Someone told me recently that some of the things I write feel too personal. I don’t really know if it was a compliment or not, and I don’t really care. In fact, it might be the only way forward. I could easily talk about a guy named Peter Parsons instead. Peter Parsons lives in London and is a struggling artist who is also a sad homosexual. But I rather write about myself. In the words of Whitney, ‘I have nothing to hide’.

It’s so hard to be an artist. I usually don’t want to talk about the things I write, all the projects I have sort of going on. It feels silly and unimportant. Projects I am unsure of. Even typing the word ‘project’ feels alien and pedantic. I have never published anything. Part of me thinks that I never will. I write more than what I put out on the internet and less than what I should.

Lately, I have been losing it.

I never talk about all the things I am writing, because, honestly, I don’t really see the point. As someone so deeply engraved within the menial of my everyday life, it feels silly to talk about things that are still in the oven. If I am out and I am bothered by someone while I’m having my third Mexican mule of the evening, the last things I want to know are all those things you have been working on. This thing over here, that project over there. That secret thing we all have in the oven. Yes, we know, the ovens all across north and east London are full, full of books, movies, fashion lines, dreams, and also, full of bullshit. The last thing I am going to do when I talk with anyone is let them know how full my oven is at this precise moment.

Lately, I have been losing it. I love this term, to lose it, as if we are going to ever have it. I don’t think anyone had ever had it if that makes sense.

I am bored of myself.

I am bored of hating every white-collar worker who works from home because, in my eyes, they all have it easier than me.

I am bored of hating every vapid person because they lack that rich inner world I worship. I shouldn’t be bothered because of people being happy. People should be allowed to like a mainstream movie or go to the football match without analysing the never-ending layers of what lies in the depths of whatever they might be enjoying.

I am bored of constantly being bitter, bored of the anger inside of me. Bored of feeling unsuccessful, bored of being forgotten by the universe. Bored of constantly monitoring the envy I feel when I see my loved ones succeeding. I am bored of constantly asking myself: When will I make it? When is my time? Will I survive to become a star?

I am bored of having the same ideas rumbling in my mind at all times. Ideas such as but not limited to: Hating my day job, hating the commute, being poor, and feeling tired.

Having the constant struggle of art never feeling enough, dancing for way too many hours never feeling enough, kissing too many lips never feeling like enough.

I keep a diary of how my job search is going. In May 2024, I have officially hit my 365th day looking for a job. Updating my CV every couple of weeks, trying to be serious about it, trying to be unserious, following silly TikTok trends, adding a blurb, taking out the blurb, one click applying to anything resembling a writing/strategist job. It has been a year of ChatGPTing my way through job applications that ask for the same thing seven times. A year of copy-pasting a similar cover letter to different companies about how passionate I am about typing ideas and making things happen.

Because I am passionate; passionate about never ever again working in hospitality. Passionate about never serving anyone again. Passionate about never having a conversation about a broken fridge or how the mayonnaise needs to be topped up.

The fucking mayonnaise diaries, as a customer told me once.

These things ended up getting into me. It is not solely the fact that I make my rent money out of serving people, which requires its own anthropological level of research because I am sure that it messes up my mind to a deep level.

The constant precarity of the service industry just drives me nuts. And I know I talk about this all the time, but please, let me reiterate.  

Not knowing if people are going to call sick or not, the weakening uncertainty of facing each day not knowing if my shift will last eight hours or twelve.

Discussing bottom-of-the-barrel topics, such as;

If the mayonnaise is topped up or not or if we have enough bread.

If someone has already covered the breaks on the terrace café or taking the chance of sending someone to smoke a little bit early since it doesn’t seem that busy.

Polishing cutlery quickly because there are no forks outside available.

Teaching people that they should charge all the customers first and then make all the coffees in a row if they are exceptionally busy.

Wearing an apron, constantly being treated like shit, constantly cleaning the mess that other people generate.

How am I supposed not to lose it?

How am I supposed not to write about the same things over and over again when this is my life?

How do they want me not to read about fiduciary money or philosophy when I get home?

How do they want me not to go to the club to feel like the star I am, even if is for a few hours?

More importantly: who are they? I don’t even know. What I do know is that a year of rejection and working in the service industry full-time really broke me. I normally get an existential crisis every three or four months, now I have them every week, and they hit me harder. They feel like a deeper existential crisis, with a side of burnout, shattered self-esteem and destroyed ego. One time, for a couple of days, I thought that I could be an absolute cunt to everyone. I stopped caring about writing or applying for jobs, I stopped caring about pretty much everything, in general. Anytime I was not working, I was in bed, eating unhealthy snacks and watching something meaningless on YouTube (some deep dive about the new NFT scam probably), recharging energy to try to behave like a normal person the next day at work. Even then, I snapped at a couple of colleagues and customers.

Below you have are some of the greatest hits:

To someone in my team: ‘Am I getting paid two salaries? Why am I working like two people then?’

To a customer asking me if I could get a shaker for them on a day that we were understaffed: ‘I have two hands, look: one (lifting an arm) and two (lifting the other)!.’

To a customer having ugly thoughts about my sassy service (I could feel it): ‘If you want to write a complaint, please, be my guest. My name is Peio, if I find it very funny, I will frame it and put it on the wall.’

And so on.

I was desperate, angry, and sick of it.

On a Monday, my birthday happened, and it has been cathartic for me. This battle against the world is exhausting, but more than anything is isolating. I feel so alone in my silly fight for a better life, that I forget the people I am surrounded with.

I am usually good with handling birthdays. I love being the centre of attention, I enjoy parties and I thoroughly adore going out. What’s not to love? The endless parade of bloody marys and ginger beers, the slippery floors, the ramifications of toilet cubicles, the sweat, the lights, and the overall feeling of being a decadent star. Just lovely things all around.

But this time, it felt a bit like Christmas.

Let me explain:

I hate Christmas (I could go on a fully separate dissertation for this), because fundamentally, I think the natural sense of self-reflection that Christmas demands really resonates with some of us in a bad way. And by some of us, I mean us, the outcasts, the artists, and the bohemians. Christmas is great if you are a straight person living in a big house with a backyard, and a pony and dealing with the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy. I am not talking about that.

At Christmas, most of us go back to our hometowns, reliving this odd regression to when we were kids, and it sort of feels like comparing your life now as it is with how it was. When I go back, my mum is suddenly an authority figure again, I am sixteen again and I feel small. When some of us go back home for Christmas, we feel exactly like we felt when we were at square one. For extension, we (okay maybe not we, but I), also compare my square one to everyone else’s, and my current life situation with everyone else’s, in a convoluted mix of emotions that scream:

YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH YOU ARE LATE YOU ARE NOT ACHIEVING ANYTHING

Is this how it feels to be neurodivergent? Does this apply to everyone? Is this what life is? I don’t know because I am not an anthropologist and neither I am a historian or a statistician.

I feel behind, useless, and empty. I feel like my life serves no purpose but to work and earn money to lose it immediately to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I feel like I am thirty-three and I have accomplished nothing.

This birthday felt like Christmas. In a bad way.

I kind of hate this post-mental health awareness world we live in. I was depressed before it was cool, and I went to three therapists across two different countries before we had huge corporations behind apps that would assign someone through a chat bout for a fortune. But now, after that little thing called ‘the pandemic’, everyone seems concerned with mental health.

Now, we live in a world where everyone is an anthropologist, a historian a statistician, and more certainly, every fucking person is a psychologist capable of diagnosing any mental health syndrome that might appear in front of them, with a look and just listening two a sentence and a half.

People are not sad anymore, nowadays, people get depressed.

People are not held accountable when the consequences of their own actions turn out to be devastating. People now, they just are (have?) ADHD.

People are not uncertain about the bleak future anymore; people have anxiety now.

No one needs to grow up and get a grip anymore, in the 2020s, people are hypersensitive.

And these people have the right to stand their own ground and make everyone and everything change and move to meet their demands.

Of course.

I am aware of how alt-right I sound. One of those white gammons that drink Stella Artois, mad that he is being turned on by a trans woman. I am, of course again, being sarcastic. But like with everything that’s sarcastic, there’s truth to it.

People are depressed and anxious, and they have ADHD, and they are hypersensitive and all the above. People also are lazy and need to get disciplined and grow up. Everything is okay, and we get the nuances, and yet, not everything needs to be a diagnosis.

In my reality, everything intersects.

They recommend a bath and a self-care day when what we need is better work conditions.

Therapy is watered down to pep talks because anyone can diagnose anything.

The most narcissistic person you know is right now, sitting down somewhere, being told that they need to put themselves first.

We have been sold self-help books and aromatic candles when what we need is just a job that fulfils us. Perhaps better working conditions. A better economy, one that’s not already messed up by boomers withholding real estate. I have been told that I need to play the game, go on LinkedIn, meet the right people, work hard and all that when what I need is simply an opportunity and some rest.

I thought so desperately that what I needed was an opportunity, that I forgot about all the rest.

On my birthday, when I felt like in Christmas, when I was so close (but like, sooooo close) to losing it, something stopped me.

Yay!

For far too long, I have been too cynical, so laser-focused that my own tunnel vision tricked me. For more than a year I have been galvanised, chromed, charged, locked and ready for my next step.

Making enemies with every single white-collar worker that IN MY HEAD is withholding my future.

Hating serving those white-collar workers with their silly how are yous and fines. Hating every second of cleaning the mess that someone else left behind.

Disgusted with talking yet again about Coca-Cola cans and mayonnaise. Horrified of still living the fucking mayonnaise diaries.

For far too long I thought that the terror of working in hospitality was over, I thought it was just a matter of time that my new future as a writer would materialise in front of me, magically fluctuating in between all the mediocrity to finally make feel like the star I am.

Didn’t happen. It turns out that changing careers in a messed-up economy is very hard, borderline impossible. It turns out that creative industries are overly saturated, and that trust fund kids are the ones taking all the unpaid apprenticeships. It turns out that no one within an industry wants to actually help you get into said industry unless they can get something out of it. It turns out that meeting the right people and narrowing down what I really want to do takes time, effort, and discipline.

It turns out that getting a degree is just the beginning of a long and painful staircase, a staircase I need to climb while working in hospitality. Fuck my life.

Although I didn’t lose it. I was close, yes. But I didn’t.

I didn’t lose it because I felt something that I forgot about. My birthday made me sad at first, and then, it paralyzed me. In a good way. On my birthday, I posted a pic on social media. A silly thing; a collection of pictures of me with the caption ‘I’m 33 today and I’m still alive’.

I don’t even know what I wanted from it, probably nothing, a birthday post seems standard practice in the social media clogged world of 2024. Underneath the shallowest layers of my own self, I was secretly hoping for some attention. Just a couple of comments, a dozen emojis that would shake me up, bring me back to life or something.

Paralysed, I feel it coming. Comments, messages, and calls from people I love marching my way with bright and colourful banners. I was frozen because of the affection I felt. People I had forgotten about reached out to me on my birthday, and even if it was expected, it made me so happy. The social media post it is not directly connected with this, mind you, people usually text you on your birthday anyway, the funny thing is that I forgot. Forgot that my people are there. I was so into hating my job, hating my job search, feeling drained and hopeless, that I forgot.

I forgot how much I love my people. I forgot how much I love my friends. I forgot how much I love my family. Every message, every call filled me up with hope (corny, I know), and reminded me that we are the people we love. And I am just starting to understand this. This economy, this society, this crazy world we live in makes us believe that the path is lonely and that we must traverse the fire on our own. I got so taken aback by this, that I am still recovering. Amid my fight to build my future, the answer was not to get a job or to someone to give me an opportunity.

This time, my lesson is to understand that anything in life takes time and that I need to be more kind. Not nice, I don’t care about manners, but I need to learn that if we are the people who we love, I need to love a little bit more, and a little bit better.

I hate that I am the agent of my own demise, but usually (often), it is like that. I also despise the fact that in the end, I am always the one that needs to learn the next thing. I am tired of learning, tired of constantly growing, tired of feeling like I am not going anywhere. And yet as tired as I am, I somehow need to endure. I know I won’t give up, and I am just beginning to see that the people surrounding me will give me the strength to keep on going further into the vaudeville that’s my life.

Yes, this is some power of friendship bullshit right here, but I feel like I need to communicate this newly acquired wisdom. A silent rebranding, mostly for myself (because literally nobody cares), about how I am going to try to be less gloomy as a writer. I am going to try and write more about literature, and less about my feelings (let’s see how that one goes).

I am going to try and write more about music, languages, about how the world is collapsing, and how sad everything is (of course), but above all, I think I will try to channel the love of the people I have in my life to search for the beautiful things in life.

I am a cynical asshole, an ironic clown, a walking act of satire and hate and I cannot help to season all my writing – and everything else in my life really – with a little bit of cunt.

I am also someone in love with the mysteries of life, a bohemian asking the big questions, a romantic trying to fall in love and a dancer. I am also, a dancer. Repeating it one more time so I can remind myself.

I pledge to be smarter in the energy I put outside into the world and to write blogs with my marketing mind on, so I can write about something else that’s not me complaining about serving iced lattes. Because this is what mental health looks like.