I want to go home

In which I booked flights home, in a haze of panic and regression

I have been having stress dreams about money and inflation. I think most people in London are currently going through the same thing. It’s not collective unconscious. It’s the fact that everything suddenly became way more expensive than they already had been.

My new flatmate moved back to London after bunking with her mother in a coastal town south of the city, because of the pandemic and a break-up. She works full time at an auction house — surrounded by beautiful things daily — and also on Saturdays, in a bookstore. She started selling books when she was furloughed, and carried on working there part-time, because she loved it. Now that she’s back here, in the city, she says she can’t stop working there; she can’t afford not to anymore.

In late June last year, I started working as a production assistant for a small brand in Hackney, where I moved to in February. (With job prospects slim and the looming presence of an increasing unease, my then-flatmate moved back to Zürich, where most jobs, no matter how menial, paid commensurate to the cost of living.) I started at 40 hours a week, grateful for a steady, stable flow of income for the first time in close to four years. “I could go to the studio after work,” I thought. I lived close enough to both places of work anyway. It wouldn’t be that bad.

Most people, when they hear about what I do, have a picture of a sweet, zen day in mind, where all we do is pour candles and eat croissants from the bakery across the road. Delivery people would come in and comment on how everything smelled nice. And, on slow days, it was really good. The stuff we made did smell amazing, and I rarely left work with fume-induced dizzy spells, like I would when I’d come from a day of painting. But, the work is hard labour, especially now that operations have expanded and we’ve moved to a warehouse that’s a 40-minute commute now, rather than a free 4-minute walk.

Just before I passed my probation in September, I handed in my notice. I didn’t have any backup plans yet, but it was too much work — packing wholesale, serving up coffee, and minding customers on top of actual producing — for too little pay. Divvied up between the hours we put in, the annual salary did not add up to London Living Wage, which at the time was £10.85 per hour. (It’s now at £11.05 per hour, but that doesn’t make too much of a difference, as LLW is not enforced by law.) I made the decision to quit after realising that despite the proximity of places I had to be, 40 hours of everything just left me with no energy to do anything else but work and sleep.

I hadn’t been in the studio I paid monthly rent for in two months. I didn’t move here to be a candle maker, I thought. Anyway, we had a small chat, and I got my hours reduced to 24, a three-day work week. I asked for a raise and got a small one. Even then, I barely scrape by. I do have time to work on my art practice now, but I have only ever have show once or twice a year, if that. It’s a very tiring frame of mind to be in all the time. I hate thinking about money, and talking about money, and yet, my brain never leaves this headspace. No amount of self-care (which often costs money, lol) or meditation can take me out of it, because once I’ve done all that, I’m still left figuring out where to allocate my money.

I’m here on a visa that prohibits recourse to public funds, which means I can’t live on credit. For better or worse, I’ve not been approved for overdrafts or credit cards. So, whilst I have not much money to spend on anything else, at least I don’t have debt.

I’ve just written at length about money, and I hate myself for it. But that is truly where my brain constantly goes every time I have a free moment. Sometimes I’ll think about the Red Velvet comeback, or the new season of Married at First Sight Australia, or maybe what to eat. But I’ll come back to my reality and realise I’m scouring a waxy warehouse floor and mopping it with bleach and hot water, and then I think how did I get here at 33 years old, with a postgraduate degree?

(I’ll then think: “Your degree was in art theory and philosophy” and then I’ll get my answer, lol.)

I’ve been thinking about moving in with my partner. I made a deal with him about saving up before his current lease ends in August, and if I have x amount of money in my savings, then we can go for it. However, in the middle of writing this letter, which is gross and upsetting, I couldn’t help but answer the call of its title — I want to go home — and I booked a flight to Manila. Which took my savings back down to basically nothing.

But I miss my family, and I want to be around people who will take care of me. Even just for a little bit.

Pay day isn’t until Thursday, the end of the month, but direct debits for home rent and studio rent and bills get taken on Friday, the first of the next month. The longstanding guideline was to take 30% of your salary for rent. If I did that, I’d be living 3 hours outside London, and I’d be paying so much for the commute and catching up on sleep in my free time.

Anyway, I’m sorry this was long and boring. I have to write exhibition notes and an article, but like I said, this is all I have the energy to think about. Maybe now that I’ve sent my thoughts out into the ether (i.e. the Internet), I can think about other stuff.

Probably not, but thanks for listening.

I love my life here. I just need to figure out how to afford to keep living here, with my partner (even though my current flatmates are a dream), and not kill myself in the process.