Resolutions Don't Resolve Anything

 

The millennium was a quarter of a century ago.
The Covid-19 pandemic, its global lockdowns, and the paradigm shifts in the world of work, that too many managers and meddlers are still attempting to forcibly roll back, was half a decade ago.

Twenty years ago, I stood on the edge of adulthood, calmly eager, focusedly excited. I knew what I wanted, I knew how to get it, and I had the energy, intelligence, and drive to pursue it.

I didn't know then that even all of those things together would never be enough.

Those past twenty years have been brutal - but there have been moments of beauty in the brutality, too.

In those twenty years, I've had the prospect of the career I'd intended taken away, and, in the last three years, have seen many more possibilities fall by the wayside, because the issue that took that initial career became something worse, something more impactful, something that took away more and more as the months rolled by.

Twenty years ago, I was going to take my driving test, get whatever jobs paid while I saved up to take my HGV test, go into haulage for 15-20 years, use the downtime to write, so that the distracting terror of "But what if I don't get published, or I do, but the books don't sell?" was removed, save up enough cash to buy a small yard and a couple of trucks of my own, establish a niche, high-end items removal company (artworks, sculptures, pianos, antique doors), with a horsebox/livestock trailer and driver hire side gig.  I was going to run that business for 10-15yrs, sell up, buy a property with some land, and breed and train horses.

By now, if my life had gone according to plan, I should have been approaching the point of, at the very least, exploring the options for purchasing my own trucks, my own yard.

But life didn't go according to plan.
At 19, following a third failed driving test, I was referred for a DVLA eye exam, and told I didn't have sufficient peripheral vision to be legally safe to drive.

No worries, no bother - I'd always been interested in business; exploring that a bit more, I discovered the concept of corporate turnaround, an aspect of the insolvency sphere.  I worked with a firm of accountants for two years, transferred across to an insolvency firm - I was back on track, everything was going really well.  I'd talked to management at the firm about what I wanted, there was a loose progression plan in place.

And then I had my second major schizophrenia episode.

The first had happened six months earlier, fortunately at the home of a friend who was a junior doctor. He'd known exactly the right calls to make, I was with an absolutely excellent therapist (Ian McMillan), whose energy and intellectual considerations matched my own.  Like many people with serious mental health conditions, I'd had a couple of false starts with medications that didn't play nicely with my bio-chemistry, and other options were being explored.

The second episode, unfortunately, happened while I was at work. I still don't know exactly what happened, but it was bad enough, or scared people enough, that I was sacked with immediate effect.

That resulted in two years spent applying for up to 15 jobs a day, and getting nowhere.  In that period, two-thirds of the management team at the insolvency company I'd been sacked from were themselves sacked, and, in two cases, brought up on criminal charges, with their licences to practice revoked, for criminal negligence and misconduct. Fun times; I still occasionally wonder if my sacking were more to do with whatever was going on in management than with whatever happened during the 'episode' I had. But...water, bridges.  We can never get back lost time.  The past is a foreign country; the borders are closed, and trade embargoes are in place.

In retrospect, I never really recovered from that second hit, to a renewed sense of purpose and ambition. I worked, but without ambition, without joy, without any real sense that I belonged anywhere.   I honestly don't remember much of what I did to earn a living in the wasteland of that time.

Twelve years ago, my Dad - the parent who raised me in a cognitive, intellectual, and emotional sense, a father who showed me how to be a man, and someone I would have been friends with if I hadn't been his son - died.   I knew, as soon as we were told he was ill, that he wouldn't recover.  I also knew I couldn't talk to anyone else about that - because everyone else was focused on the fact that he'd be fine, the chemo would work, loads of people recovered from cancer, these days! 

But more than a few don't, still.

In the wake of my father's diagnosis, I experienced life-threatening physical violence from my mother, homelessness, and the wake-up call that I actually didn't have anyone who would help me just because I asked.  People did - eventually - help me; but only after my Dad, who was shocked and dying, had called someone else who told people I had already tried to reach out to to help me.

I lost my Dad, I lost what remained of my trust in people, and I lost my home. My childhood home, the home where I'd wanted to live the rest of my life. Not just the house, but the village, the last true community I'd ever know.

Eleven years ago, I met a woman who sparked love that was strong enough, and insane enough in its own right, as love always is, to override some of the madness in me.  We started our life in a chronically damp converted shipping container, living on the site of my precarious employment with an abusive boss, who managed to "forget" to pay me with depressing regularity, tried to get me to commit benefit fraud, and became violently abusive towards me when the benefits office got suspicious, eventually leading to yet another spell of homelessness.

During that time, I had a job which included a nice dash of sexual discrimination - that boss believed that "men aren't capable of cleaning", wasted her time stalking round after me, trying to find evidence to justify her bigotry, and, when I had to take a day off to deal with a major family emergency  (my mother having a mental breakdown which involved the neighbours), and despite me phoning in to explain, took advantage of the opportunity, when I went back for my shift the very next day, to have a woman in place, and the excuse that "I never got any call from you, so I assumed you'd walked out - men do that, frequently, especially with jobs they know they shouldn't really have been given anyway."

More unemployment followed - trauma, and the chequered career history it can create, aren't welcome in the bright, brave new world where, as long as life doesn't leave marks when it touches you, anything is, apparently, possible if you want it enough, and work hard enough for it.

My late father's life insurance brought myself and Morgana - the woman I'd met, and fallen in love with - a home.  Within two years of moving to Lowestoft, the town entered what's increasingly looking like a terminal decline. But we can't afford to move - we can't even afford essential repairs, mostly because the cost of labour is impossible to meet, and we don't have people who are able to help us for just a few quid and our eternal gratitude.  

Three years ago, I found out I was going blind, with four separate confirmed sight loss conditions, two degenerative, and a fifth strongly suspected, which will need further investigation to confirm.  I don't know if I'll bother with the further investigation - there's nothing that can be done, for any of the conditions I have.

In the past two years, I've lost two jobs because of my sight loss; the first because my job description was changed, without consultation, to include a mandatory aspect I physically would not have been able to achieve, because of the extent of my sight loss, the second because I'd identified I wanted progression and promotion, but leadership felt that "wouldn't be achievable" given the impact of my sight loss.

In both cases, management dressed up the reason for my dismissal in terms that caused me deep hurt, and critically damaged self-esteem that was already pretty shot by the life impacts I'd already had, just so they could gaslight me into not going after them for wrongful dismissal. Not that I could, anyway - the Tories required that I be employed for two years before I could claim unfair dismissal, and I wouldn't have been able to afford to take anyone to Court anyway.

Littered through all of this have been four failed attempts to start my own business, and a stubbornness which has seen me decide to launch another business - one which I've spectacularly failed to get any interest in, or clients for,  in the past year.

So... I think you can probably understand why I don't do New Year's Resolutions.

I've had resolve, grit, resilience, determination, focus, whatever name you prefer to throw as a cloak over what is actually at play: privilege.

Privilege. The dirty word no one wants to acknowledge they have.

I can acknowledge that being white, and male, has lessened the impacts of everything that's happened to me - but it didn't stop those things happening, and the legacies of all that's happened to me have eroded whatever privilege the facts of my race and gender may have given me - because trauma creates its own kind of marginalisation.  So does poverty.  So does the lack of a cohesive, consistent, well-equipped support network.  

I can't ever be the person I was twenty years ago.
Those twenty years I spent experiencing life's brutal hard edges were spent by others acquiring meaningful, transferable experience, building financial and social capital, making progress.

They're entering their forties with proven track records.
I'm rocking up to that milestone seeming "too intelligent for the CV I have." (Actual feedback, in literally those words, from three separate, unconnected job interviews I didn't succeed at.)

I've had beautiful moments - my marriage, the times Morgana and I have shared within that - but I've also lost too much.  I'm too far adrift from where I intended to be, and I don't even know where would take me in, even if I could get there from wherever it is I am now.

I really, badly want The Productive Pessimist to take off, to be the thing that I can rely on for income for the next 30yrs.  But I have to accept I don't know how to ensure that happens. I can't get loans, I can't get credit - hell, I can't even transfer the site for that to a professional domain name.

Being blind, and banned from driving, I can't travel all over the country to network, attend conferences, etc.
Being broke, I can't afford to even attend the relevant, reputable online conferences, which are still charging in the hundreds of pounds to register.
I can't afford to employ people who are better at sales and marketing than I am.
I can't afford to be where people with money are.

I've asked for help.
And only got silence in response.

Which is...pretty consistent for the rest of my life, actually.  People have helped me, when I've been completely out of all other options, and literally frantic, on my hands and knees, begging.  But I don't know the kinds of people who can help just because I asked nicely; everyone I know is struggling to some extent themselves.  I don't want to add to other peoples' burdens, I don't want to be seen as just another entitled white man who thinks the world owes him whatever he wants. I wasn't raised to be like that, I dislike people who are like that... But ah, feck, would it be nice to be able to live easy for a change.

Twenty years of mostly punishment; if I'd killed someone, I'd've served less time.

But, the past is what it is.
Your present situation is what it is.
The years have gone, and none of us know how many we have in front of us.

This isn't going to be an ending where I make some inspirational observation, and tell you to "resolve to be HAPPY!" - you won't always be happy.  Happiness - moments, shards, of it - will always be present, but they may well be outnumbered.  

The part of the Suffolk coast I live on is apparently rich in amber - but you're still far more likely to find pretty pebbles than actual semi-precious stones.