Skip to content

for hire

The Office

I did buy some office-friendly clothes today, including a shirt. The venue was H&M. I usually buy stuff from M&S, since we have food from there, but they’re pricey. H&M are cheaper, although their displays are appallingly untidy and disordered. And the clothes are quite dirty in some cases; they had a pale blue shirt I might have bought had they not all been mingingly filthy and creased… okay, they can be washed and ironed, but that’s not the point.

If this sounds like I’m planning to get an office job, well, I’m not. Not really. It would entirely upset my long-term image as an arty-farty anarchist. I’m merely being… pragmatic.
Read More »The Office

Does a New Year Mean Anything?

I’m not sorry to see 2003 go. It was in some ways a significant year… we got the house move situation sorted out, finally, and I made the arguably foolish decision to kiss Der State Benefit System goodbye because I no longer felt my life was my own…

That said, I can no longer define a year as a unit as precisely as I felt I once could. Each year once appeared to have a particular ‘personality,’ which no longer seems to be the case (to me). Well, after all, a year is just an arbitrary unit of measurement, so the former impression was probably illusory.
Read More »Does a New Year Mean Anything?

Slight Improvement?!

I’m experiencing some emotional turmoil, with various factors ever-present. My employment situation, general isolation and lack of self-belief, etc. They’re big issues, without any obvious answers, and it drags my morale down constantly. It is possible in fifteen years to go from thinking you have tons of creative potential to believing you’re worth nothing. A long cycle of non-success is usually sufficient.
Read More »Slight Improvement?!

Moving On

As noted in the previous comments thingy, I made the decision Monday that I’d had enough of the endless New Deal harassments (it’s been going on in some form or other since March). I had two appointments in one day: I neglected to attend both of them.

The government will, of course, suspend my benefit almost immediately. Well, tough! I almost took this route four months ago, but someone out there (not a Jobcentre person, I hasten to add) decided to treat me with a bit of understanding. Fine. But enough’s enough. Their tiny handouts just aren’t worth the stress. Sunday, I had a recurrence of IBS, which hasn’t bothered me for a year or so. By Monday, it was crippling me. Funnily enough, it’s mostly subsided now. I might be in deep shit as far as money goes, but I feel a lot less stressed out.

Oh, I haven’t a clue what to do. Broadly speaking, I think I have to consider myself self-employed at the moment and figure out if I can make money from something for once in my life.
Read More »Moving On

Bored and Boring

I am feeling a little disillusioned again. It’s not been a good few weeks, and I can’t help noticing that I’ve largely failed to write anything even slightly interesting on this blog for some time. Depending on how you define interesting, maybe.

Perhaps a break is a good idea. I might feel better when this move is out of the way, but it’s dragging on ridiculously, to be honest. There isn’t any solid reason that it wasn’t more or less finalised a month ago. I’m incredibly bored, and I feel this is making anything I say incredibly boring…
Read More »Bored and Boring

I Need to Expose Myself

I’m still not in the greatest of moods. This ‘government scheme’ business is a big factor (hey, our government does nothing but scheme!). On balance, since the house move is so near now, I think I’m inclined to just opt out of the system. £50-odd a week isn’t nearly enough to justify the degree of control they can exert upon me.

So, I’m available for work! Presently, I’m collecting together a few decent writing samples and making a Web site for offering Web design services. I can write. I can do Web pages. Someone out there must have a use for me.

Now, about this Web site… considering the poor degree of link exposure I have, the traffic’s not so bad. But, you know, I’ve worked pretty hard on this site—I reckon it’s one of the better-designed blogs out there, and while some of the content might be considered boring, the same goes for every single blog I’ve ever read. This blog’s as good as anyone else’s, dammit.
Read More »I Need to Expose Myself