Where are we now?

Indeed, where are we, as Bowie once put it. 

The answer is, I don't know. 

Not being dramatic, but as someone who next month is probably going to have my official status as self-employed pulled by the DWP (our benefits agency that helped me go onto the enterprise scheme I am on that started just before the pandemic) — or indeed forced to 'look for work' that I don't know is there when I'd rather do my art work...that uncertainty is almost a taste at this point. 

It's fine, with the pandemic and everything I have decided not to freak out and have been saving like crazy over the last few years, storing art materials, and accepting that me and the DWP will have to part ways at some point. 

Not being an artist and going back to the hell that was three years on the dole is not an option (after my mother's inheritance ran out, I was forced to move from my old flat in with John and sign on; it's soul destroying and social genocide basically, they try and make you ill or make you angry so they can sanction you. It's very Orwellian). 

I've tried the other things, trying to get jobs in ALDI and Waitrose and in my former industry — some close calls, but it was all for naught and just made me quite ill with stress and depression. I, Daniel Blake is pretty much a documentary — one of the bad things is you can NEVER show weakness. If you do they seize on it. It's brutal.

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