Job Interview

I have a job interview on Wednesday.

I've been working in a school as a supply LSA (learning support assistant) since December, I earn £65/day.  I have an interview for the same job at the same school but employed directly rather than as a supply staff working for an agency.

The job is in Chelmsford, which is 29 miles from my home.

In preparation for the job interview I thought I'd better do some maths to figure out the material benefit of getting a full time job.  After all I'd be spending the time of my life doing that work. 

It's demanding work with significant responsibility.  I've been working in education for students with special needs.  I've been bitten, scratched and hit in the face, and by Fridays I'm generally exhausted.
However, I like working, I want to continue working, and I like that particular work.  I like being part of a team and I like working with the students and I very much like wearing a lanyard and riding the commuter train and going to work.  It makes me feel that I'm participating, like I'm being a good citizen, a good role model for my children and most importantly, after an agonizing period of  unemployment, it makes me feel that once again I have a derserving and rightful place in society.

However,
the job takes my time, as well as my energy and focus, and my time is my life. Nowadays, my weekends are spent cleaning my house, tending the vegetable plot, bike maintenance, looking after myself and family and freinds and preparing for the working week ahead, all pretty normal stuff.  Full time, means full time; there's not much time to focus in a meaningful way on other activities; it means that I never will get to master the theremin, I haven't even practiced once since I started full time work last December.

But needs must, and I'm fit for work.

So, here's the maths. My question was this; what material difference will a full time job and a stable income make to my life?

I was shocked by the answer.

Annual income   £13,000

Annual travel cost from Wivenhoe to Chelmsford         £2,400
Annual council tax bill                                                    £1,800
Rental value of my house    £750/month   or P/A           £9,000

I'm not pedantic, and just wanted a very rough costing, didn't want to scare myself or face the likely reality that even in full time work, I'd still be poor, so thought I'd  stick to those 3 basics; travel, rent and coucil tax.  Three unavoidable and fixed expenses, outgoings that couldn't be massaged by maintaining a strict household budget.  Other expenses such as phone, electricity, water, food, I thought, those can be juggled, so they're less important, and I just wanted a rough costing, just to check for viability before I commit my life to a full time job.

So I added those 3 basic costs; housing, travel to get to work and council tax and it came to

£13,200.

The job isn't viable.    

If something isn't viable it means it isn't going to work.


              

F-rigging Facebook

FAcebook, as now know takes our data.  It does this because data has value. So it takes our data in return for using it's app that is in turn used as space to sell for advertising.

And we are the mugs.  Job seekers.

No income, eveyone wins they all get paid, but we who generate the data get used.  It's enough.  And to make it worse I thought as an add popped up on Facebook telling me that I could earn £1000/day as a model, of course I clicked on it and then today I found myself spending £38 on stuff I'll need for a photoshoot to get the photos I'll need to put together a portfolio if I have any chance of actually getting a job, even a low paid one, it has to be a scam.

It's all a scam

student loans to pay tuition fees

health insurance

even on my electricity bill which I paid today with money that can't be replaced, unless I get a modelling job, it has on the bill, a number to ring fot debt advice, ie. it is now normal that people can't pay their electricity bill, debt and financial struggles is normal, what the fuck is going on.

Well today I have 2 air bnb guests, ( I;ll be sleeping at my neighbour's house) that's £40, but I spent 40 today on toothpaste, tights and stuff I'll need for the photo shoot and tomorrows money will cover the cost of the train fare, shit. I am dum.  I am very dum.

I'm an outsider, and if I pretend otherwise I'm a fraud

I've been thinking about outsider art, like that of Daniel Johnson's Walking the Cow (click on the link below),

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXCdYobgr5Y

And I think it's somehow relevant to me as a inactive in terms of official employment status.  I choose do voluntary work. 
 
Outsiders are invisible to the mainstream, they produce work in private.

Outsiders write in their bedrooms.

Outsiders use makeshift materials, they don't get funding for equipment, they record on a mobile phone or a webcam

Outsiders sometimes get noticed and celebrated by the mainstran, like Daniel Johnson has. 

I find my getting twitchy when I leave my bedroom and need to introduce myself to a group and there's a need for an identity, I'm an outsider because I'm inside, I work in my bed. I'm not part of a group or an organizationSometimes I'm asked to leave my bedroom and talk at puplic events.


When I watch Daniel Johnson perform his songs I ask my self what is it that makes me relate to this?

Why do I listen to the end and then play it again and again?

Is it just because he's different, his music doesn't conform to what society would normally regards as art?  Is it because, as an outsider myself I want to endorse the work of other outsiders?  Do I feel some sense of solidarity with an artist who expresses himself so openly and in doing so becomes vulnerable.  He's vulnerable to how he might be represented, people may laugh, people may say his work is rubbish, even worse it could just go unrecognized, all that passion and delivery and outpouring of what's going on inside, could just get absorbed in the ether and have no effect  whatsoever.

At the weekend I was playing cards with friends and family, we were talking about an upcoming event when I've been asked to speak.  It's an event by the establishment and for the establishment, and I'm the outsider called to entertain, but I'm not an entertainer per se, I just do stuff that seems to entertain people.  I have the time and energy to indulge in doing stuff that takes my fancy since I quit my book packing job.  I have time to watch youtube videos, and make you tube videos and podcasts and to write stuff for the ether.  Any way, while we were playing cards, I suggested that I could use the event to get some income, maybe pass round a begging bowl to pay the water bill that I don't have money for.

But I'm not serious, well actually, maybe I am serious. I do my voluntary job, without pay, I do public speaking, without pay, I'm working hard to organize a community event, I pay my council tax, without pay, (from money borrowed from my Dad) and my debt increases; without a solution

because,  I won't work for less than a living wage, and I won't sign a contract for zero hours and no I won't run a car to participate as rentier.

So I choose live precariously as an outsider.

But being an outsider, conversely means being mostly inside, inside the bedroom, can't afford the gym membership so the bedroom floor is where I work my biceps, the bedroom walls are is the gallery space for my artwork, the unsecured Wifi of my neighbours is my cinema ticket

Sometimes it's hard as an outsider without a source of funding to which you're accountable, to know what your doing and what are you doing it all for; to quote Daniel Johnson, "I really don't know what I came here for, I'm walking the cow"


out of work identity

I'm the outsder.

workers in the gig economy are outsiders, the shift in work automization will effectivly push more workers to the shpere of the outside, armies on non-participants, painting on bedroom walls and singing songs for the ether.

But the privelage of being an outsider is ... what is it? there was something I'd thought of, now it's slipped my mind

Outsiders don't go to meetings in coffee shops, they leave comments on Youtube videos.

not a teacher or an NHS worker, not in the MET or member of a sporting fraternity

The big question is how can outsiders act collectively?
How can we claim our rights to dignity through, proper housing, living wages and a fair standard to living.


insiders find outsiders quirky and interesting but they are nonetheless the 'other', exotic, refugees, the poor, non-participants, below the radar, behind closed doors and drawn curtains, they don't walk their dogs or do the school run, they've been working the nightshift but still can't pay the TV licence.