Being This Franceska.....

February has flown by and I'm tired as it seems that I have too much to do in one week and for an unemployed freelance artist, it feels odd as compared to earlier decades when I was employed full time, I think I actually had more time even though my time was someone else's......I'm not making sense. 

Being this Franceska.....age forty-four (how did I get to this age so fast?) - I run art events on Fridays and some weekends and they're full on to the point that after two hours of teaching, I feel wiped out for 24 hours afterwards!

During the week - Mondays to Thursdays, I split my time between admin for my events, admin for my artist career, admin trying to find a part time job and occasionally I create something in 2d or 3d and post it on instagram.....in the meantime, I'm about to move again (with my landlady and her other lodger) to another part of St. Albans (by mid March) and then if all goes well a few months later, I'll be moving again to live with my boyfriend which is quite exciting but feels like a long way off. So everything is in semi chaos.....the attic I rent at our current place is old and falling apart and since moving in last August, I've not really unpacked.....so I live on top of myself and constantly can't find anything which is driving me crazy.

In an effort to get rid of the constant chaos, I've been working for the past few weeks to live a more minimalistic way so I've been organising everything I own, getting rid of lots of unused things and rethinking how I structure my home art studio in my bedroom and how I'd like to live vs how I have been living. 
I've not posted any artwork on Instagram for ages simply because I've not had time to make anything and I long to draw, paint and sculpt but once I'm moved in a few weeks and able to unpack, then hopefully I'll be able to catch up with myself.

So I've been trying to get a Monday & Tuesday part time job and have been approaching the local temp agencies here in St. Albans with various levels of frustration.....I went into a temp agency in person and was told that I couldn't speak to someone in person and that I had to email first to get an appointment.....so I went outside onto the pavement and emailed them through their front window to ask for an appointment......this has happened twice now with two completely different temp agencies and has resulted in no work but lots of stupid unnecessary emails back and forth asking what location I wanted and trying to arrange for appointments. If this is how they conduct themselves, I don't feel very confident of finding work with these agencies.....so the search goes on.

I saw an advertisement for a part time position at the Museum of St. Albans a few weeks ago and immediately got online and downloaded and printed off their job application and filled it in, scanned it back in and emailed it to the contact details provided......and waited and waited and waited.....and then was advised by the Jobcentre to physically visit them in person to show them how eager I was and to find out how the application was going. I visited the museum in the old Town Hall.....and was told to visit the Civic Centre instead as apparently they deal with applications.....so I went to the Civic Centre and was told to go to the museum.....so I went to the Roman museum instead, thinking that maybe they were the best museum to talk to.....and was told to go to the Civic Centre.....so I reached out to the Facebook group for "All Things St. Albans" to find out where I could check on my application and the museum responded and told me to email them......so I did.....and they said that they could only see one record of my application being emailed and no other communication from me .......so I told them that my attempts to reach them had been in person not online and they responded that they would respond to my application in a few months if they thought I'd be a good fit for the job........JOB SEARCHING IS STUPID!!!!

So I'm going to focus on my events in London and see if I can just add more events rather than trying to find a part time job during the week which is more work, less money and not dependable at all.

As a side note: I'm back to creative writing again and have been slowly writing a series of children's books and working on my own illustrations to them......I'm taking it slow as it's been over twenty years since I last published anything and want to enjoy the process for the journey that it is, rather than the product. 

Everything I do feels like a crazy scheme to make money and survive.....I feel like it's a fairground ride that's gone wrong and I want to get off. I want to be financially comfortable and have a full day off to just lie around reading magazines and eating sliced fruit with not a worry in the world....but that sounds like nonsense compared to everything I've got to accomplish and the idea of taking time off sounds utterly impossible. 

To make things that much more exciting, I've had to find a dentist because a tooth that was previously given a root canal over a decade ago by a crap dentist, has developed an infection deep down in my jaw because apparently a bit of root was never removed all those years ago. As I'm on Universal Credit, I'm an NHS patient and the only option to me is to have the tooth pulled....but because I don't want to have to just resort to pulling teeth, I've decided to sign on as a private patient in a futile effort to save the afflicted tooth so I've been scheduled to enjoy a root canal redoing session next Tuesday afternoon which terrifies me but has to be done......and will cost me between £770 to £970 over a period of months.....which I'll have to pay using my meager earnings from my events which are not dependable and make me wish I could have a successful job search and find a part time job that could let me sign off from the Jobcentre once and for all.....I've been dirt poor and on benefits and struggling like this for six years. 

If one more person says....."have you tried this....." or "it'll get better soon...", I'll murder them! 

Another side note: I've been trying to create non sugar recipes and have this evening made a rather successful cashew, pistachio, cacao and date spread that is a little fruity but very similar to a chocolate spread so I'm focussing on small victories like this one! 

To battle my Fibromyalgia, which I neglect often as life gets in the way, I've used a voucher for a (nearly) free Swedish massage so I'm hopeful the therapist can unknot my spine and limbs over the weekend! 

I hope that my next blog entry in a months time, details how wonderful it is to have signed off from the Jobcentre and to be earning more than enough money to cover all my living expenses and begin to save as well as that would be something to look forward to and make this crazy fairground ride worth the unexpected dives and lurches.

​Fingers crossed!