Jun 16

 Tired. Tired. Tired. And everything hurts. I mean super hurts.

Old school hurts. Like when I couldn't step down a step hurts.

Perhaps it's the swimming and all my muscles are screaming. Perhaps it's my on and off again random pain and sensitivity malarkey. I'm reasonably sure it's not the swimming - it kicks in super hard after sleep, but also flares at random points in the day and is sharp take your breath away pain. Not dull achey muscle type pain.

Painkillers take the edge off for a little while.

I think it's just one of my cycles. Also got big black eyes on waking. And red bloodshot irritated eyeballs. And tingling arms. Lack of oxygen my dude. Not enough oxygen going around the body. Makes me wonder if the sharp silvery pains are also this - basically lactic acid build up from anaerobic activity. 

Anywho.

This week has been a bit of a burn, one that I can't sustain at this point. I need to stop.

I did a little work on a "new" shelf that has been sitting there for a year. Finally cut it to its final size. Sanded it all down. And varnished it. It hurt to do it. Pain flare.

Then I've sorted out the router. Fiddled around with the server, pushed it out of being the boss of the network, and yada blah. Also tiring. And painful. 5 minutes of physical fiddling around - reaching for cables, standing up and leaning over makes everything scream in pain. Old beyond my years.

And then yesterday and the evening before - the Hazel day. Up early to get there for 9.30am across a busy city. Made sure Hazel was up half the way through my stupid early morning routine. We still ended up leaving a bit late, but, I had kinda figured she would be slow. She's not good in the mornings. Or with times. Or deadlines. If left to her own devices she's a disaster in the mornings. Or with times. Or deadlines. Hence she stayed the night before. My scheduling when it needs to be is tight. So my shuffling around and getting ducks in a row makes her move a little, and then at some point I come and kick her. Nicely. Gently. But a kick nevertheless. Hey. Time to move.

We got there bang on time, literally, to the minute. She was anxious before, during. And fluttered on the edge of being a pain in the ass. However she actually apologised a couple of times for low key needling me in her anxiety. It was ok. And she was aware she was doing it. In the scale of things it was extremely minor. I was calm. Emitted calm. Told her to trust me. For her part she has been way wayyy worse. A monster. She was not a monster. Just a little hyped. And a little fussy.

The new place was alright. Somewhat sketchy around the entrance. A somewhat sketchy vibe all over. But then. This is the landscape you're in. Bottom rung of housing. Bottom rung of society. Those in pain. Those that can't cope. Those that have zero money. Those with issues and dysfunctions, bad choices, bad luck, that don't fit in. The sharp pointy end of society that suffers from low key neglect.

On the way in we passed two dudes drinking from cans. At 9.30. They were friendly. Helpful. But their demons cuddled up to them clearly on show.

Despite that the building was better looked after than Hazel's old one. A little more care. A little more community. Less sketchy. More modern.

The place itself is a good deal bigger than her old one, and cheaper. It is I think an upgrade in terms of living space. And seemed like a nice place you could make a home of. The view was of trees and green and loveliness. And a balcony that stretched the length of two rooms, very nice, albeit a little narrow. But still. Nice.

The place has communal heating and hot water, the building runs off wood pellets, and everyone shares the same heating system. This is way more efficient than individual setups, the US has a lot of this in their cities, and in bigger blocks this can be a thing. The upshot of it all is the heating and hot water is very cheap and to all intents and purposes, limitless.

I stayed quiet and in the background for the whole thing. Not my show. Not my decision. I was just there for moral support and a lift to and from the place. Hazel asked if there was anything I could think of, question wise. But it had mostly been covered. I asked about the status of the place, council owned or what. Charity owned. A housing association. Basically a spin off of housing development. Where developers build X amount of properties for profit and then Y amount of properties for social housing. The government forces their arm. And in this case. Spun off into it's own not for profit organisation to run it.

So bigger space. Better neighbourhood. More managed. Lower rent.

But. Further out of town. Way less light and airy.

For me, the whole place was indeed tomb like. Don't get me wrong the view out of the windows was lovely and open. But it was shaded. The light was shaded. On a bright sunny June day. In winter the place will be darkness and gloom. Which is fine if you're fine with that. Me, it wouldn't bother me too much. Although I dare say you'd get itchy for open skies and light. I directly raised the point with Hazel even before we got there. You've noted my place is too dark (it's not). If this is you genuinely not liking shaded places, then carefully assess the light in the new place. If it's you just being disagreeable then don't worry about it so much. Frank. No judgement. No venom. Just a. Is this a real thing or a mental by product. Make sure you take it into account at the new place. Hazel is extremely flakey when it comes to making weighed decisions. Her mania takes over, any kind of critical thinking goes out of the window, and it just ends up as a spur of the moment impulse, which often as not, ends up biting her on the ass. It also highlights why in the past she has had issues with addiction. And also hilariously why she is the worlds best sucker of infomercials and adverts on TV. Particularly the stupid wacky shit you get late at night. Every single advert break she ends up wanting the thing on show. A marketers dream.

Anywho.

Her current place is as light and as airy as you get. With nice views. But of course you pay the price of having more stairs to climb. Hazel is struggling to do stairs.

As I waited for her I let the vibe of her current place wash over me. It was actually pretty nice. A little sketchy on her stairs. But. Nice. Trees. Green. Right on top of the city. Of course. The neighbours are diabolical. People come. People go. And as said before. Hazel doesn't make this easy on herself by having zero de-escalation skills and her borderline making her "feisty". Everything becomes a warzone. If not immediately. Then in 3 months.

She's happy. She agreed to take the place. Is happy she's moving. She has an interview to get through to take it, but, that should be a formality. She has a bunch of bureaucracy to go through now, to get her benefits switched from paying the current place rent to the new one. A whole bunch of other stupid paperwork steps. But she seems ok with it. With that stuff, she's pretty resilient. To a point. She doesn't have any money herself. No job. Fully on benefits. So to some extent. It's just pick your place and move. As shitty as the very bottom of the rung can be, there is, also, absolutely, a safety net there. And Hazel is the poster child for it, completely dependent on everyone else to function. Far from easy. Far from comfortable at times. The government tends to treat you like Enemy No.1 and make you jump through any number of humiliating, aggressive steps to get what you want. Truly awful. But. There are very long periods of calm and no stress. Basically. When the powers that be stop fucking with you and poking you, and have just agreed to pay you and meet your needs regularly.

In Hazels case she is free of this until 2027 at the earliest. Hilariously the government doesn't have the money to switch people about and assess them. So everything is on a waiting list. In the meantime, everyone gets paid same as usual. No assessments.

Which if you cut the bullshit out is probably the cheapest way to run things anyway. Rather than spend shit tons of money on chasing this that and the other and employing countless people to be assholes, just taking a big picture view, cutting that expense and letting people be, ends up working cheaper. This is in fact one of the arguments for a UBI, a universal basic income. Rather than all the fucking hooplah of do you qualify for X, who are you, why do you need it, let's talk about this every 3 months, just pay a set amount to anyone/everyone and be done. When you sit and calculate the beans. It actually works out very efficient. There is quite a cost to pay to be a mean asshole it turns out. It's a simple calculation. Employ someone at X wages to police person Y. Or just give the money you'd spend on employing someone at X wages to person Y anyway. Or in actuality. A fraction of it. Everyones better off. Money and wellbeing wise ( because trust me, employing people to be assholes is no great career for the assholes either, and the corrosive mental effects is super real. A friend of mine lasted all of a couple of days before handing her notice in from being a phone operator for them. The awfulness was too much )

I do get the penny pinching scrooge like mentality. There is that eternal worry. Oh. People will exploit it. Always a free hand out. Spiralling costs ! No one will do anything. For one thing I am not sure that's true. Some people like being busy and doing shit. And for another thing. Our society is now so labour efficient. And getting ever more efficient by the day. That the point where you have to ensure everyone is working hard to make society work ie not starve to death was passed a long time ago. We aced that a while ago, and are inexorably shifting towards a point where almost no one will be required to do shit anymore. It's all robots, automation, AI and renewable energy baby. The actual problem with society is all that productivity boost was not spread amongst everyone and instead captured by the top 1%. Hence the wealth inequalities. And the graphs that show the wealth inequality tracking the productivity boost going on. If you actually spread that out. A lot of people could actually be looked after better. People could be less stressed overall. Lower misery. Lower strokes, cardio, yada blah.

But that of course would make a few insanely rich people less rich.

And we can't stand for that.

In very simple terms. For the incredibly hard of thinking ( or arch capitalists ). Consider Agriculture. Once upon a long ago for a group of size X, you would need most of them to be dedicated to the labour of producing food. Labour intensive. The benefits of scale meant that you could also afford to have some specialists in other areas other than food. Blacksmiths. Stone masons. Mathematicians. Managers. But still. The majority of your group needed to be focused on food production.

Over time agricultural technology improved. Ploughs. Animal pulled ploughs. Irrigation. Fertiliser. Crop rotation. Tractors. Combine Harvesters. Automated machines to pick and plant everything. Automated combine harvesters that drive themselves with GPS.

All of which now means.

A single person. A small group of people. Can now feed the whole group. You've liberated easily over 50% of your population to go do something other than plant and pick turnips.

Wow.

So now you can do more specialisation. Fancier. Machinists. And computers. And interior decorators. Some of which feed back into making even more automation gains.

But just on a food basis. If we just stopped at food.

A handful of people would make food. A handful of people would make and maintain the machines.

And the vast vast majority of everyone else would just loaf about. They wouldn't need to do anything. Everyone would be fed. Happy days.

This is where our society has advanced too. Freed from labour intensive food gathering. Freed from the yoke of survival. Close to a utopia.

We are not there though. Not because of the realities. But because we had perversely organised society to be that way. All those gains. Have made a tiny few very rich. And cursed everyone else to still live under the yoke of survival.

Bullshit.

Despite this absolute fucking outrage. Continuing advances which make everything else seem trivial, where all the labour gets automated out mean that it's going to be increasingly difficult for capitalist types to justify the current outrageous setup. Not that it means they will just roll over and die. Oh hell no. Power always hangs onto power. They will of course try to channel out every single advanced into wealth for the few. It will increasingly stratify and become obviously imbalanced. Trouble is likely to ensue. But you never know. Maybe the guilt and social embarassment will get so bad, the greedy setup will roll over somewhat voluntarily. On the other hand. Never underestimate the shitbaggery narcisists and sociopaths can get up to. They literally do not care about you. Would rather drive a tank over you than give you a single moment. Because fuck you. You don't matter.

Anywho. Massive tangent aside.

After the flat visit, Hazel wanted garbage to eat. So I took her to Greggs. Then back home. She then wanted to come swimming with me. So we did that too - after I had a nap ( too much ! ). And then she wanted a Costa after swimming. So I got that for her too.

And at the end of the day. Took the dogs for a splash at the river.

In short.

She was spoiled for the day.

Favourite drinks. Cake. Chocolate. Coffee. Toasties. Pastries. Swimming. No cost. No hassles. Chauffeured.

Which is fine. I don't mind. No complaints. There is a small amount of peace I get in making sure someone else has what they need. Of course. See my earlier things about being compelled to help people.

That Just Makes You Nice.

Uh huh.

If only it were that simple.

I've decided to push back the visit to Oxford a week back. This week has taken it out of me. And the day with Hazel was a lot more full on than I anticipated. Mainly because I ended up spoiling her. Not that she doesn't get spoilt otherwise. But still.

But also I had realised even before picking Hazel up that I was doing a little too much this week. I could feel me slow burning out CFS style. Don't bang and bust. Trying not to. I could subtly feel my pace was too much and that a bust was threatening. Slow up. Stop.

So my new much firmer plan is now to take the next week of entirely. Well. I say entirely. Hazel needs her keys picking up next week. So that will be a trip out. And I still need to sort the server out for Oxford. And maybe put the shelf I made actually up on the wall.

My plan now is to spend 3 days in total on site rather than a week. Because. By the time I am done. I will only have a week left of my month off from actual work. Time flies. And my time flies apparently by doing shit for everyone else. Ah ha ha. Sigh. I'm an idiot. I know it.

I'm gonna drive down on Sunday - 4 hour and something drive. Then do work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. NOT attempt to drive back on Wednesday and instead stay another night. Then drive back on Thursday. Something like that. I am considering driving a little on Wednesday to put some miles behind me before staying somewhere overnight. This will somewhat break the stupid journey up into a more manageable chunk.

Whilst I daresay for most normal people, a 4 hour car journey is no problem, for me, CFS boy, it represents a challenge. Don't bang and bust. Don't bang and bust. And I need to pace myself. Or else.

Really.

I'd just like to chill out. Rest. Do nothing. Hang out with Athena.

Maybe next time.

In some ways I think this will be my last huzzah. In more than some ways.

I caught myself looking at Athena yesterday when she slept. She is so beautiful. Such a pretty doggo with her fancy white markings, flashy socks and paintbrush dipped tail. Lovely. And it made me so sad that she was getting so old. Almost gone. And I spiralled hard. Into sad. And I honestly could not see a future when she was gone. An empty house. On one level it's stupid. Pathetic. That I could be tied so hard. "It's only a dog". Except it's not to me. A best friend. A stability. A happiness I don't have. An enthusiasm for life and small things. And on the other side of that wall is my bottomless pit of sadness. Despair at the world. Cruelty of life. Of not enjoying things. Of shit health. And shit mental health. And none of it being worthwhile.

And. Yeah.

I am. Ok with it. Do what I can. When I can. Until I can't. And then ?

I don't know.

Hazel with her dysfunctional wiles picked up on it.

What's wrong. Are you ok.

Just. Sad.

Is it Ares she asked.

No. Yes. No. Athena. Getting old. Not going to be here. Life is cruel. I don't like life. I cannot cope with it. There is something wrong with me. Just. Sad.

She gave me a hug.

And I took her home.

The life of Johnny.

A tragedy. In many parts.

Cheer up ! Could be worse !

*death stare*