My current contract at work ends next Thursday. They may prolong it, but they still haven’t figured out if that will be the case, which leaves me in a state of uncertainty. Much worse, though, is that I’ve recently learned that some law changes will imply that I will get offered fewer contracts because I can’t speak Basque. I was born here in the Basque Country, but neither of my parents speak it, and I have lived my entire life in a border town in which you only rarely heard Basque. These days, half of the time I can’t understand a word of whatever language some random person is speaking.

For whatever reason, the big boss of our office wants to keep me around, so he suggested that he’d finagle a contract to make me continue for six months more, under a sort of subsidiary company that works for the regional sanitary organization. I would be doing the same job, but with administrative issues (for example, I’d lose my mailbox and likely be unable to access some admin stuff unless they figure out a back door deal). Much worse yet: I’d get paid 25%-30% less.

If I don’t accept that offer (they still haven’t figured out the details), I may work for about two months of the next six. If I take the offer, I’d work under some shady circumstances, tolerating the same shit at the office, but for 25%-30% less money, which, I admit, would likely be what I would be earning in the private sector as an IT guy.

Let me put it out there: I only work because I need to earn money. Isn’t that the case for most people? They seem to pretend otherwise. And to receive a significant (for me) amount of money at the end of the month, I sacrifice my very limited time, my energy, my health, my sanity. If I don’t accept that contract, I’ll likely find myself with a few weeks of peace at the least, which I would use to study for an upcoming public examination (which I need to pass with a good enough grade), but mainly would allow me to write much more.

I’ve been on phone duty for two weeks. I suppose I should feel bad for mentioning constantly that I’m autistic; in any case, autists are known to need order and predictability, but I work as a firefighter of the computer world: we never know what issue we’ll end up dealing with, problems that can prolong themselves for days or weeks. I’m not one of those people with such social anxiety that they are terrified of phone calls, but talking to people drains my energies and makes my skin crawl, so by the end of the day throughout these last two weeks I’ve been out of it, barely able to do anything productive. I’m not even halfway through the current chapter I’m working on, which should conclude the latest sequence of the novel.

I know damn well that I will never make any significant money writing. I write because I need that magic to remain sane enough, although being me and existing in this world feels near unbearable. I’m too deranged to connect with the vast majority of human beings, in part because my subconscious is a maelström of weird/uncomfortable compulsions. The more that others learn about me, the more they regret knowing me. Only other freaks tend to stick around (and I’m grateful for those few).

In addition, I’m so self-destructive that I’d say fuck off to that six months-long contract (and the about 6,600 euros that it would provide) just because I’d rather be unemployed, not have to wake up at six in the morning, and be able to sit around in my pyjamas and write. I’d leave future me to deal with the consequences.

I don’t know what to do. I have never been sure, because I simply do not care about my well-being to any significant extent. It’s hard to do when I was convinced that I wouldn’t survive long enough to reach adulthood. I have drifted through my life getting used to whatever circumstance I ended up in. Most of the time something goes wrong, and the current example of that pattern is me losing access to as many contracts as I used to get, and likely ending up earning significantly less.

I have felt old for a long time. This afternoon I went out to take a walk and then sit at a coffee shop to listen to music and read for a while. The demographics have changed so much in the last twenty years or so that I feel like a foreigner in another country. I read for a bit at an outside table of my usual coffee shop (which I have visited for years, although I’ve never interacted with the locals except to make my order and say thank you). At one point I closed my eyes and listened to Ichiko Aoba’s gorgeous music for a couple of minutes, until some intellectually disabled woman who was walking by babbled something at me and at a group seated nearby, which broke the spell. I left shortly afterwards. I managed to write very little for the rest of the day.

I lack answers to even my own problems. All I do is work through my psychological issues on a daily basis, whether through writing or more blatantly hedonistic activities, because that makes me feel better. Meanwhile I just grow older and stranger.