Some Words from the Fray

I’m having a hard April — it’s a struggle that’s cut into my ability to write. Sometimes, life’s just hard. When writing for an audience, no one wants to hear you bitch, so it’s easier to just disappear than to be truthful, sometimes. But I’m hoping I’m near the end of this challenging month, so here’s some unbridled realism. I’m not spending a lot of time editing either, so if it’s not as crisp as usual — apologies, but the more I edit it, the more I feel like I shouldn’t publish it, and that’s how we’re at this point where I’ve not been posting much lately. So, here goes — plus some photos from the last few days.

I’m drowning in exasperation and impatience. Nothing frustrates me more than waiting, a powerlessness I loathe.

I’m waiting on taxes. I’m waiting on a client who appears to be ghosting me after a Zoom chat. I’m waiting for the vaccine. I’m waiting on other things.

So, I’ve been unable to write or find anything useful to say. A couple days into waiting, I was all, “Pfft, I got this. I’ll be fine.”

Now, a week into it, I’m a bundle of anxiety and moments from tears sometimes – not my normal state! Usually, I’m only waiting on one thing, maybe two.

Right now, I’m waiting on everything, and it’s crippling my productivity and sending my anxiety into overdrive.

There are bright moments, though.

Photo: From last night, even the most dilapidated old house gets its moment in the sun.

Last night, I just gave up. I was out of gas and I knew it. I went to the nearby burger joint, grabbed some takeout, and headed to the beach. I sat blinded by the sun, inhaling burger joint grease, and letting everything wash away from me.

Then a young girl came by on her strider bike. She was maybe 3 or 4, and her family chose a bench near mine on the cliff top. The path in front of us was a paved one, with a divot that dropped maybe 5 feet down over a 20-foot span. A wee, tiny slope.

Little Miss Thing on her strider zoomed over it and shouted “whee-ee-ee-ee!”

Adrenaline: Activated!

Now her dad had to stand by while she went back and forth over the wee slope — down, up. Down, up. Down, up.

Every time: “Here I go!”  Then stride-stride-stride, legs flung out to the side—“Whee-ee-ee-ee!”

Just sheer delight. BEST HILL EVER.

*

I’ve written before about my ‘park bench theory’ about life and happiness, and I guess that’s what did it last night — the bench helped flip my script on a hard day. There’s something about watching kids in full-throttle innocence that takes the edge off the toughest moods.

I got home still exhausted, still impatient, but I was okay with it. I crashed hard and early — 9:30PM, then got up in the wee hours to enjoy a quiet, dark world to myself, then returned to bed just before sunrise.

I woke feeling a little more settled – for a while.

Photo: Japanese plum blossoms from last weekend. And yes, I sat on the bench so I could be under its canopy for a moment.

Sigh. But here I am, still waiting. I’m on my last cup of coffee. My house is a bit of a disaster. I have a ton of work on my plate. Then there’s the full moon agitating all of this.

It’s been a heady week on other fronts too — I have indeed begun writing several posts for you, but I couldn’t get through them. Emotionally, mentally — something’s off.

There was a guy once who had a Twitter bio I always loved, “Using Twitter for me, not for you.” And it’s sort of always been my take on social media, writing, everything — “I’m doing it for me, but if you wanna come along on the ride, there’s the door, hop in.” It’s why I’m so active online, yet also terrible at promoting myself.

But every now and then, it’s all about me. I write for me, not for you, and it goes into some deep, dark file to never emerge again — a data dump, as it were.

Sometimes, we need to live in our head and find a way forward on our own steam. The trouble with folks “hopping in” for the drive is, too much backseat driving happens.

I’ve been around the social sphere long enough to know that opening the door on a headspace like this can herald an unwelcome invasion of well-meaning people who can derail me worse than if I just went it alone, in the dark.

Essentially, a writer goes and writes about something like this, things bothering her or stressing her out, and then everyone thinks it’s an invitation to have an opinion or weigh in on things.

And I get it — other people tend to not be writers, they don’t understand why you’d put a thing OUT THERE if you didn’t want people chiming in on it.

But the whole purpose of writing, sometimes, is just to put a voice to that unnameable thing. It’s not about kicking off a roundtable of discussion every time we hit publish. It’s about having a voice, recording a moment in time.

This is my reality, my headspace, today. Tomorrow, it will be different. But today? It is this.

Right now, I’m a single self-employed woman without a safety net, in an uncertain time, living on that precarious edge of debt.

It’s unsettling, it’s scary, and sometimes it’s just too much.

And there’s not a damn thing you can say to make it better.

So, no, I’m not super-keen to write about things right now. All my experiences in life, all the roads I’ve walked, they’ve given me no wisdom to impart or strength to rise above it all.

Photo: This was a suprising shot I took last night, the unkempt path behind an old age home. It looked too dark, but there was a glint of light off a window, so I shot it with no expectations. It’s not an amazing photo, but it’s my favourite last night because the result was not what I expected — and is proof that our light can come from surprising sources sometimes; a metaphor in that, I think.

I have a superpower, and that is my dogged ability to hustle and get through adversity. I generally don’t give myself time to be in the emotional fray of these troubling waters. I just put my head down and swim, and I always, always get to the other side.

As survivalists go, I’m one of the best.

But it’d be pretty fucking great if I could retire that moniker, because surviving is no way to live.

All these things I’m waiting for — they should come, and soon-ish. This mood of mine is a fleeting time, I hope. The client that’s ghosting me, well, they may never come, but if other work arrives, then I’m fine.

Survivalism of the single, self-employed woman gets old sometimes.

People speak of admiration for the scrappy survivors — folks like me who’ve seldom met an adversity we couldn’t weather — but it’s all bullshit. No one should have to be in a position where they’re continually proving their ability to weather the storm or survive adversities.

Life shouldn’t feel this way — a constant paddle against currents, struggling to keep our heads up. No one can accuse me of not being a hard worker. None of what I have in life is from luck, fortune, generosity, happenstance, or birthright.

I worked for every damn thing I own.

It’s partly why I identify as an angry woman.

Many people may be irked by those of us who largely identify as “angry.” They’ll say we’re negative or we don’t have a good attitude.

Honey, attitude is the one thing I’ve got.

It’s this attitude of “fuck it” that allows me to mentally propel myself through adversity, because I don’t sit around feeling sorry for myself — I recognize the problem and I set about solving it, knowing that I can sit around licking my wounds and frowning when the dust settles. (But usually, I feel so victorious when the dust settles that there are no wounds to lick.)

But, angry? Tell me why I shouldn’t be angry.

Don’t for a minute give me that “other people are so much worse off than you” shit either, because that’s part of the problem.

Why should I be grateful that other people are worse off than me? What a ludicrous assertion!

Here’s an idea: How about all of us get to a better place in life? How about all of us have security and safety and a promising future? I can be angry for all of us.

It’s 2021. My cost of living has skyrocketed. Rents have tripled in price during my adulthood. Tripled! I paid $600 for a nice character apartment in 1999. I pay $1800 for a similar apartment in a smaller city now.

Meanwhile, “the wealthiest 1% of U.S. residents — about 3.29 million people — hold 42.5% of our national wealth, while the remaining 325.7 million people share the remaining 57.5%, according to Inequality.org.” And CEO compensation has surged 940% since 1978, while workers’ wages grew just 12% over the same 31 years.

The workforce is more unstable than ever, and it’s still the Wild West for freelancers like me, who get the thrill of paying for taxes while having nearly none of the same safety nets as employed workers.

If my work dries up tomorrow, there’s no unemployment insurance for me, despite paying my share of taxes every year. That’s a lot of uncertainty to live with. Especially in a pandemic.

Sometimes, it’s a lot to shoulder.

So, yeah. It’s been a stressful week.

Photo: Blossoms, a character house, and sunset light. What’s not to like?

Plus, a few days ago, it was the second anniversary of my return to Canada. TWO YEARS. And instead of victory, I was awash in feeling like a loser. Two years?!

A few minutes later, I realized 14 of those 24 months were spent in the grips of a pandemic.

Four months were spent housesitting, AirBNBing, and being a house guest, before finally getting my apartment.

Two months were spent in limbo moving to Victoria.

All leaving an whopping four months of some brand of stability — which fell in the autumn and winter of the Great White North in Ottawa — so I was still in a new place, still trying to learn the ropes, when a pandemic hit.

No wonder I feel like a loser. How’s anyone supposed to get anywhere while enveloped in that much chaos inside of two years?

But that’s just how it goes. Any of us caught in change, it’s a time of finding our footing and navigating a new normal — it doesn’t always result in feeling accomplished. Change is tumultuous and hard.

I’m a realist, though. I know change isn’t linear, and I knew this year would be a challenge. So the thing I grab onto now is the knowledge that I have a home I like, in a city I love, and while the fourth wave of the pandemic rages, there’s hope in sight for an end.

*

I have always believed in the “darkest before dawn” truism. But one thing I forget, sometimes, is how brief but impactful that “darkest before dawn” time is. It’s a shitty, deep place to be in, but it often seems to only last two or three weeks. Man, what a burden those weeks can be, though.

Celestially speaking, it’s not the whole night that’s equally dark. The end of the night is the darkest, that moment when we’re furthest from the sun but also just around the corner from that first break of the light. Hence the cliche.

Suffice to say, I’m not having a great week. And no, I don’t want advice on how to make it better.

And no, there’s nothing you can do for me, unless you’re some wealthy benefactor who wants to pay off some of my credit cards. Or someone who wants to hire me to write a website or do some SaaS blogging. And no, I don’t want sympathy or hugs or empathy or ‘chin-up!’ messages.

I just want to get through the dark of night and see that crack of light on the horizon. That crack of light will feel like victory washing over me.

I want to know where my taxes stand. I want a jab of a vaccine. I want new projects and work that pays well and feels fulfilling.

I don’t want some easy way out of everything — I just want a little security, a little stability, and a little less fear.

That’s why I am a staunch supporter of Universal Basic Income. As a freelancer, I pay taxes. I have months where I fly high and everything is amazing, one great job after another. But then I have weeks, or even a month or two, when it’s hit after hit, and a little wiggle room would save my sanity. Like now.

That $1,000 a month from a UBI would allow me to stimulate the economy in great months/years, and keep me stable and still in the self-employed game during harder times.

As a nation — hey, as a planet — if we could provide more stability for freelancers, we’d protect jobs, because then people with a skill or talent like myself could easily navigate the waters of self-employment, while leaving contractual employment to those who aren’t cut out for the hustle of working for themselves.

But UBI is another topic for another day. All I know is, far too many of us live on the edge, and UBI could radically transform so many lives.

Imagine what life would be like if more people felt like they were getting by, rather than just surviving.

It’d be a pretty great world to live in, dontcha think?

By the way — I’ve never been an optimist and there are times it comes off heavy and dark, like in this post, but experts are realizing that it’s realists, not optimists, who ultimately have better mental health.

So, as my dad would say, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Thanks for listening to this grumpy realist.