THE WRITER’S LIFE

If I don’t write this now I’ll be conceding defeat, not to one nemesis or tormentor, but to life. The Tory social cleansing machine nearly got the better of me today, so I have no option but to write about the constant scream of consciousness.

This blog was once the daily diaries of a homeless drunk, written during an hour of public access time on a library computer. Lately I’ve not been able to find any time to collect my thoughts, let alone convey them. Rather than sit around all day, confused and wondering what to write, I thought I’d spend an hour like I used to in the library, writing, like I haven’t been lately.

Everything whirling in my head has become almost overwhelming, and there’s been plenty of it. Keeping it to myself while I contemplate how to address it meant that I didn’t confront it. Tired of life and the world, I have to write to save my own little place in both.

It’s pretty clear to all but the most ignorant that the world will end, one way or another, during our lifetime. It’s completely obvious to me and thousands of others, that the UK government are a bunch of fascist murderers. And it’s plain in my mind that I’ve not been right lately. Unless I can sort that last one out, I’ve got no chance of playing any part in doing anything about the other two.

The writer’s block is because my mind is so full of all that stuff. There are potential solutions and suggestions in there, but what’s been keeping them at bay is the world of me at the front of my head, the face I haven’t shown.

My ongoing battle with the Department for Work and Pensions is now well into its sixth month, not through inaction on my part so much as incompetence on theirs approaching Vogon levels. More on that another time, in a different post, where I’ll free another hour to write.

For now, the world of me has been laid to waste by the government’s best efforts to kill me by proxy, by denying me (like thousands of others) the so-called benefit (some would say a human right) of personal independence. They’ve taken away the money I’ve been judged entitled to for the last four years, which allowed me to live an independent life, while suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) picked up from mental and physical abuse I encountered while living on the streets. But of course, I put myself there by being drunk. As if the daily guilt wasn’t enough. I was ill, and I still am. Always judged.

I’ve been judged as deserving of personal independence by those qualified to do so (tribunal panels) in the past, but the system is designed to make people kill themselves, with out-sourced assessors deliberately ignoring evidence of entitlement to massage the government’s figures and pay their private sector employers’ and shareholders’ bonuses. It’s a murderous apparatus, employed by a morally bankrupt dictatorship. Like the wider world, the UK is a victim of the wealthy minority running government so that fascist capitalism trumps a more socialist approach which might otherwise save our species and our home. That’s another hour of writing a separate post.

When I used to write this blog in the library, it was my way of keeping in touch with my world and the wider one beyond, whether anyone gave a toss or not. It was always therapy. Lately I’ve assumed no-one cares, because I’ve been caring less about myself and most things beyond. I realise that even dealing with myself is not something I can do on my own.

I’d become convinced that if I felt as low and little about myself as I’d been ground down to feel by the social cleansing machinery, then anyone else would give even less of a shit. But every hour that I’ve stared at this blog I spent the last five years building, I can’t help notice that quite a few people follow it, and therefore me.

Most of my followers hitched up when they read one of my short stories, but others have climbed on board the wagon through empathy. I know my watchers here aren’t like those necrophiliac perverts at DWP, and you don’t want to see me fail (as in, die). How does knowing that make me feel? Honestly, I feel better.

I have a better life now, one where I don’t have to commandeer a public access computer to get all my thoughts down in an allotted hour. But actually, setting an hour aside to simply write is the best way to do that. Because the time we have together is allotted by me now, and it makes me feel better just talking to you. And whether I’m heard or not, it helps to talk.

This blog was once the daily diaries of a homeless drunk. Then it became that of a writer with mental health labels, writing about being a writer with mental health labels. I’m sober now, and I have a home. Then lately that stopped, and it was because of the killing machine. It was that which made me write for an hour tonight. I’ll stop now. I could go on, but if I stop then I know I can come back and write for another hour another time.

There’d be no point – indeed no point in being me – if I didn’t have readers. Hopefully this brief diary provided some insight (for voyeuristic perverts). I’m stopping now and not re-reading or revising. This was stream of consciousness stuff, like I used to write in the library. Once that meter ran out, I was cut off for another day at least: See you again soon.

There, I said it. I wrote it. I feel like a writer again. Lost and in need of rescue, but you can’t be rescued if you don’t shout. You can’t write if no-one can read. I feel better. Thanks for reading. For everyone who got this far, there are many who didn’t. But they might read this sometime. They wouldn’t if I hadn’t written it.

“Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.” Baz Luhrmann. Keep moving. Keep living. It’s too late to floss my teeth, but I won’t let fascists dance on my grave.

I need to pay my annual hosting fees soon, and fascist Tory human rights policies mean I can’t afford to. Donations always help me to keep writing this blog ($1 per follower who could afford it would be massive), and there’s Cyrus Song: a perfectly plausible solution to all our problems, available for less than a decent coffee as an eBook (also available in paperback, like the rest of my books).