It seems wherever I turn at the moment the 4 letter acronym is there- AtoS. Striking fear into everyone they contact. On a contract in which they benefit financially for every benefit they take away. Ruthless, some would say. Still I wait in the line holding my little ticket waiting for my number to be called, fearing the time when it does come. It could be tomorrow. It could be next week. It could be next year but somehow I doubt it.
Already I have accepted what will happen and what I will do based on the horror stories I have read. Put simply I will tell them as politely as I can to naff off. Every action has a consequence. In my case we are a family of 5 living in a small 2 bedroom damp ridden flat without a holiday for 6 years and just about financially keeping our head above water. When that money is taken away, and it will be taken away, we are buggered for want of a better word. To be honest I don't know what we will do. But I am one of many.
Of course the solution is employment or at least self sufficiency. Can I work? Yes and no. I can't go to a workplace of any description so that would suggest no. But I am able bodied within my confinement. I have a computer and internet access. I have computer skills. Surely those could be put to some use and if it meant data entry for 12 hours a day and for 6-7 days a week I would do it to be free of the stigma and now financial uncertainty. Alas finding such employment isn't easy and when I last spoke to the people at the Job Centre they basically told me to search the Internet but all I could find were schemes you pay for and hope you make back the money later.
There are of course other ways to become self sufficient. I see a lot of people do it. Once upon a time I thought as was as imaginative but the truth is I am not. Try as I might I have searched myself for an ounce of creativity which may lead to being my own boss. I know my inlaws would probably give me some cash if I had an idea I thought could make me self sufficient or a skill. Agoraphobia though is stifling in the creative process. Of course there are things that can be done without leaving the house but mainly these are skills that involve creating something physical- unless its virtual like web design which I tried and failed at. So no paths leading in any direction. It takes me back to the mundane tasks of things like data entry. Jeez with so much gathered in paper form needing transformed into electronic format surely someone could make use of my time in exchange for not being a scummy benefit scrounger.
Going back to this cull a few things have been on my mind of late. I saw no justification in this current process and in fact today on another current matter affecting the employed I heard someone say that currently the government are targeting areas where there is a minority of wrong doing but not caring that they are impacting those who play by the rules. It got me thinking. Those who play by the rules are the ones most trodden. The evasive devious types usually find a way round it.
The employed can be so righteous and I speak from experience as I was once one of them myself. I remember scoffing at a woman being off for 3 months paid leave with stress in my work even though all she did all day was sit at a computer talking to others around her and making occasional trips back and forth to the coffee vending machine. I never saw her once look stressed. Then another woman who was off every other week claiming to have ME and any time she was in work she shuffled like an old dear with her head hung moaning and groaning despite being in her early forties. Charlatans I thought. I felt an intense disgust I am ashamed to admit.
And what of the employed. I noticed the other day that one of the fathers on the school run has been going a bit regular of late despite having a job. When I asked my wife told me he got signed off with depression for a month. Depression? He's not depressed. Yeah but he needed the time off and he couldn't take unpaid leave. That took me back to my uncle. He'd used up all his holidays at work when my gran was ill so through no fault of his own. But he said to me it was OK because later in the year he would take 2 weeks off by seeing the doctor and getting "signed off with depression or something like that". Something that is difficult to dispute as there are no physical symptoms. You see its in the psyche now that mental problems are undiagnosable and easily emulated and so not taken seriously so there is an undercurrent, as I can testify from experience, that people are lazy skivers unwilling to work.
That is though not to say that it is not the case. God there are many. I remember in between jobs in my early 20s coming out of the job centre after signing on and bumping into a girl I went to school with. She thought it was great not working and had no intention of doing so and then started to tell me to right off for jobs I would never get and all sorts of other thing "to keep them off your back". Just last year sitting outside my house in the sun a guy came up and got talking and then told me how he was signing on under two different names in different places and still working for cash in hand and he could get me a job there too if I wanted. I see them all the time. My dad's cousin hasn't worked a day in his life and is the biggest slithery snake I have ever known getting everything going. A chancer and it pays for him. Lots of examples and you will know your own so yet I can understand the need for it but its just a pity that everyone is tarred with the same brush.
Its just something I cannot get my head around. My GP has been very good and understanding. He went to university for a long time and worked hard to be a GP as many do. Why is his word not good enough all of a sudden? Why is some stranger with less of a medical background and a set of procedures suddenly deciding whether I am capable to work or not. Well I can tell you this: despite the ramifications of not allowing them to have their wicked way with me I will not be letting them do so. I have read of too many people going through humiliation and mental torture and still being called a fraud after to let them get any satisfaction aside from their financial benefit from doing me over. No chance. They can go and...
Well, I suppose I will deal with that bridge when I come to it. I'm sure there are ways to deal with most things but its best not pondering too much on it until the need is near otherwise in an anxious mind like my own it just becomes caught up in all the other worries growing, snowballing. Still though its worth using it to try to spur myself to find some way to financial independence. Write a Kindle bestseller? Agoraphobic photographer specialising in things around the house and out of the window? Play the stock-markets from the home with monopoly money? Write a killer app for the mobile and tablet platforms? Oh to have the talent or the imagination. Useless at making things with my hands and the brain is too full of swirly things to let any creativity breathe. But I will keep looking.
Aside from the sword of Damocles things have been going OK on my road to metal wellness. Tiny steps and little achievements here and there. Little foundations I hope to build my platform from. Time though is no longer on my side and with that brings a pressure which is detrimental to the whole process but I try to push those things to the back of my mind and focus on the immediate path ahead.
Lastly I just wanted to add a point about this blog and its lack of updates of late. I have been keeping a separate daily blog on my progress of late in the hope of using it one day as reflection for myself and hopefully even as help for others who find themselves where I am now. This though has caused me to neglect my updates here and in my muddled head has me trying to remember what I wrote and where. So I have binned that for a bit and will concentrate here and as a result hopefully update more often.
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