That Time

I had forgotten how horrible this month is. Extra letter or no extra letter. January is expected to be rubbish, but really it is the most potential-filled month of the year. You're allowed to be fat, broke and depressed in January. It is socially acceptable to have what is affectionately known as "the blues".

By February, though, you've had a whole month to put into action all those resolutions that January gurgled up. It is no longer a new year, it's now just another year. If you had planned to do something brilliant in 2008, you really should be a twelfth of the way through it by now.

What if, though, you've just started your third office job of the year? What if you still have no money, you still feel depressed and your room is no tidier? What if you haven't actually managed to write any new music and what if you are secretly not sure whether you can quite remember how?

Last year I hated February. Life was worse then, without a shadow of a doubt. A relationship was about to hiss out its last forlorn breaths, having been ill-advisedly resurrected a few months previously. It was agonizingly and cruelly consigned to the funeral pyre once again, leaving me even more bowed and broken than it had the first time. I was living at home. I had stopped going to Eastbourne to record when I realized that, in fact, there was something extremely unhealthy and stagnant about the whole set-up. I was trying to deal with the fact that those months had been wasted, that I was, in more ways than one, going to have to face up to the consequences of my own terrible choices. My parents had a bed for me, so of course I was lucky. I must admit, though, that I didn't really feel it. I felt broken.

This year, though, is better. I live in Brixton. Money still fuels a large part of my anxiety but I am working. Those relationships that had just withered last year are now long behind me and there are other pieces of those things that are happier and more promising. I am not broken. Life seems full of potential.

I feel depressed, though. A train is hitting me in the mornings. I can't think in straight lines, and I feel constantly guilty and anxious. Suddenly lots of seeds I sowed months ago are becoming green shoots and are wiggling their way upwards, but, just as suddenly, I have been rendered completely incapable of doing anything to nurture them. I have been thrust back into that cycle of depression and guilt that wakes me in the night and makes me stare at blank pieces of paper. Maybe I should write a list of stuff I have to do, of ways to make it better. I stare at the paper, though, and all words vanish from my mind, leaving only misty, formless uncertainty.

I want to sleep, to run away and to drown in my own self-involved, self-perpetuating paranoia. I want to be cold because I feel like I deserve it, and I am a narcissist for writing those words.

I want to scream and shout, but I also never want to say another word.

Post-firing (and a book!)

I am over the Fired! escapade, just about. Well I was until today, when I found out that they had claimed I was an hour late for work last week and therefore weren't going to pay me properly. Ah, whatever, it's over now and I am moving on. (I was not an hour late. I don't understand what I did to so incur that woman's wrath!)

Ahem. Over it.

After a long time of waiting we are finally getting the Internet installed in our not-so-new-anymore house in Brixton this weekend. I will not be there to herald it in as I will Up North, but I hope so much that by Monday I will be able to spend whole nights blogging until I can no longer converse in real life and am forced to conduct every conversation through blogger.com. That, my friends, is the dream.

I currently am sitting in an almost-deserted office, listening to the air-conditioning hum over the endless computers as they sit, black-faced and dormant, under the fluroescent lights. I am waiting to go to do some studio recording, trying to use the time wisely. I will have nothing for dinner so I have just eaten a packet of crisps I didn't want and an extra cup of strong coffee that is making my blood vibrate along with the glinting drinks machine in the corner.

I like this temp job. I have friends at this place (I have temped here before - maybe that is the key). The work is mundane and repetitive but I like that, because I can dream and plan while my hands and eyes are occupied. I like it here.

Money is more than tight, and I am about to start a job at weekends which involves dressing as a cheerleader (it is not that) (or that!). I have re-discovered a deep rooted passion for toast with peanut butter and jam and am therefore spending slightly more time thinking about going to the gym.

Now I am going to go and journey to North London, shove myself onto tubes and try to remind myself not to feel tired. The work I have just spent the day doing merely facilitates that which starts now.

Perhaps one more cup of coffee for the road.

UPDATE:

A book of bloggers' writing is being put together in aid of WARCHILD. The idea behind it is that of sharing experiences, which I happen to think is a really lovely premise for a book. I am going to submit something and I think that perhaps you should, too. Go and have a look.

Fired!

I got fired from a temp job today. From a temp job where I felt bullied, where I was on the verge of tears for each of the seven days they (by which I mean one woman in particular, of course) managed to cope with my presence by being overdemanding, sarcastic and mean.

She didn't even tell me to my face. I got a phone call from the agency on the way home, who said that I was no longer required to come in tomorrow morning.

Of course, it's fine, because I hated it, I thought the woman was a vitriolic, bitter bitch and had just spent the whole day with mascara smeared all over my face. It's fine because when I was there I felt menial, degraded, and an easy target for the frustrations of somebody else's life. It's fine because I did not want to go back there. It's fine because I don't want to work for someone who knows how to pronounce my name but deliberately gets it wrong to make me feel like shit.

It's not fine, though, because being fired is humiliating. I feel like I have just been dumped by someone I didn't like anyway. I should have walked out this morning after I had just spent ten minutes in the toilets trying to stop crying, but I didn't.

Fuck.

Everything else is good, though. Music is going well, my friends are nice and there has been some pashing with someone I like. Things are good!

In general.

Right at this moment, of course, my cheeks are scarlet with humiliation and fury. My self-esteem has taken a battering and I feel exhausted.

It would have been so very great to have been able to say my piece before I left, but alas I did not get that chance so I must be satisfied with venting here. I think that the way people treat temps, or office juniors or admin staff etc. is very telling about the rest of their personality, and that theory has been thoroughly proven today.

I would wish for a curse upon That Woman, but I think the fact that she has to live her life being Her is punishment enough.