Things have descended into total chaos in my life, and I’ve largely been unable to continue doing anything much at all, never mind art. Without wishing to totally depress everyone completely, I’m currently paying the bedroom tax on my son’s room while we wait to find out if he comes home.
I’m incredibly angry at the DWP. When I graduated from University 5 years ago, having worked damned hard for my degree, I had planned to gain some kind of well paid employment, preferably within the arts, and no longer be reliant on benefits to support myself and my family. But here I am, five years on, still reliant on benefits, still applying for work without any reply, and without any feedback from potential employers why I wasn’t successful – my latest failed job application was for a gallery assistant at the National Centre For Craft & Design. And I set up the LAN in order to create work for myself in the spirit of entrepreneurship, but still I don’t earn any income for doing that.
I’ve been advised to apply for ACE funding – many times I’ve applied and been unsuccessful.
When I go to careers advice and state that I need some form of income to run the LAN / my own practice, I’m told to get some other job. But I’ve been applying for other jobs since I graduated, at least, ones that are suitable for single parents, that don’t require a car, a long commute on an unreliable train service, “flexible” hours (which usually means weekends or evenings) or ridiculously low pay.
I really just want to be paid for the work I do every day doodling, illustrating, observing, creating, questioning, seeking answers, whatever it is. Mainly simply living.
Time is now running out for me. I feel ever more as though I’m being pushed over the edge of some kind of financial precipice – just when I thought I’d made it to relative safety, another foothold has crumbled.
But this last week, with bills rocketing, my income dropping to below poverty levels in a sustained financially abusive regime imposed by “austerity”, feeling powerless and hopeless, some little ray of defiance picked itself up from the floor.
I submitted something for Emily Speed’s Work Makes Work blog /p/497389/
And I saw amateurs applying for funding, and I thought that I can’t let them make me feel like giving up, I have to keep pushing, no matter how futile it seems, no matter how many days, weeks, months go by with yet more dictatorial criteria being meted out at us – the latest particular evil is housing benefit sanctions for people working part time – https://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2014/02/27/part-time-workers-to-face-housing-benefit-sanctions/
Oddly, despite this news, I decided for the first time in months to start working on the graphic novel again. The only thing that has kept me sane is doodling in my sketchbook, keeping drawing, but they’ve been just random things. If I don’t work on the graphic novel I feel as though I may as well be unemployed, and that’s not going to help.
