Two months in All Good Things

Can’t believe it’s been two months since I last wrote in here. All I’ve been doing is playing the piano, really, and learning music theory. I’m pretty good at sightreading and can play almost anything if I have sheet music for it, but I’ve never been able to play by ear and I was never able to memorise anything. Thanks to all my music theory study, I’ve been able to start memorising songs and it’s so easy I can’t believe it. I love it. I’m starting to get to a place of being able to play by ear, not quite yet, but soon. It’s exciting and very satisfying. Being able to create my own music too!

Outside of that....nothing has changed. I’ve had no work and I have no idea when I’ll have more. Because of the way the British government decided to offer financial help in a very bizarre manner, while millions of people have been getting up to £2,000 a month to get them by, I didn’t qualify (apparently I earned too much money before, and it is a very arbitrary, random cut-off point, and it only applies to self-employed people, whereas employed people get help no matter how much they earned before). So I’ve been watching my savings disappear and honestly? It’s terrifying.

I feel so helpless. There’s nothing I can do about it. I mean, I’m lucky I had as much savings as I did (so much for my hope of buying a house next year), but what do I do when they run out in a few months? Then what? I live in a tiny town by the sea where there aren’t any jobs at the best of times, let alone now. I keep hoping my industry will revive, but a lot of things are fucked and it just isn’t happening. Especially since most of the work I do is international.

I keep trying not to think about it, hoping that it’ll sort itself out in time....but time keeps passing and it isn’t. I have savings enough to last for five more months, and then? What if there’s a second wave when winter comes like they expect and everything shuts down again?

My anxiety level is through the roof. I am literally constantly terrified and feel utterly helpless and I hate this. This was supposed to be such a good year. I’d conquered my anxiety, my agoraphobia, my fear of flying, I was enjoying my job again for the first time in years....

I was meant to fly to Canada in three weeks for a month in Vancouver and the mountains. I already missed the trip to Jordan, and to Italy, numerous trips to Dubai, I missed out on seeing Louis perform live (and will miss out on the second concert of his in Vancouver as well), and now I have to live through the four weeks I was meant to be on the trip of a lifetime through Canada. I was looking forward to that so much.

But even that pales next to the contemplation that I have no work and what happens if there’s never any work and I lose my home and lose everything?

All because the government decided to put a random cap on the support self-employed people could get while giving away millions to everyone else. I pay so fucking much in tax every year it makes me sick. And I’m going to be expected to pay thousands more in January. Good luck to them. I’ll soon have to start using the tax I’d saved up for the July payment in order to live, and there’s no hope of paying the January payment if I have zero income.

I hate our government. Boris is obsessed with getting the pubs open again and making sure people can go on summer holidays to Europe. WHAT ABOUT ALL THE PEOPLE WHO ARE LOSING THEIR JOBS AND THEIR HOMES??????? I shudder to think what’s going to happen when the government support schemes run out. So many currently “on furlough” will lose their jobs. Loads of self-employed people who hired other people will have lost their companies since they couldn’t survive without any help. The travel industry’s collapsed. The theatre industry is non-existent (you can imagine the panic all of my friends in that world feel right now). Same with the music industry. So many other industries are being decimated.

I get so scared thinking about the future. We have no leadership in the UK who cares about the country or the people. All they care about is keeping their own privilege, keeping the rich rich and making them richer, no matter what the cost to the country and the island we live on. They’ve bashed Brexit through under extraordinarily false pretences, even though they had/have zero plan for how to do it. Now this has hit and nobody seems to be planning for the future. They clearly hoped a bit of financial support (for SOME people) would tide the country through and then everything would be normal again. Well, it’s not going to be. It’s too late for that now. There’s going to be anarchy and it’ll be horrific, and I’ve lived through two thriving countries falling apart and collapsing into chaos and mayhem and crime and horror, and I can’t bear to do it again. Not here. Not in England.

All of that said, at least I’m not living in America. I have to avoid most news about America these days because the very headlines give me panic attacks. How can people be as incredibly disgusting and selfish and appalling as so very many Americans are proving themselves to be right now? How is that revolting “president” being allowed to get away with everything he’s doing? I feel so distressed for all the good people in that country. I have family who live there, and many friends, and it sounds like a ever-worsening nightmare.

By contrast, my father lives in New Zealand, where everything is largely normal now, almost as though coronavirus never happened - but then they are completely cut off from the world.

I can’t imagine what’s going to happen across the world during the next year or two. What the fallout from all of this will be. We had such an opportunity to band together, to change our obsession with capitalism and money at all human cost - but no. Instead England and America have the worst leadership I can imagine right now for something like this, and all I can see is the end of the West. This is it. This is how it dies. I’ve seen countries die, and it’s exactly like this. This is just a little bigger.

Do we really want China in control of the world? Look at what they’re doing to Hong Kong. Look at what they did LAST WEEK. They’ve utterly devastated Africa as well.

This is why all I think about is music and music theory. It’s the only way I can stop the endless hysterical panic from exploding inside me.

Outside it’s a beautiful Sunday, after the storms of yesterday. Clear skies, warm breezes. The sea is blue and glorious. People are going to the beach and chatting (six feet apart) on the pavements and everything looks so normal.

When nothing is normal. Nothing is okay. And every glimpse of the future terrifies me.