2475: Necessary Evil

I’ve grown to hate money.

Well, that’s not quite true. I like money when I have it. I hate the feeling of anxiety it gives me when I don’t have it, however, especially in situations like I’m in at the moment where I’m owed a considerable amount of money (like, over £1,000) in outstanding invoices from freelance work I undertook nearly two months ago.

It’s not character-building to have no money through no fault of your own; it doesn’t teach important life lessons; it just plain sucks balls.

It’s exceedingly demoralising to be strapped for cash when you know you’ve been working hard for your pay, and said pay is nowhere to be seen for one reason or another. It makes all the effort you’ve put in feel like a waste. Meanwhile salaried employees waste time on a daily basis fucking around with Fantasy Football and other such shit, secure in the knowledge that they’ll get their paycheck at the same time every month, come hell or high water — particularly if they’re an established employee with a decent enough track record to be considered a fixture.

I already struggle with anxiety and depression, but when money is tight, too, I just want to bury myself in a dark place and not wake up. It makes an already difficult situation feel all the more hopeless and desperate, and I’m running out of ways to cope with it.

I quit the job I described yesterday that didn’t feel like its benefits outweighed its many drawbacks — this is not the job that owes me over £1,000, I should add; rather, it was the part-time courier work I mentioned in passing a few times recently (which subsequently ballooned to an underpaid 7-day working week). I calculated that any money I would earn from it would immediately be eaten up by expenses incurred working that job, so it’s simply not worth the hassle, stress and physical discomfort it causes, particularly without any opportunity for a break.

I feel bad turning down a source of income, but if the net profit is negligible, I’m better off staying at home, saving the wear and tear on my car, not having to pay up for fuel and having the time and energy to pursue other opportunities. That’s how I’m rationalising it, anyway.

Just have to hope one of these opportunities I currently have an application in for and my fingers crossed for actually comes to something, but it’s frankly rather difficult to feel hopeful right now. I guess that at least means it will be a nice surprise if anything does happen.

2474: Pay Your Damn Workers

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One of the things I’ve noticed as someone who has spent more than his fair share of time looking for suitably gainful employment is the number of employers out there who undervalue their workers, expecting them to work long hours at demanding jobs for pitiful pay — and in some extreme cases, expecting them to work on a voluntary basis.

The growth in the number of jobs where the people who do all the heavy lifting (literal or metaphorical) have to act as self-employed is disheartening. It’s clearly a transparent, cost-cutting measure that means employers don’t have to provide workers with any kind of benefits — whether it’s basic things like holiday and cover for days you can’t work, or more structured benefits such as pension plans, healthcare and the like — under the pretense of being more convenient and flexible for the worker.

The above would be more acceptable if the payouts for workers were commensurate with the amount of effort (and/or physical exertion) they have to put in, but sadly more often than not they simply aren’t. What you end up with are a bunch of companies who are effectively paying their workers less than minimum wage while offering them no benefits, no National Insurance contributions, no Pay As You Earn tax deductions and little to no job satisfaction.

At the time of writing, I’m working two assignments on a self-employed basis. One of them pays a fair wage for some honest, specialised work, so I don’t mind working for them in this way at all — though I do, at times, wish they’d pay me a bit sooner and provide me with enough assignments to make it a legitimate full-time job, as that would go a long way to assuaging my presently perpetual state of anxiety. The other, I’m feeling, does not feel like it has enough benefits to outweigh the drawbacks, even though it presents the prospect of more regular income. (That said, taking into account the expenses I incur while working this latter position makes said income look even more woeful than it already is.)

I don’t know. I’m just currently feeling physically exhausted and incredibly disheartened at how things have been going for me, and I don’t know the best thing to do about it. The vaguely rational part of my brain tells me that sucking it up and paying my dues is the sensible thing to do, regardless of how exhausting it is and how awful a work-life balance it affords me. But the part of me that wants to not collapse and actually have time to enjoy life — even if it’s with tight purse strings — suggests that the healthy thing to do, mentally and physically, might be to nip things in the bud before I get too stressed out by the whole thing.

Goddammit, GamePro. Why’d you have to close down? I was happy working for you. Genuinely. More happy than I’ve ever been working any job since. All I want is to be happy and satisfied with what I do, and to be paid a fair wage for it. With every passing day, I worry more and more that I’m never going to achieve that.

2365: If I Had a Million Quid

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An awful lot of my anxieties come down to money issues. I’ve always found financial matters to be inordinately stressful, largely because there haven’t been that many periods of my life where I’ve felt particularly “secure” in this regard.

There have been a few, admittedly. When I was teaching, the pay was great, whatever other teachers might say, but unfortunately it was not worth the life-crippling stress that the rest of the job gave me. So that was out.

One of the retail jobs I had actually paid very well, too, which is unusual for retail, but probably not surprising for the company in question, who I won’t name for the moment (at least partly because I wouldn’t mind them hiring me again, please) and also perhaps not surprising given that my role wasn’t exactly traditional “sales assistant” stuff.

Then there was my work for GamePro and USgamer, which to date have been my favourite jobs, not to mention the ones I think I’ve been best at. Unfortunately, neither of those were to last; GamePro because it folded, and USgamer because of general behind the scenes assholery.

Then there was SSE, which I will name because it was a health and safety-obsessed shithole staffed with some of the most odious people I’ve ever had the misfortune to work with. Again, pay good, but the working environment — very much a culture of fearmongering and whistleblowing — was horrible.

The freelance work I’m doing at the moment also pays pretty well, but unfortunately it’s very sporadic; at the time of writing I haven’t had any for a while, so pennies are running a bit short. Andie is at least back to work now so our household will have some income again, but I am very much in need of a regular source of income.

Money anxieties naturally lead me to fantasising about what I’d do if I won the lottery, because that would take away a considerable number of the things that stress me the fuck out each and every day. It’s almost certainly never going to happen, of course, but it’s nice to dream.

If I won the lottery, I wouldn’t do anything outrageously huge. I have a few things in mind that I’d definitely do immediately: I’d pay off the mortgage on our house, I’d pay off my car and I’d clear my credit card. Then I’d probably buy an HTC Vive VR headset. And from there? Well, I wouldn’t really do anything else. I’d just live my life in the house I’m in, safe in the knowledge that I won’t have to worry about money again. I’d do the things I want to do rather than feel like I have to do; I’d write, I’d make music, I’d make games, I’d play games. I wouldn’t feel that crushing sense of guilt any time I do any of those things now because I wouldn’t be under any sort of pressure to do something more “productive” and “useful” (i.e. something that pays money) with my time.

To be honest, the dream of just living normally, only without having to worry about money — that’s far more appealing and exciting to me than any grand designs to buy a country manor or a sports car or a holiday home in exotic climes that other people often claim will be their lottery dream. Perhaps it says something about me that the only real “ambition” I have is to be comfortable and secure; opulence would be fun, I’m sure, but security is what’s going to keep you happy in the long term.

1479: Moneybags

Andie and I have bought a house. (Or possibly, “Andie and I are buying a house” — I’m not entirely sure which tense is appropriate at this stage.) Thus far the process has been significantly less stressful than I have been led to believe, but I’m sure there’s still scope for something to go horribly wrong along the way. Until that time, however, I’m going to enjoy what has, so far, been a fairly painless process.

One thing that has struck me during this process, however, is how much your perception of money can change in such a short space of time. Or, indeed, how much the quantities of money you deal with on a regular basis can change in a short period.

When you’re young, getting a couple of quid pocket money is a lot. Getting an expensive present — something that costs £20 or more — is pretty awesome, and getting a really expensive present — a games console, say — is really awesome. At the same time, if you’re not dealing with a lot of money at once, it can be easy to disregard it completely. I recall when I was very young — like, early primary school young — thinking that cashpoint machines simply gave you money if you put in the right number. It didn’t even occur to me that you had to have that money to your name in order to be able to receive it in physical form.

Then you move into your teenage years, and start having a bit more money of your own. It’s still not in huge quantities, though that said there’s plenty of teenagers wandering around sporting the latest iPhones, so modern teens are certainly getting money from somewhere. Some even save up and get their own car, although admittedly said car tends to be a rustbucket monstrosity that will fall apart the second you look at it.

Then on to university, where, in many cases, you’ll have early encounters with both crippling debt and seemingly more money than you know what to do with. You’ll start paying rent, which costs hundreds of pounds a month, and you’ll have expenses to consider. You’ll get thousands of pounds through a student loan, then blow it on booze and whatever else students spend money.

Despite university being a whole bunch of years ago now, I must confess that I still find myself in that mindset sometimes. I feel like I don’t have much money coming in — even though I’m drawing a respectable wage and can live comfortably — and even a hundred pounds feels like a lot of money.

Until now. We’re buying a house, which costs six figures. This involves being saddled with a six-figure debt, and spending five figures up front. The most I’ve ever spent on something in one go up until now was four figures on a computer, so the prospect of spending five figures at once is… well, it’s a little mind-boggling, if I’m honest. I’m not sure the idea has sunk in yet.

Still, at least once all the house stuff is sorted we can hopefully both go back to thinking about much smaller numbers on a regular basis. At least until we decide we want to move and buy another one somewhere else…

#oneaday Day 571: An August Sort of Gentleman

I hate August. It’s one of the biggest pain in the arse months there is. It’s partly through my own doing that it’s a pain in the arse, of course, but it’s also an unfortunate combination of things that it’s not particularly easy to do anything about.

The reason it’s a pain in the arse is that it’s always expensive. During the month of August, I have to pay my car tax, renew my car insurance, and get my car serviced and MOTed. When I lived away from home (which quite soon I will be again, yay!) August was also the month to renew the TV license and, if I was moving again (which I did every year for quite some time) find some way of scrabbling together a deposit on a new place to live.

This year is going to be no exception. Tomorrow it’s the annual “cross your fingers and hope the car survives” experience of getting it serviced and MOTed, and inevitably there’ll be SOMETHING wrong with it that needs fixing, which costs more money and time. While people are hitting it with hammers, or whatever it is mechanics do while they’re servicing your car, I’m also going to go and get my car tax done which, given the “Do It Online!” system that the government was so excited about when they introduced, should be an easy process, but unfortunately isn’t, largely because of the combination of other factors that August throws your way.

Boring factoid: you can’t renew your car tax online if your car insurance is about to expire, even if you’ve already had the renewal paperwork through. This completely negates the convenience aspect of being able to do your car tax online because you then have to go to the post office and queue for hours and ARGH.

I am going to beat the system this year though by only renewing my car tax for six months while renewing my insurance for a whole year. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, August!

Breaking up the month is next week’s trip to Gamescom in Germany, when I’ll be far to busy to worry about mundane things like tax, deposits and all that sort of thing. It’s fairly unlikely I’ll have any time to socialise (sorry, “network”) let alone think about things which aren’t happening RIGHT NOW in Cologne.

Following that, I’ll be moving house. This will involve handing over a large wad of cash to an estate agent (or possibly handing over a debit card and closing my eyes) but at the end of the process there’ll be a new place to live available to me. Which will be nice. But then I have to move all my stuff there. Which will not be nice. Moving house is stressful, but fortunately there are no time pressures this time around, which means I can take my time over bringing stuff in gradually rather than having to get everything done in one night.

(Incidentally, there are those who say that moving house is as/more stressful than the breakdown of a marriage/divorce. Having been through both I can say with some confidence that the latter is infinitely more upsetting and stressful than having to carry a lot of boxes and furniture into a van, sometimes throughout the whole night. The former may well do your back in and cause you to be completely knackered, but the latter does unpleasant things to your emotions and brainy parts, as my blogs from last year will attest. Just in case you were wondering.)

I’ll be happy when September arrives. When I was a schoolkid and later a teacher, September was a stressful time — time to go back to school. But as a “normal” person now with a regular job that doesn’t take six weeks off in the summer, it’s just another month — and more significantly, it’s the month after the pain in the arse that is August.

So sod off, August. You’re a pain in the arse.

#oneaday, Day 75: Late again

One of these days I’ll post one of these entries before midnight. If you look at the dates, it looks like I’m a day behind. But I’m not. Oh no. I just stay up late. Which is perhaps not wise. But hey. It’s too late now.

I wrote 650 words of story today. They’re probably crap, but I made an effort to just churn them out regardless. I’ll try and do at least 500 every day, preferably 1000. I can easily get through that. It’s just a case of letting the creativity flow and not worrying about it being stupid. That’s what the editing process is for.

Little else of note has happened today, really. I went out for a walk and took Gowalla with me. For the uninitiated, Gowalla is a location-based app for the iPhone where you “check in” at places to stamp a virtual passport. You can create your own spots too, meaning that eventually, a user-generated map of points of interest in an area is built up. There’s a sort-of game mechanic in there too, with items appearing in places and allowing you to either collect them or drop them elsewhere for others to find.

I’m now up to a hundred stamps. That’s cool, although I did create a whole bunch of them myself. Southampton was a little dry on “points of interest” when Gowalla first launched. Now, thanks to the machinations of myself and several others in the area, there’s now lots to see. Interestingly, I’ve got to know a couple of people (not face to face… yet) simply through playing with Gowalla, which is nice. There is talk of a “tweetup” at some point in early April so if I’m feeling super-brave I may go and check it out. We shall see.

Elsewhere today, I rediscovered LittleBigPlanet, which is still one of the best-looking games on PS3. There’s some incredibly creative levels out there, too – but you knew that already. Tonight, I played through a selection of excellently designed levels by a guy whose name escapes me right now, as well as a perfect recreation of the first bit of Bioshock, albeit with some rather poor writing spelling, punctuation and grammar-wise. My mind draws a blank any time I fire up the level designer for LittleBigPlanet and I am yet to create a level. I’m sure I’ll think of something eventually, though.

Tomorrow, I have a music pupil in the morning and then the remainder of the day… who knows. Since coming back from PAX East, it’s been an odd feeling to be “free”, though of course the money thing is something of a worry. I have let various agencies know I’m available for work, however, and of course, if you know anyone who is interested in either music or computer tuition in the Southampton area, I invite you to direct them here for music lessons or here for computer lessons. That would be marvellous, ’cause if I get enough pupils between those two things, I won’t have to set foot in a classroom, even as a supply teacher, ever again. But that won’t work just yet, unfortunately. That’s the plan, though.

Right. I’m off, because it’s nearly 2am. Good night!