They might just come in the form of a site called Flexijobs.
It’s a site that aggregates and lists and lets you apply for the kind of remote jobs you can do from home on your computer.
Which sounds perfect for me. Fab, even.
It could easily be my portal back into actually earning money, and that would do a lot of very good things for my mental health.
It would give me some ammunition to use against my deep and terrible sense of shame for being such a burden on everybody and never having done anything with my life.
It would boost my self-esteem immensely. Like Heinlein said, money is the sincerest form of flattery. People can blow smoke up your ass about how great you are when it’s not costing them anything but when they are willing to actual part with their hard earned cash for what you do, that means they must really like it.
And, ya know, I’d have more money. Can’t discount the positive effect of that. I would feel more financially secure and therefore more emotionally secure, and I would have more cash to spend on little treats and other fun things.
My current lifestyle is already pretty decent. I don’t feel deeply deprived of anything. It’s nothing like when I was on regular welfare and feeling like everything bright and shiny and good in the world was out of reach for me, and I would stare at people, say, going in and out of a restaurant and know that they had no idea how good they had it just for being able to eat out now and then.
God, no wonder I was so depressed.
Anyhow, my point was that getting remote work could be very good for me.
Now, because I am me, I actually discovered Flexijobs last Thursday and it has been sitting there in a couple of tabs ever since.
What can I say, discovering something that (potentially) amazing was very intense for me and I had to leave it alone for a while until the intensity wore off enough that I could go there and truly check it out.
And yup, I know that is bad. Were I a healthy fox, discovering that place would have filled me with enthusiasm and excitement and I would have rode that high into signing u and applying for a buttload of jobs.
But I am not healthy and so I have to deal with it my own way.
What I am definitely NOT going to do is let Flexijobs get lost in the tempestuous turmoil of my brain as I became avoidant of yet another amazing thing and end up not doing a thing with it until months later when I finally close the tabs and give up forever.
Fuck that noise. I’m not going to let that happen this time. I am going to stand up and face the hot winds of opportunity and fight my way uphill against them until I get to the top and overcome them enough to actually do what’s good for me for a change.
And I don’t care what it takes for me to get there. I know that those hot winds will be trying to blow me down back into my “place” and I am going to be ready to fight the god damned things the whole way.
Because I not only want more, I deserve more. I am too amazing to live in this state of genteel poverty. I deserve to have my own home, satisfying and lucrative work which makes me feel like I am finally a part of the world and a grownup, and a man in my life who makes me feel good because I love the hell out of him and he loves the hell out of me and that’s really all we need.
And Flexijobs might just be my key to all of that.
I’m so excited!
More after the break.
On being antisocial
Strictly speaking, I have been antisocial for my entire life.
“But Fruvous!” I hear you say. “You’re so sweet and kind and friendly! You can’t possibly be all antisocial and mean!”
And you’re right, I’m not. I am, scientifically speaking, a sweetie.
But I am nevertheless antisocial in that due to having Avoidant Personality Syndrome, I shy away from social interaction in ways that can occasionally be mistaken for the more stereotypical antisocial behaviour.
For example, if you were passing me in a corridor and you said hi and I was too shy and withdrawn to say hi back, you might feel like I deliberately snubbed you.
But I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I would never want to make someone else feel the icy cold caress of a failed attempt at connection like I have felt so much in my life.
And yet I am fairly certain that I must have done so inadvertently many times.
That’s what comes of being very hard to reach. People who try to reach out to you end up going away hurt and confused because of their lack of success. And they then have no choice but to walk away from you, shaking their heads and nursing some hurt feelings, quite likely to never try again.
Meanwhile, I am crouching behind my invisible wall feeling miserable and lonely and wondering why nobody likes me.
They would have if I had know how to let them in.
I’m working on it.
I’m still not sure if I would have been able to connect with people even if I had known what I was doing way back when. I am an irreducibly weird guy who finds it hard to relate to everyday people.
I might have made nerdy friends before college, though. I get along great with my fellow nerds. They are my tribe. They are my people.
And maybe if I had gained nerdy friends earlier, I would have had some vague chance of having normal, healthy teenaged social development.
Would have been a lot better than my hermetically sealed high school years.
Plus there is my insistence on being myself no matter what. By the core values of our individualistic culture, that is noble and heroic.
But it’s also very antisocial. Actually getting along with others requires at least a little bit of compromised individuality so that you can seem like part of the same herd as others.
Being a lone wolf might seem cool, but it’s not.
In the real world, lone wolves die.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.