to be able to build relationships with people. I am finding the space, communication, and conscious choice of commitment which poly centres incredibly positive and freeing. At the time of writing, I am in one relationship of note and that's with 'Teddy'. They are on dreamwidth as well and next-to-no-sleuthing will reveal their dw username to anyone who wishes to put together such a puzzle.

I am a nerd for pop culture and a deep love of sci-fi (especially Star Trek) has been a constant in my life. I am a lifer fan of Manic Street Preachers, even though I haven't liked any music they've released for nearly a decade. I have a soul deep love for David Bowie and our bond will never be broken. 

I read the journal of everyone I subscribe to but I am an inconsistent commenter. 

I've had a week.. Not overall good or bad, just many things.

Started just feeling really bone deep exhausted - by lockdown in some ways, and fear of the future and impending workload - and unable to move forward on the very reasonable to do list I had for Monday/Tuesday. Wednesday-Friday truly made this the week of hell with an enormous project of work which gives me chills to even think of doing step 2 with on Monday. It is very likely going to result in me getting to the point of being utterly overwhelmed again - as I was on Friday - and raging at myself and the world. 

The flip side of this week of horror has been in/from interpersonal relationships and achieving new physical stuff. Found new friends in the colleagues I was working on hell project with Wed-Fri and spent time on Teams sharing gifs and laughing and smoking together on video chat. I managed a 6k run on Friday which is the first time I've checked my distance after a run. I had a lovely evening watching another shit film - this month: Batman & Robin - with Brighton friends on Friday night and then Zoom chatting with them until 1am. Spent a good long chunk of time chatting with Teddy last night which was just lovely. And then woke up and text them and it just feels good.

I blogged over on the other place about my overall wellbeing at the moment, and how contrary this feels in such objectively terrible times. Life is the things between the chaos isn't it? The bits where you fail quite completely to engage with the bigger picture and just have your little world - for better or worse.

Things are really fucking nice with Teddy. I have had this nagging worry which basically boils down to "is there space for me?" and I managed to articulate it last night and it's not like it's fixed for being out loud, and I'm still invisible in a place that makes me...have discomfort? But it's good for being there. And for them knowing that worry exists, and for them making clear they care that I feel that way? It's difficult asking for something you are not sure you can ask for. I find it difficult admitting I need things that can only come from outside of me. But this is the nature of relationships - allowing the vulnerability, admitting to having needs. These are things I wobble on.

The wobbles are the things between the rest of it though. And there's a lot of good there. If you'd told me this time last year I'd be really fucking delightedly and enthusiastically embarking on a 200mile-away/long-distance relationship I would have laughed you out of the place. But it feels like exactly the right decision. I'm trying not to spend my months counting down the weeks to seeing them, but it's hard not to.  There are worse problems to have.

For me, like everyone, it's been a strange week. Time is moving especially strangely, stretching out and then clumping up and flying by in a single gulp. I thought I'd record the outline of my week here, as a little road marker in this peculiar journey we are on.

Monday I went into work and spoke to 4 or 5 colleague who were also in - all of them stood at the door of my office and spoke to me from there. I deep cleaned the staff kitchen (which is not cleaned by facilities even though it's a shared space provided by the university...) and went home with the vague expectation I would be able to keep doing a couple of days in the office and three at home for future weeks. I walk to work so it didn't seem like it was much different for me to walk in and go to my office compared to staying in my flat. One colleague who is going on maternity leave in a couple of weeks left me all her plants to look after so I put them in my office. By the end of Monday the uni annouced everyone who could should be working from home so I planned to bring everything home on the Tuesday. 

Tuesday was student phone calls for supervision and general disaster planning. Went for a swim which was great, pool was empty. Packed up everything I could think of, short of bringing all my books home, got a taxi with my books and plants and the packs of porridge I keep in my office for afternoon snacks. 

Wednesday the uni annouced the Sports Centre would close on Sunday, and that campus would be pretty much closing down entirely but the library and my building would remain open. They have a truly insane plan of having people use individual offices in my building on a rota; we were asked if we happy for our offices to be used - I didn't reply. I assume it will get requistioned if needed but no mention they will be deep cleaned after use by unknown number of people so I didn't volunteer. Seems hard to understand why anyone who can work in a office which isn't theirs cannot also work from home. And indeed, none of us are essential beyond payroll stuff and student services so why even require most people to continue working from home?

Thursday I steeled myself and headed into my local high street to try and get a few essentials I'd run out of (sanitary towels, toothpaste, veggie mince, vegetables) and hit three stores to fulfil my list with pretty good success. The sanitary towels were especially challenging. The woman in Boots told me people were buying them to line their fucking face masks with? Which is insane. It struck me that period poverty is likely to deepen now - I can afford to buy these at more or less any price and I did pay more than I usually do. People who just about manage buying the cheapest options are not going to be able to buy anything. Sainsbury's freaked me out a bit as the empty shelves were more numerous than I expected and the vegetarian freezer section was totally empty so I have no veggie mince in now which is a pain as it's a key component of a few of the easy/few ingredient meals I do. I'm also out of tinned tomatoes and obviously they have long since vanished from supermarket shelves.

Friday I had more student phone appointments which I really enjoyed and was glad to have a focus/feeling of usefulness after a very unfocused week. Decided to go for a swim and swam in an empty pool for an hour/just over 2km. By the time I got out of the pool the library had annouced they'd close indefinitely from 6pm, and Boris had ordered leisure centres to close. I went home via the library - like me there were a lot of people checking out great piles of books. So hard to know what you need when we simply don't know how long this level of restriction will continue.

Saturday I decided I would do one last non-essential, 'essential' trip and went for a long walk across the city, via the Common, to Wilko. The walk was absolutely glorious, sunshine and warm temps really boosted my mood tremendously - as did seeing lots of people also on walks in twos and threes, and playing in what looked like family groups. There's been a lot of noise on twitter in the last 48 hours berating people for going to the parks but I struggle to know what else people should do when they don't have a garden, or have a dog to exercise. If you're not symptomatic, if you're practicing social distancing, if you're only with the people you live with when you're outside, what is the harm of going for walk around the park or playing frisbee? My understanding was that this is entirely within the realm of what's allowed. There's so little firm, clear guidance from the government on any of this. It's such a shocking lack of leadership in a time when doing it right hardly seems to be easier.

Wilko was really quiet, I asked the cashier how she was and she said customers first thing in the morning had been rude and frantic but that it calmed after a few hours. I bought £20 worth of bulbs, compost, and pots to plant out on my balcony and try and ensure some green and colour as this quarantine deepens. The thought of facing out onto that concrete carpark with only distant trees for next 3 or more months would about finish me off. Got a taxi home and had a chat with driver to similar to the one I had on Tuesday whereby they have no work, are all self employed, and are about to go broke - but also feel anxious and unhappy about picking up passengers because of the risk to their health. I paid via their app to at least minimise that contact. Spent the afternoon planting and sorting out pots. Realised I'd ignored instructions to soak some of the bulbs overnight before planting so resolved to dig them up and do it properly on Sunday.

Sunday has been pleasant. Another gloriously sunny day which boosts the mood. Of the modest blessings about when this has happened, it is at least in spring when the world is coming alive again. To quarantine in winter would surely have been the end of me. Did a load of laundry and put it out on the balcony to blow dry (why does laundry smell so much better for having dried outside compared to drying quickly on an indoor airer in a well ventilated room?). Dug up the anemone tubers/bulbs to soak them. "Went" to a museum with two friends via Google hangouts and spent a good two hours chatting with them and screen sharing the stuff we saw in the galleries. 


Next week is going to be the test, and the beginning of this for real. No more frivolous shopping trips. No more shopping trips at all really - I've signed up to a veg box delivery and I've got enough cupboard stock to comfortably last for a few of weeks (fortunately, I had done my monthly big shop at the beginning of March and had loads of loo roll and cans before the supermarkets started emptying out - neglected to notice my low reserves of tomatoes and veggie mince when doing that order, unfortunately. Which normally wouldn't be a problem, but these are interesting times).

No more swimming - the thing that in no small measure keeps me sane. Need to see if my knackered bike is a) still in the building's car park b) fixable to a level I can use it. And no more social face-to-face contact. At all. 

All the yelling at people about failing to do social distancing "properly" seems to ignore how many of us live entirely alone. Social distancing for us ends up meaning self-isolation. I feel scared and very alone and very ashamed of the fact that I have plans to meet someone face-to-face in the park or in my flat, about once a week. She and I are both freaking out at the idea of not seeing real people regularly. I don't want to hurt anyone - I understand the concept of stemming the transmission rate and reducing people who can spread it. But I also don't understand what I am required to do to "do my part"; what is advised and what is essential in this social distancing thing? If I am home alone 6 days a week, only leaving to have a solo walk, surely meeting face to face once a week with one or two specific people is less risk than a majority of people who are still working and still using public transport etc? 

ETA: looks like tonight's advice is now more robust. Can someone actually tell me what I can and can't do? I'm lost.

 You know sometimes how you're so tired and so overworked and so anxious about the endless list of stuff you just have to keep in your head and keep moving forward on even though progress is so small it's like you're not moving at all?

And how "sometimes" is "all the time"?

Is this just how everyone feels? Or is this quite particular to having a really demanding job, a brain that sometimes runs on empty, and being really fucking single in a constellation of friends who have partners to share these burdens with?

I feel like I'm a zombie in my own life sometimes, I really do. Stumbling on and on.

I genuinely thought "well thank god for that, an end date" when I saw this headline

 I'm the only person in any part of my family to ever go to University.

Ever.

It's suprisingly isolating. And, as I get more and more embedded in academia, the sense of isolation only increases. Nobody in my family has any clue what it is I do, and only a couple of people have an inkling why I do it. 

My nephew turns 21 today and in a genuinely surprising turn, has decided to go to university. He got in to a university which I didn't have the grades for as an undergrad (to my chagrin!) but he got in, effectively, on a much lower offer because he's a "mature" student and has an NVQ (in "performance and excellence" - no comment) which is fairly arbirtrarily weighted to 3 or 4 A Levels. 

He's a bright lad, always has been. But he's also completely unwilling to distinguish himself and deliberately buried his ability at school and habitually refuses to ask for help because he seems to view it as a sign of weakness. Add to that the fact his classmates are largely going to be beginning this year having been drilled through A Levels in Law, Sociology, English and similar, and he's going to be a huge disadvantage. He doesn't know how to write essays or handle reading independently. There will be support for him - but will he actually access it? I don't know.

I'm hovering between sending him reams of instructions and directions in how to actually navigate university, and trying to remember he needs to find his own way, and I don't know what is in his heart in terms of commitment, change from how he was when he was younger, and determination.

It's particularly hard that he has never consulted me or asked for any help or advice in applying, selecting, etc, to university. His mother and my brother seperated when he was 2 and I'm not a big part of his life, but I am here. At Christmas I said he could message me anytime if he needed any help and he said "what is it you actually do?" and I was like ".....I'm a lecturer in Sociology. The same discipline area you are going into". 

Does he think I have nothing to offer or is this another example of his total unwillingness to actually call on people to help?

I'd love for him to succeed at university. I have this fantasy of us becoming closer as he goes through university and actually having a relationship.

I just want to feel some sort of connection to my family.

Being the only person to go to university, or show any sort of interest in it, makes me feel weird. Like I'm actually a changeling. And it makes me feel - wrongly, perhaps - that nobody in the family values what I do.  Everyone respects hard work in my family, but I think there's a suspicion that academia is secretly a holiday. And then my Dad, for instance, seems to respond to that by continually emphasising how hard I work which in turn just makes me feel guilty for not working that hard.

Academia is intellectually and emotionally hard work. But compared to my various low grade jobs - shop work, childcare, cleaning - it is much less physically challenging. And physical hard work is really easy to understand. I can't and wouldn't suggest my fortnight of sitting in front of a computer with writers block, drinking cups of tea, is anywhere near comparable to the various labouring jobs most of my family do.

I think this could all be summed up as "I have a working-class chip on my shoulder and it's getting heavier with each passing year"

As the years go by I become increasingly convinced class is more a state of mind than it is a socio-economic reality.

My parents were working class.  The half of the family who have the greatest impact/input on our lives are all working class.  My older (half) brothers were brought up in a working class home.  My Mum met my Dad and had me and I was brought up in a lower middle class home in a middle class area at a middle class school.  I left home for university, was vomited from there into the world and promptly became [economically] working class again.

I currently work in a state school were I watch the taxpayers money - my money, your money - being spent.  Being spent unwisely, often.  I hear the business manager (yup, that's what schools have now) talk with the Head about turnover, budgets and project management.  Sometimes, I think they forget there are children in the 'business' they are running.  The business manager - my manager - wants me to become a business manager myself.  I am 'going along' with it for the sake of looking like I want to work there - and thereby secure my small income - but as soon as I get the opportunity to leave for a new job as far away from money management, I will.

I find it abhorrent, talking about money and people management as though they are just meaningless numbers.  How many books - or computers - could be bought for the school, or poorer schools in the county, if both the business manager and head took a 10% pay cut?  I could not take the money they take to do the job they do, from a public service budget, with a clear conscience.

But to move up on the class ladder - my previous and current experience tells me - I must be willing to act without conscience in taking a pay rise.  And I must act selfishly in demanding more pay and more benefits, and in viewing a school, for example, as a business to be run not an institution to be nurtured if I wish to climb out of the economic group I find myself in.

If having a big house, a flash car, designer clothes and expensive holidays means stamping on people, rejecting the community spirit and 'less doesn't matter if you still get to be with your family and friends' attitude that I was raised in and brought up believing - through social-genetics as much as being actively schooled in that mind frame - then I don't want it.  If money comes above equality in relationships, and career progression must be bought at the cost of nurturing and preserving the person I am - as it has starkly done for some people I have known - then I don't want it.

Above all, there is an inherent dishonesty to me in pursuing class mobility.  In achieving it, more so; as the effort to earn enough to maintain the lifestyle must take precedence over maintaining bonds to the past and, due to an inherent snobbery in the middle class, disguising one's roots.  I do not want to be paid an exorbitant amount of money for moving figures around or writing nonsense on bits of paper or 'networking' to further business concerns, I do not want to learn how to do those things, I do not want to begin to learn how to do those things.  My only ambition is to be paid an honest wage for an honest days work and go home and know that, in whatever small way, I have contributed something small and perhaps even vital.

I think I need to read News from Nowhere again.

It strikes me it has been some time since I've posted a 'proper' entry.  Perhaps it is time to remedy that.

I have been in my new job for a month now and whilst it does not fulfil me it is a relatively low stress environment and my manager - the school bursar - seems to think I'm a good egg and has made many efforts to stress she wants to help me develop my career in school administration which, whilst it is obviously not my career of choice, is certainly positive - in this financial climate, a manager who has a long term professional development plan for their newest employee after 4 weeks is a rare thing.  In short, my response to  the dilemma I expressed in my previous post, is to try and wait it out. My timescale for a review of where I am is set at the beginning of January, after that? We'll see.

The usual idiosyncrasies of a new work place have begun to reveal themselves to me; half the office hate the manager because she expects them to do work during the day. Instead they sit about, bitching about staff, parents and kids and gossiping with anyone who stops by.  The other half of the office work part time and do three times the work of the full time bitches.  Such is life.  I am, unless you haven't guessed, firmly in the second camp, except I have to be there full time.

And I do mean bitches.  I've never worked anywhere where the majority of the people full on don't like me, or just plain ignore me.  And that really is what happens.  As usual I find I'm getting on better with men in the school than the women and were it not for the guys in premises who pop in from time to time and always have a smile and always enjoy a brief chat and a giggle with me, I think I'd be tearing my hair out.  It has to be said that after a particularly frustrating day today were a couple of my contributions to an office wide conversation were not just ignored, but overruled/immediately restated by someone else, I came home and cried. Le sigh.

I'm finding living back at my parents house not nearly as bad as I anticipated.  In particular, I feel relieved to be back in the countryside.  In the mornings, as I am smoking my cigarette, I watch a family of squirrels play in the same tree.  Yesterday one snuck up on another and pounced....oh his tail.  Then they chased back and forth, tumbling and grabbing each others tails.  It reminded me of this scene in the Sword in the Stone.  

The other day I clambered down the river bank next to my house, as I have so many times before, and watched a vole and, later, a water rat, scramble about on the bank.  Every day my parents garden is filled with birds - just as it has always been, but you forget how much you enjoy seeing these things until all you see for 3 years is seagulls and pigeons.  We have pigeons here too, of course, but they are the beautifully purple wood pigeon.  And those guys mate for life, unlike the promiscuous city birds.  

The last two lunchtimes - partly out of frustration at the office situation, partly because the weather was so enticingly mild - I have left work and done a speedy circuit of the village on my bike in my lunch half-hour.  It's been nice.

It's not all good though. I'm aware - acutely aware - for the first time just how oppressive queer invisibility is.  There is a teacher at the school who I knew was a dyke the first time I met her.  This week a PGCE student started in her department and she is also, clearly, a dyke.  The urge to just seek them out one lunch time and exclaim "gay! you guys are gay! so am I! Can we talk about gay please?! do you know any gay bars? Can you take me to some?!"

...Which is absurd of course, and unimaginably embarrassing were I wrong (although I'm sure I'm not) and I'd be pissed as hell if someone said that to me BUT. I miss teh gays!  I miss a gay on every corner, as provided by Brighton, and I miss people asking after your "partner" instead of your "boyfriend" before they know for sure.  And I miss people not doing that surprised face/quick hide it look when you casually correct their "did your boyfriend" in your answer (e.g. "no, she.....") And I miss wearing whatever clothes I want, instead opting for clothes that won't get me heckled in on the streets of Grantham.

How I hate Grantham.

All that said? I guess I'm comfortable. Actually, I might go as far as happier. But not content.  More factors need to be present in my life before I can claim content.  And less bursting into tears because everyone at work is mean.

 In 26 days I will be 26. Struggling to have any positive feelings about this.

Today I visited the job centre to transfer my claim from the Brighton office. As with the previous visit the advisor was rude and...stupid.  He mocked my signature for looking silly (I know, wut?) and kept laughing at the course title of my Masters (Sexual Dissidence in Literature and Culture) before needing convincing that yes, that is what it says on my degree.  He snorted once more and said "I won't write that on your file" and simply typed 'M.A.'

I spent the afternoon with my brothers, which was lovely.  Although we all had a bit of a weird psychic moment where brother 2 and I left his flat to surprise brother 1 with a visit - 1 didn't know I was even going to be in town today - we arrived to 1's flat but he wasn't in.  So we nipped into the nearby Asda and received a call from 2's partner who was still at their flat.  1 had just arrived.  This means that we both left our respective departure points at the same time, having not planned to meet or visit and all three of us deciding on the spur of the moment to visit at that exact time.  Weirdness.

I got home to my parent's house and my Mum tells me that the school at which she works, the same place I had an interview the other week, want me to work there in some sort of admin role.  Apparently it pays better than the one I interviewed for and I won't have to interview again.  So obviously I'll take it if they offer it to me - don't look a gift horse and all that.  

I was planning on going to the cinema with brother 2 tomorrow for Orange Wednesday to see Salt.  We were going to go to a matinee because it's cheaper and he needs to get home at a reasonable hour to go to bed as his schizophrenia medication makes him sleep for at least 12 hours and he's at work at 7am the following morning.  ANYWAY, I'd be leaving at 1:15pm for the cinema, not unreasonable that I won't be constantly in the house between 8:30am and 4pm, surely? My parents believe I'm being reckless with a solid job offer and I should arrange to stay in ALL DAY.  This is particularly stupid given my Mum could just say to the recruiting woman tomorrow morning "oh, she's only in until 1pm as she has to go to the job centre" or just "go out".  Not unreasonable, right?  Parents continued repeating same thing.

Eventually I packed up my stuff and went upstairs to my room, once again - I've spent a significant portion (if not all) of 5 of the 6 evenings I have been living here for, in my room (and the sixth night was spent at a friends house).  I may as well have got a bedsit and stayed in Brighton.

I am, despite my above refutation, thinking about looking a gift horse in the mouth.  I have spent the last 3 years trapped in a job I hate in a city I love.  I say trapped because of the working pattern of 1 day on, 1 day off, 4 days on, 1 day off, repeat didn't allow me time or energy to look for new jobs with necessary zeal.  Financially, of course, I was also trapped, unable to afford luxuries or save any money, but earning just enough to pay rent and bills; making myself unemployed in Brighton would have been suicide/was unthinkable.  But the gleaming, shining, bouncing, glowing star of optimism that convinced me to move back up North was the idea I would have space and time to find a job I might enjoy, as well as live in a place that would allow me to save for the now mythologised PhD.

In short, whilst the prospect of a job falling into my lap seems a delight, I can't help but sigh a sad sigh and prepare myself to be reinserted into just the working environment I so gleefully fled in Brighton.  I feel trapped all over again and I haven't even had the job offer.

I was meant to be having some sort of careers guidance meeting with an advisor a week on Friday.  I was feeling really positive about that.  And I was planning on going to Nottingham on Thursday to register with some agencies in the hope of striking out into publishing/editing industry - copy writing? Yes please.  But agencies and waiting for the career you've picked to turn up requires having an empty calendar - you have to be able to answer the phone call that says "we have a 3 month contract for a copy writer in x, can you start on Monday?" with "yes" not, "no, I have to give my one months notice first".

I keep getting trapped in this stupid fucking economy with my fucking useless (although, apparently amusing) degree and attempts to break out of it last LESS THAN A MONTH.  I just want a good job.  A graduate job - £20,000 p/a is not an unrealistic salary expectation.  What was the point in going to University, getting myself a £15,000 student debt, when I could have got a job at a local paper or something and worked my way up.  I could have done a degree at 50 if it was still something I felt I needed to do.  Instead I'm completely fucking stuck.

I'm single. And I'm 26(ish) and I'm living with my parents again - the latter being my choice in principle, by only because I thought it was a radical move that'd give me the opportunity to break out of the have no money-get paid-pay rent-have no money cycle of finances I simply couldn't break free of in Brighton.  And here I am, feeling more hopelessly stuck than I have done since I made the decision to move if I didn't find a new job in Brighton back in May.


ETA: Oh, and the rats aren't settling in nearly as well as I hoped they would and the only time they come to me is when they are cowering in fear and want to hide from everything/nothing in my arms/under my legs, rather than for kisses and tickles and hugs like they used to.  I feel fantastically guilty for upsetting them so much

 So, ArtFor Pride is nearly upon us.  We have hard copies of flyers and private view invitations and a final meeting with the other artists a week on Monday.  As a result, we're looking to the future and, on my suggestion, we're almost certainly doing our next ArtFor (on the condition this one doesn't crash and burn) for Mind.  I proposed we do a call for artists specifying we're looking in particular for artists who deal with madness in their artwork, which will double up as publicity.  Art/madness is such a popular theme I really don't think we can go wrong in terms of getting people through the door, which in turn means money in the bank for Mind. I met up with Becky today, two days after I proposed Mind and she said she can't believe we didn't think of it before - it basically markets itself.

In other Pride related news, all being well, I'm going to be in the parade in Brighton Pride this year! My friend works for the Terrance Higgins Trust and they want to bulk out their numbers for the parade so they are recruiting their friends.  I'm mad excited.

In less awesome news I'm tired beyond words at the minute, no amount of sleep - or lack thereof - is fixing it.  Customers at work are even commenting on the fact I look exhausted....Not got time off again until the beginning of August, 4 long weeks away.  Mentally I've been at a low ebb and as usual that gets borne out on my face. Le sigh.

Weird dreams and confusing daydreams which merge too readily into reality abound.  They have, if nothing else, furnished me with a bit of artistic inspiration and a new journal title here on dreamwidth.  Always a bright side....or something.

I have, however, got an interview, finally.  It's for the position of science technician in a high school in the village where my parents live - aka the place I was at school some 11 years ago.  There's actually another high school job I want more that I'm applying for - Art and Design technician in the nearby town.  Can't imagine a better job than spending 20 hours chilling out with art students in the art department at a school, but we shall see whether or not I can actually get an interview for it.  Need to book train tickets for the interview tomorrow. My credit card is already groaning.