I had my biweekly benefits interview today (apparently they tried to tell me to stay home and do it by phone. Oh well). These sessions are really more of a catch up and a subtle prodding at my mental state to make sure I’m not planning to take any baths with a toaster. Which several days ago was a not unattractive option for me. I was crying a lot.

(I know you are tired of hearing me talk about crying. Again, I’m sorry. I opened a mental Pamdora’s box and I can’t seem to find the lid).

Fortunately the mood passed. A good thing, I hope. The future can seem ominous, especially at year’s end. Suicide rates go up at Christmas for a reason

What I wanted to write about was a slight follow up from yesterday: little things. Little victories. I was seen by a work coach who doesn’t really know me, so we did the edited “this is what I want in life” chat. I don’t know what I want in life really, other than to create, so I usually stick to the one area of art I actually have some published work in: photography.

I had a photo used as part of an advertising campaign for the Sony RX100 MK2 model camera. It was a collaboration with hitrecord.org, a community I was a member of at the time (I still am, but take part in little of it anymore. My last check for my work from them was 27 cents. What can you say to that?)

Anyway, fifty of us were featured in their ad campaign. It was the most money I ever made from art: just over a thousand pounds. I bought a second hand Samsung laptop since my desktop was dying. It was the best computer I ever owned.

I gave the abridged story of this tiny triumph to my work coach. She did the politely impressed response. I shrugged, muttering I had done little since. I had a screenplay considered for broadcast here in the UK, and was featured in a few other hitrecord.org publications. It amounted to nothing in the end.

I know I sound ungrateful, and I don’t mean to seem so dismissive: I’m proud of my little achievements. That’s not the problem.

I’m ashamed thst I failed to turn them into anything but this utter mess, my failures. This life of emptiness and pennilessness. I failed. I am a failure, a loser, it’s that simple.

Little things can be good, but what we take (or don’t take) from them can be bad. Useless as I am in life, I took nothing but stupidity from mine.

So it goes.