I haven’t written much recently. My rent went up. I am being squeezed and juiced, cooked, fried, boiled, and roasted, all after being thoughtfully marinated for 48 hours.
I am not the magnet but rather the repellent substance.
I don’t believe in the future, but I tirelessly prepare for it.
I hate what cities represent, but I love cities.
I love human beings, but I hate masses.
I want to become a star and tell my stories. Not true (pathological liar here), I want my stories to be heard and read. It is not enough that I tell them, they must be perceived. I need external validation.

But my rent went up.

I was somewhere in east London, under the August sun, the cold August sun of long mornings that come after long nights, when I saw the email from my landlord. And you know what? That I didn’t freak out, at least not fully. I took a deep breath, and I moved on with my life. Let’s take a moment to appreciate what therapy can do because any other time this could have been a disaster ranging from a full mental breakdown with tears to going nonverbal in a corner. I’m a functioning adult and instead, I took my vintage jacket, and I left the temple of dance & sin. Any commute makes me mad anyway but commuting back home after a night of glamour and excess, digesting my lovely rent increase was a dreadful experience.

Life always has something in store for us, doesn’t it?

When the finances go well, life sends a heartbreak. When the career path seems to advance without any issues, a familiar face decays, and when the rhythm of living feels happy and bright, life sends a rent increase.

How lovely.
@eli1ah states it beautifully in an Instagram post:

As my plan to change careers was prevaricating, mainly due to the rent increase, I could not pursue my plan of becoming a paid writer in the traditional sense, at least not for a while.

Changing careers is exhausting, and I have been fighting for it for more than a year. Becoming proficient in bullshit corporate CV speak, knowing how to tailor blurbs, speaking in acronyms and (at least) trying to network. Having the realisation that I am moving to the bottom of a different ladder has been not pretty. I was (am), exhausted, burnt out and sick of it. It has been time-consuming and humiliating.

A change in priorities.

Something much more horrifying needed to happen; I was in desperate need of finding a better-paid job, and quickly. In the catering industry.

And then, a new feeling. A bad one.

In my mind, the piece I was missing was a degree. I thought once I had a degree under my belt, I would never work again in the service industry. I was being naïve and foolish of course since I didn’t take into account that

1. People don’t get anything with a BA in arts.
2. The job market for a white-collar job is damaged beyond repair (due to capitalism being a gigantic pyramid scheme).
   So here I am, tailoring a restaurant CV, in front of a disgusting Indeed page, due to the fact that I am literally this person:

(I am the skinny one, because gay.)
It’s from 1894 by the way. This cartoon is specifically about the Pullman Strike. The company had its own town that the employees lived in, and when hard times hit, they reduced everyone’s wages but kept rent and other costs the same. We are in 2024, and this still damn well applies.
I see myself talking about counting disposable containers and Coca-Cola cans. I see myself talking about how excited I am to belong to my new family or whatever, and as much as I try to keep a cold head about it, something in me breaks every time I face a new round of interview processes in the catering industry.

It might not be a big deal, but I hate – like HATE- being a service industry worker. And yet I what I am stuck with. So, I shall roll with it and feed people and deliver stellar customer service or whatever.

Lately, I have felt that my writing has gone stale. I try to write every day (I kind of keep a schedule) but I didn’t have the guts to post anything on the internet. Such a silly thing to think, when literally no one cares.

And because no one cares (not a bad thing), the stakes are low, and I shall remind myself, and therefore, remind whoever is reading this not to be precious about content. Time will pass, and people will forget. Most of us won’t ever get to be viral or get cancelled or whatever it is that the kids are trying to do now to those who have views.

Here I go, posting again about my life, and how I try to become a writer.
So, here I go (Britney Spears – Stronger) again, perfecting the art of constantly coming back, putting words together one after another, typing things, crafting some nice sentences and all that.
Despite all the issues—rising rents, jarring job shifts, and the incessant ache of trying—I’ll keep writing. Like Sisyphus and his immense boulder (but more handsome – because gay).