Dear reader,

I have finally secured an interview for a job I actually want, and I’ve come down with a horrible chesty cold thing.

I sent an email this evening asking if we could do it over Teams or Zoom, because I really do want the job, and even then, I really need the interview experience.

But it just seems so unfair after the last month.

Why can I not get a break? Life surely has to give me something… Maybe 45 minutes on Tuesday evening, for the interview?

I’m not asking for much, just a moment of peace. A quick hush, a short acoustic reprise of something gentle, just for a singular moment.

The world is so bloody loud.

I’m into theatre, but the performances people are giving outside of their own homes are insane, and when you’re feeling rubbish, it’s all you can see and hear.

People behave so ridiculously when out and about, as though their common sense sneaks back in through the letterbox of their front doors before they step over the threshold.

I’m often told that my writing doesn’t reflect the wider experience, and that sometimes I need to tone things down a little.

But that’s the point of it all, isn’t it?

I’m writing from well outside of the ‘normal’ experience. Years of self-destruction, a criminal record, being let down consistently by the systems that are supposed to uplift, empower and inspire us, adoption, bereavement at 14, alcohol abuse, and that’s without bipolar being the absolute bastard that it so often is.

I’m not here to play the victim or to wallow.

But as one of those people so often scapegoated by headlines as being lazy, unwilling to work and unmotivated to do anything, I am here to write to the world and document what it’s really like to be in the final year of university, scrambling to pull your life together.

Especially when the response to asking for help seems so consistently half-arsed or so bluntly dismissive.

I know that the world owes me nothing, and I am not the centre of the universe. I’m not even the centre of my own mind.

But I do think it’s about time things started stabilising and becoming at least a little more predictable.

Not easy. Just a bit more navigable.

Even the app I’m using to write this post has had enough…

Is that ironic?