I'm presently overwhelmed and almost paralysed by an anxiety that rose up when Heather told me about her daughter not having got a good job she had a chance at, and Heather saying "I've told her she mustn't stop looking".
It brought back the anxiety I felt after college, when for two years I pissed around trying to improve my folio on a false promise of work from one of the partners at the Artist Partners Agency, and discovered afterwards that I had crippled myself in the normal job markets.
Even worse, I'm remembering that I've wasted nearly 20 years between my realisation that even though I did have talent I wasn't psychologically suited to be any kind of artist. In those years Heather's daughter has gone from birth to young womanhood, that's how many years have gone.
I've thought how I didn't absolutely waste the years - I took night classes to improve my prospects, I enrolled on a part time business computing HND/BSc course which I had to abandon when I got a job, a menial job but a job.
But I didn't make much use of my admittedly limited opportunities, largely out of the feeling I have now, the feeling I've had all my adult life, that nothing will work out for me, immobilised into a sickened passivity by fear for and of my future
The difference I feel between the anxiety I used to feel, in my early twenties to late 30s, is - I imagine - the difference between being in a plane ready to jump and fearing my parachute won't open, and being in freefall and finding my chutes have not opened and the ground is rushing up towards me.
Both Ian and Heather have observed that knowing what is wrong I now need to act, but what to do?
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