Work Work Work

It’s been a busy old week, which pleases me greatly.

Out of the blue on Tuesday I got a call from one of my very first customers. He is a headmaster of a school, and all those months ago he promised me that when he got enough work in his school he would give me a call

And, at last, he did. I had started to think maybe he’d had enough of me and thought I was a bit of a joke, and had just said something nice to get rid of me.

But it seems, after all, that maybe I did a good job after all.

I’ve been there for the last two days now. It’s not exactly in a convenient location, requiring a two hour train journey to get there (even though it’s not that far away) but it’s been worth it. So far 12 hours of work, with a little hardware sales, and the prospect of at least a few more on Tuesday.

All good timing as it’s going to help make sure my cash reserves are in good shape for when the move comes.

Which is, at this point, scheduled for next Saturday. That’s scary. I’m looking forward to it, but the nerves about whether I’m potentially frittering away over £5,000 are now setting in. I’m also starting to think that maybe things are just about getting into shape around here at the very moment I’m abandoning it all to start again.

Very risky indeed. But, at the same time, I know I’ll be able to make a much better go of it in my new place. I should be able to build up the business much more quickly and get back to the same position I’m in now in a much quicker time. Fingers crossed anyway.

So next week is potentially my very last one here. Well, that’s rubbish, actually, because I know I’ll be back the following weekend to bring back more stuff and keep in touch with my other loyal customer (another school), which I’m going to on Monday.

But it’s still a significant emotional milestone. The end of the road for my life here. In all honesty, I can’t wait. That’s the way I’m feeling right now. I’m sick of my family, I have no friends here. I’ll have no friends there either, but at least my family won’t be getting in the way.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, it seems. I think I need a good absence from them now. They don’t appreciate the contribution I make to this household, and I’m sure they’ll properly notice it once I’m gone. All I ask for is a little thanks, a little recognition. But no. Too much to ask for. That’s the way this family has always been; we don’t communicate. Even when I try to.

So I don’t bother any more.

And soon I won’t have to. The odd phonecall every week. That’ll do me fine.

Holding Pattern

So I’ve spent the last week considering very carefully what my next move in life should be.

The problems outlined in my previous post still remain, and are no nearer to being solved. In fact, each day they go on drives me just a little bit more insane. Will I ever see my passport again? What a stupid bastard I was to hand it over in the first place.

But there has been a modicum of success business wise lately. Yes, I can’t believe it either. I’ve sold three PCs, all about the same time. How can this be? How can people suddenly arrive with requests for PCs all at the same time? Life is very weird. But all of these orders have now been fulfilled… with only minor farce resulting from the delayed arrival of one hard drive.

Then, as I fully expect, all will return to silence again. The phone will stop ringing. The e-mails will not arrive. All that will be left is just me. Sitting. Waiting. Wishing. As Jack Johnson sang. Good tune that.

Over the weekend just gone I had a meeting with a friend of mine. It was mostly to talk business… because he and I have big plans in formation. I’m fed up with life here. He’s fed up with his life. It just so happens that our talents and plans have co-incided for the first time in our lives. He’s been made redundant. I’ve been sitting around doing naff all for well over a year. Perfect!

We think we may be able to do my business and do it properly. Combining beautifully with his new media talents. Oh, and his ability to drive. And some new territory. Up North, no one really seems to care about computers. Down South… well, maybe it’s more likely to be the Land of Milk and Honey. And silicon.

This plan would involve me moving down South. Permanently. Well, permanently if it works. If it doesn’t work I’ll be back home by the time six months is up. But I’m prepared to take this gamble.

I’m starting to feel old. I’m starting to feel like my opportunities to take big gambles with my life are shrinking. I need to be doing something productive with my time, something that is genuinely going to be able to make me live a life. A life that’s actually worth living. Not like now.

Perhaps the stresses of having bills to pay and obligations will focus my mind, make me work harder at it. Because I know full well that I’ve not really given this my all. Partly through not being prepared to risk much. But also my lack of transportation and not wanting to put more upon my parents.

That’s another reason why I have to leave. I really must get out from under their feet. I’m no bother. I help out a lot. But I need to move on. They understand. I’m too big for the nest now.

Let’s just see what happens.

In Demand

For various reasons, I am indeed a popular chap at the moment. But not in every way I’d want.

Chief amongst them is in my so-called part-time job. Because it’s shit, and no one wants to do it, and even more so no one wants to work nights, I am called upon if anyone calls in sick. Which is happening a lot at the moment. It’s resulting in me working a lot of night shifts… which is steadily driving me insane due to a lack of sleep.

But also, yesterday I was out delivering leaflets for the political party I’m a member of. People like me are always loved by local parties. We’ll trudge around for hours doing the same thing again and again in the hope that it’ll turn a few voters to us. And as we’re young and fit, we can go on for hours and hours without too much of a problem. Just as long as the councillors dip their hands in the pockets at the end of it and pay for food and beers.

Only yesterday’s post-leaflet celebration was cut short by the dreaded phone call asking me to work the night shift on my night off. I accepted the offer, mainly because I’m a slave to the wage right now. I need every penny I can get my hands on if I’m to amass the funds required to achieve whatever the hell it is I want to do.

Which is rather odd, because I still don’t know what to do. I must have delivered over 200 leaflets separately for my business only a few days before, only to get precisely no response. It seems everything I’ve tried to do has failed miserably. I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to get anywhere. All around me are people running businesses. Worst of all, the guy I work for in the petrol station empire is, frankly, thick as pigshit. Presumably dyslexic judging by his appalling written communication. A rather nasty piece of work too.

But he’s running a business with a multi-million pound turnover. It can’t be rocket science. What is it that I’m doing wrong? I could do with getting some advice from somewhere. Free advice, preferably. Because that’s half the problem. Everything I want to do seems to cost so much. Advertising. Rental. Buying stock to sell it at a profit. The initial outlays are huge. I can afford them, but at the same time do I want to? Maybe I’m just not prepared to risk enough to run a business.

Meanwhile, I get more and more frustrated with my life. I have a viable option to escape from this house and live with an old friends from secondary school. That makes me in demand there as well. But I don’t know whether it’s sensible. It could be the worst decision I ever make, because I don’t really know him any more, and for all I know he’s not a very good person to live with. I’ve learned that one through bitter experience. Gonna have to think through that one very carefully.

But what can I do with my life? I’m still no nearer to answering this conundrum. I thought I may have found an answer by running my own business, but no such luck.

Until I get close to solving it, I’m always going to remain just one step from severe depression.

Older Still

It appears that today is, again, my birthday.

Only this one is going to be one of the most non-eventful I’ve ever had the so-called privilege to experience.

The problem this time is that not only am I older, I have not achieved anything in the last year. At least while I’ve been in school or university, I’ve been able to say that – well, I’ve completed another year of studies. But this past year has been one notable failure after another. All of which has been tediously chronicled on this blog so much that I’m bored of writing about another week not doing anything.

But something else makes this birthday even crapper than normal. The fact that I’m still awake, and will be for another two hours at least, and will be then sleeping until approximately 11am. Only then to get up, have breakfast, do some housework, and then work from 3pm until 10pm in one of the scummiest areas of my home city. I will then come home by about 11pm, with approximately one hour left of my birthday in which to “celebrate” with my family.

Pretty rubbish. And it gets worse, because I’m then working nights the next three days, so there is no chance of us being able to go out for a meal in the evening – which is usually what we like to do for birthdays here. A little break from the norm of having to cook food.

On the brighter side, my patience with living here has finally snapped, due to a combination of family members, family circumstances and terribly behaved dogs which I really don’t like. But now with my new, old job, there is a definite prospect opening up that I could well be able to afford to move out.

There are some new apartments that have been built a couple of miles from here. They are perfectly located, with an ASDA next door, the train station a stone’s throw away, a major retail site nearby, and bus links that go all over the city. The apartment in question just about has enough room to swing a cat and costs a shocking £395/month.

But I think I can do it. In fact, for the sake of my sanity, I must do it.

So I’ve begun to make enquiries. The ball is well and truly rolling on this.

I feel like the only way I’ll get on in life is if I get out. Get out and resume the life I lived for four years. I liked my independence and freedom. I hate being answerable to parents, I’m fed up of living with family members who don’t even talk to me any more and with whom I don’t seem to have any relationship. And I’m sick of all the work I do in this house being taken for granted. They sure will be in for a shock.

So in truth, the best birthday present I could get this year would be a free pass out of here. That’s not to say I don’t like my family, but familiarity certainly does breed contempt. If I get out of here, that crucial distance may be what I need for re-evaluating my relationship with each one of them. Then I’ll be less of a “parent” figure and more of a sibling again.

Anyway. Time for a celebratory episode of Prison Break. Now coming to the end of the third series…

Late Night Blues

In the past few days a lot has changed for me.

First of all, I have a job. Not a good one, but a job. It will allow me to earn some money while I work out what I do next.

The bad news is that the job is primarily based around night shifts. Hence why I’m currently awake as 2:35am, way past my usual bedtime.

Even worse news is that it is a job I’ve done before – cashier at a petrol station. Well, a few different petrol stations in fact. Perhaps I don’t really know what I’ve let myself in for. Only now is it dawning on me that unless I want to have to do this regularly – changing my sleep pattern by staying up late, taking regular naps, going to bed early, or a combination of all three – I’m going to have to turn into a night owl.

How long I can put up with it, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll find I like my new living pattern. In truth though, it’s unlikely to work out very well in the house I live in now. There’s no way I’ll be able to sleep very well during the day here. It’s not just the noise of the family, but the heat in my loft bedroom is unbearable at the moment.

Nevertheless, it could be the perfect excuse I need to escape from this house. Though my original plan was to get a part time job to sustain an income from which I could fund more business activities, I’m somewhat loathe to waste any money on that pathetic excuse for a business which I run, the one which has currently not received a phone call in almost a week.

So maybe, instead, I could use my money to rent somewhere. Near where I live they have just built an apartment block. A very nice one too. I could rent a one-bedroomed apartment in an excellent location for transport and shops for £400/month. It’s a lot of money, but I think I’d appreciate the freedom again. I’ve had it with here – it’s just too much. I feel too depressed here. I feel too detached from my brothers and sister because I’m more like a parent now than a sibling – because all I seem to do is moan at them or ask them to do things. Crap. I would have hated to have had an older brother telling me what to do.

The best thing for me would be to be gone from here. But I know it would make my mum and dad’s job incredibly difficult. Things are amazingly stressful around this family at the moment, due to my older sister, my grandparents, and various other circumstances. If I went it would make things ten times worse.

It’s something I’ll have to keep thinking about. There’s no immediate rush to decide, and in the meantime I can earn some money. Tomorrow will be my first night shift ever. It should be OK, but you never know in petrol stations! Either way, if I can get into a routine I’ll probably feel a bit better about it.

Cos right now I feel shit. And it’s not helped by the awful news on the TV. What a night to be up late. Poor Michael Jackson. I had a lot of time for his music. The man himself was clearly not all there in his later years. But it remains a tragedy that he became that way, partly created because he lived his entire life as a celebrity.

It’s a strange world we live in.

400 Up

This post is a significant moment indeed. 400 posts now. I think each post has roughly 500 words in it, so we’re definitely north of 200,000 words now. Amazing.

But it’s only significant because the numbers look nice. Really, it’s just another post. It’s symptomatic of the whole of society when nice round dates and anniversaries are picked out to be more noteworthy than others, when really it just doesn’t matter. It’s my decision to celebrate anything at any time. In fact, I’m really looking forward to post 432. I don’t know why, but I am.

OK, I lied. Why not fall into tradition just this once. 400 posts shows some great stickability. I know posts in the past few months, if not longer, have not been particularly exciting. It’s just not been an interesting life since I left university. Most of that is my fault, but some of it has been caused by the economy too.

The coincidence about this post is that it is almost one year since I left Hull. That very anniversary will occur tomorrow, as it was on the 25th of May 2008 that I departed. That’s the most scary aspect about my life. I genuinely don’t know what I’ve done in the last year, what I’ve achieved, what progress I’ve made. There is nothing to report of any significance. All that’s happened is that I feel like I’ve aged, I feel like I’ve regressed, I feel like I’ve become more negative and cynical about everything, and I’ve made a somewhat farcical attempt to run my own business. What a strange old life I’m leaving.

So strange, in fact, that I’ve had enough. I’ve set a benchmark. By the end of the year, things have to have improved. If they haven’t, I will explore all options to escape. The prime contender in my list is New Zealand because of their working visa arrangements. Australia is also possible too. The reason why I have to wait till the end of the year though is that I think my business needs a little longer to prove itself a disaster, and secondly my money is locked away until then anyway. And who knows what other countries could come onto the agenda. All of this coming at a time when the government is telling us recent graduates to bugger off, hence not joining the dole queue and not being a drain on the country’s finances. Yes, very clever that. Fuck the economy up and then ask us to leave. Thanks.

But, let’s face it, things can’t get any worse for me. I’m already at rock bottom. It’s simply that day after day of no hope really does make me feel pretty shit about myself. And this even comes after I spent Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week actually doing work for my business. Yes, I had three days of the stuff and earned some cash. My business is actually in the black right now. So maybe things aren’t too bad. I just need word of mouth to start spreading. Please!

Anyway, that’s quite enough misery for now. Let’s turn instead to watching some TV. I hear the world of politics is a particularly well-respected place to work these days. Yes, that politics degree really has come in handy.

Attempted Getaway

In the past few days my mind began to wander. It drifted to the other side of the Atlantic, thinking about the time I spent in the USA working for a summer camp. My mind tends to do this when I want to escape from my current conditions, and that thought comes around regularly at the moment.

It was at that point that I realised that maybe it isn’t too late to do the whole thing again this summer. Oh, how I wished I’d had this thought a couple of months ago. I went around, frantically e-mailing the few contacts I could get hold of over there, eventually getting the details of the one I wanted.

Then, the bad but totally expected news. No positions available. I’ve been desperately wanting to do the summer camp thing again, just one more time before the door shuts forever on it. But each year I’ve managed to contrive an excuse for not doing it. I should have done it last summer, but I thought I’d be too busy. I should have done it this summer, but I thought I’d have a job. You know, one of those things where you do work in exchange for money.

In my desperation I thought that maybe they’d still have one or two openings in there somewhere. But, as we all know, the recession is biting, especially in the USA, so I’ll bet they were inundated with applications this year. I know they would have had me back, but there’s nothing they can do about it if I leave it too late.

Briefly my mind had already drifted to what I’d need to do in the event I got the go ahead. I was thinking about the clothes I’d need, some new shoes, etc. You know me, always wanting to be prepared for any eventuality. I don’t know why as I knew there was no hope. But it was an entertaining diversion nevertheless. Lord knows I don’t get many of them these days.

Next summer, maybe? I’d be nearly 25 then. While there’s no real limit on ages in the camp I would go to, there’s a certain feeling in my head that if I haven’t got a full time job sorted out by then that there’s something drastically wrong with me. But then again, the months seem to go round so quickly at the moment. Day after day, ticking by with no hope, no prospects. I’m still desperately waiting for someone or something to give me a break, but once again, my latest attempt to fashion one out has failed miserably.

There will be no getaways this year. I suppose my life is one continuous holiday at the moment, so what could I possibly want to get away from? Such is the mysterious nature of the human existence. Boredom is a very powerful emotion, but I sure as hell have had enough of it now.

Axe The Family

In recent weeks, I’ve become increasingly despondent due to the relationship with my family. I know I love them really, but it’s just one of those things that really needs a bit of distance.

It’s not good to live with your close family all of the time. In the end, you just get frustrated with them. Their quirks, habits and annoying features all get under your skin. If I wasn’t living here, I wouldn’t be witnessing them on a daily, if not minutely basis.

The problems range from my younger sister who incessantly watches television, no matter how crap. From soaps to reality TV, from Hannah Montana to The Suite Life On Deck – no insipid dross is bad enough for her. It all just flows in. And then there’s the obsession with the Jonas Brothers, and her constant desire to talk about every last detail of what happened in school that day.

My brother in university is something of a joke. He should have gone away for uni, like I did. He’s trying to live his own life, trying to be different, except it’s being frustrated by living at home. Such a rebel. If he wanted to drink till all hours, come home whenever he feels like it and stay up all night watching shit on YouTube (or worse) then he should have found his own place. While he’s here, his anti-social behaviour is disrupting the rest of us.

Worse, it is a terrible example to my other brother. He’s still in school, but thinks he’s such a big, tough man. The language from him is absolutely disgusting, especially when he’s on the Xbox 360. I’ve never heard anyone filled with such bile, such bitterness, towards people he hasn’t even met. Stereotyping people on the stroke of a pen, my brother’s degenerate behaviour really has been something of a shock to me since I moved back home.

So, basically, I want out. My parents are OK, but they’re useless now. They’ve clearly given up on the rest of the family. There is no way that me or my older sister would have got away with the way this lot behave. And I recognise that my attitude towards life has become so down and negative simply because I’ve been the one having to tell my brothers and sister off if they do something wrong or inappropriate, as my parents just don’t seem to care any more, letting them get away with murder.

There’s just a slight problem with my master plan. No job. No money. Business is a disaster right now. Even if it wasn’t, I don’t have a reliable source of income. At any moment I could get work and then the work could dry up, and I’ll end up with nothing and still be left paying rent (because a mortgage is never going to happen).

So I’m stuck here for God knows how long. Stuck living with a family that I can’t tolerate for much longer. Depression is returning, I know that for sure, as I’ve been extremely down for more than a week now. I just wish someone would give me a break.