Panic in the Doldrums
this should be the title of my next novel
Sometimes, I imagine how nice it would be to have a “proper” job, the kind with a contract and a salary and a whopping great pension at the end, but then I remember that I’m not very good at doing the same thing every day in the same place with the same people, and that the last proper job I had I lasted 18 months before I ran away from it screaming, 30 years ago. Being freelance is the only way I can function.
Work wise, the long Portuguese summer is often quiet for me, unless it’s absolutely not, and I wish for a day off. The quiet version sounds nice, but if you’re freelance, you’ll know that it’s hard to enjoy the down time because of the underlying dread that no more work will ever come your way ever again and how will you eat this winter?
This summer is being one of the quiet ones and this time the dread is greater than usual while I watch AI and socially awkward billionaires disrupting everything (because, let me remind you, they do not care about you or me or the meltdown of society), so instead of fannying about, going to the beach, reading books, having a lovely rest, I’m being productive and frantically working on things. To be proactive? Or just to distract myself from the terror? Who knows. For a couple of weeks I worked on this story:
Meet Fanny
My fingernails are black with ink, my right arm grey because it’s the closest thing to my brush to remove excess paint, and my desk stained in all the colours. Spread in front of me are three jars of water, from clean to very muddy, and various palettes, one for watercolours for the colours I need a lot of, another fo…
… and for the last couple of weeks I’ve been putting together a new motion graphics reel (see above… still a fair bit to do) to put out there, since OH MY GOD IT’S SO BLOODY QUIET, I’M NOT PANICKING, OK, I AM PANICKING JUST A LITTLE BIT. Once that’s finished, I’ll go back to the story, and finish the rewriting and the illustrating, and then decide whether to make an actual book out of it, or a podcast in here, and then I’ll do some work on my film (oh god, will I ever finish it?), then I’ll think about what a next book could be that I could persuade my publisher to take on, in case my book that will be out sometime before Christmas (I hope) sells more than ten copies, and then I’ll think about whether I should find something to do on youtube, like teaching middle-aged women how to use After Effects, or selling fantasy Portugal to eejits, or start an onlyfans and YES, OK, IT’S TRUE, I’M PANICKING.
Speaking of selling fantasy Portugal (this is a long aside, and I wrote the following as a note a couple of weeks ago, so if you already saw it, skip past)…
I’ve noticed a thing on social media, including substack, regarding the behaviour of new anglophone “expats”, the instant experts on Portugal/France/Spain/Italy/Greece who make being an immigrant their personality and/or job. The absolute worst are the ones who are selling their services as “relocation consultants”, the ones who are doing actual damage rather than just annoying this grumpy old sod.
They confidently declare something about their pet project, their specialist subject, i.e. the country they discovered six months ago. What they declare is utterly wrong or misleading, and what happens next is this:
An equally ignorant noob replies “hey I didn’t know that! Great to know… I’ll put gravy on my sardines now” and the “expert” says “yay, cool! Great to meet you! If you want any help with your gravy, I’ll write you some AI assisted drivel!”
An anglophone immigrant who has been in PT/ES/FR/IT/GR for decades corrects them, kindly, or not, “there has never been gravy on sardines!” and wrath is descended upon them by the “expert”, then they are blocked, and bitched about in forums (🙋🏻♀️ for as long as forums have existed, I have been bitched about on forums and proud of it)
A national (or hundreds of nationals) from their pet project country corrects them and they are entirely ignored by the “expert”, like they don’t exist, are irrelevant, because… why?
Don’t take my word for it… see what happens in the comments/threads of replies on such posts.
It’s very telling about how such “experts” see their new (temporary… they will inevitably get bored) country and its countrymen.
NB. NOBODY EVER SUGGESTED PUTTING GRAVY ON SARDINES. IT’S NOT A THING. IT’S A MADE UP THING TO REPLACE REAL WORLD FINANCIAL/VISA/LIFESTYLE NONSENSE.
It’s the extraordinary arrogance and entitlement I can’t bear. The people from these places are telling them that rent here or there is not €400, or that you can’t live in these places without learning the language, or that sardines have never been seen anywhere near gravy. The locals are not being rude, they’re writing in English, they’re just correcting incorrect facts… and they’re ignored.
I really hope all this selling of other people’s countries becomes unfashionable soon. On a related note, I’m taking up a new habit of refusing to speak English to anyone who has been in Portugal for more than five years. No more Mrs. Nice Guy. Soz. I think we should all do it.
Now, where was I? …youtube, selling Portugal, only fans, oh yes, PANICKING…
Realist me knows that things will pick up and I haven’t been replaced by an idiot robot yet, and I do, in fact, have long term things lined up, but everything feels so uncertain these days. AI plus a terrible lack of gatekeeping plus the sad fact that most people don’t care if a machine made something horrible or if a human made something beautiful are really doing a number on so many industries, and doing it really, REALLY quickly. This is like the industrial revolution on crack. Remember the olden days when we might wonder how the work environment would be in ten years? “Will I still be working on my own loom in my tiny freezing cottage, scraping a living, and still having to do all the housework and having twelve children?” How young and naive we were.
I don’t mind change, but there’s an awful lot of the stuff going on all at the same time.
PANIC
One of my more notable forms of personal cringe is the constant parade of expert consultants that grift off of that. The pushback locals get for calling out that the sardine emperor wears no gravy (and at 'the sardine festival", no doubt) is likely because it breaks the fourth-wall of constructed escapist fantasy.
Much of the travel content produced and consumed on the Internet and TV, and formerly books and magazines, has undergone a dramatic shift in the past couple of decades. If you've got most of an hour and are curious, I do recommend this rather academic read on the evolution of travel in the Western world: https://fugitivemargins.substack.com/p/the-end-of-elsewhere
We now live in an era where people travel more to verify what they've already seen on a screen. And for the many more who now consume travel content with little intention of using it beyond daydreams, a place, its community, and its people are more the props and central casting for that escapism.
Example: the much-promoted "live like a local" mantra while no one really wants that. Living like a local means filling taxes online in a new language, helping find childcare for your sick neighbor, and participating in the body politic of how social and political decisions are made that likely impact your life.
Nobody signs up for YouTubes of that. Most of us want the sanitized, fake version that can make us feel better about the world and ourselves without daily concerns. And certainly not the responsibility of caretaking.
Locals are inconvenient because we burst the bubble and invalidate that desired fantasy just by existing.
There’s no way you’re panicking more than me. I’ve signed up to do an admin course at the local college! I think this year of freelancing has finally driven me mad. If it helps, you are insanely talented and things will probably pick up 🤞