Saturday, 12.04 am

It's year 45 and 8 months in the alternative big brother house (the one with one person and a cat), the person is typing on the computer and the cat's enjoying her 'fleadom' (ie flea freedom) by climbing all over the lounge furniture. After yesterday's admirable adherence to the job list, today was more laid back, I needed a little break but didn't let any other remaining jobs slip either. I know these jobs are a pleasure when there's someone else around, and just average to boring when not, maybe as well as the cleaner I'll find an unpaid companion (homeless maybe?) who could just turn up some days and hang about the house. Besides the obvious security implications it may be the only chance I have...

Blogging nearly every day now of course there's far less to report each day, but it's more of a challenge to draw anything out that can be added. I did realise if I worked from or very near home I could probably manage about 20-30 hours a week but how many regular jobs let that happen? The only people I've heard working from home are self employed and in very successful professions that rake in the money and are usually in great demand. Counselling is not one of those, and with more people qualifying every year it's only the select few who make a career of it in this country, especially as it's not a recognised profession by the state. So apart from writing which again, is self employed, I don't have any skills or qualifications like book keeping that can be done from here on a regular basis. But as the books I read say, if I'm paying the bills today, forget tomorrow, as it means I don't need an income, until I do. If that happens, then deal with it. Not perfectly logical as with no income of course it only takes a measurable amount of time for that day to come, and I'm trying to prevent it, not wait till I have to cure it. But it's true worrying as well makes it worse not better.

As far as my housework is concerned, unless a house is in a real state, even though I know I've done something I can hardly tell it's any different if at all. As I said, all the bookshelves and cupboards are full, and I'm very slowly looking for things I can get rid of as I have a house full of things but it's still empty. It's only the rare new technology like the MSN text watch apparently heading for the UK next year that I'd get, and I tend to get bored with them after a day or two. You can't replace people with machines.

Well, I've been passing on my URLs to a number of people this week as the comment total has dropped so suddenly, though I read a teen blog yesterday, which was the most awful shite I could have written myself as a parody word for word, which had no comments for pages. It wasn't a thick kid, it was a first year student with three A levels in real subjects. Now when I was 15, let alone 18, if I wrote a diary I have to admit it was identical to now, though with a little less structure. I was never a teenager, mainly through being an only child and spending my first 21 years listening to legal talk between my parents and intellectual talk amongst their friends. They had little choice to drag me along with them most of the time as I'd get bored left at home on my own, and I just made myself part of the group though I hear many of their friends were highly unimpressed by it. I always spoke English, not teenspeak or text speak, and until I left prep school at 12 almost spoke posh. Now so many teenagers of all classes talk like they've had a lobotomy and write like a retarded 9 year old. I hope to god it's a phase, as having started teaching in 1985, saw the gradual beginning of swearing and arguing with teachers I'd never seen at school myself. No class distinction, I taught all over, and there was no difference. Now I dread to think what goes on 20 years later. That was why I gave up, combined with the assumption a new qualification would lead to a new job (yes, 5 years serving in a shop). So now I have gained and partially used qualifications, but as the years passed it became less and less in demand until the work dried up altogether though I was always pretty flexible what I did, it was the hours and location I was fussy about (having not been originally).

But in theory I've produced a lot better quality since I've been free to do so, it's being used and the only final step is finding someone who wants it enough to pay for it. I can write, paint and possibly go on TV again from home, if this reached a paid stage I assume I'd earn so much per item that I could get away with a large return for small bursts of production. I may well have a time when I feel like working elsewhere again, it's only a recent period of poor health that's kept me near the house a lot and I was far more flexible before then. I am apparently (no surprise to me) a challenge to the doctors as my symptoms don't fit their expectations. Fancy that. But I know my body better than they do from this side, and I'm not surprised, and just hope whatever is wrong they can find it and fix it. It's not a constant problem, but few chronic problems are, you get good and bad times, and I can see this bit is just a phase like any other, but I'll be bloody glad when it's over.