UPPER TIERS: LUCKY MAN

Weirdly, I never much enjoyed writing at school. I had ideas – too many ideas – but I’d hurry to get them down on paper. I’d skip words, or write in an illegible scrawl. 

Once I became a writer by trade, stopped having to use a pen or pencil, and got better at writing, I learned the value in putting feelings in writing as a form of processing them. There’s something about getting it out of my head in a linear way, that I can read over, that just helps me during difficult times. Once I’ve hit ‘post’ on a blog, I feel less burdened almost straight away.

Somehow, it works best when I share it. I don't know what it is. I worry about it coming over as self-pitying, or attention-seeking, but it's never about that. There's a power to sharing your burdens with others that I can't explain. So, thank you for putting up with it.

This is another one of those; me journaling everything we have going on in our life right now. Making sense of it all. Looking for solutions and answers.

If you don’t want to read it that’s fine. I mean, it’s not very happy. Also, I’ve written a lot of posts about this stuff already. 

One blog isn’t enough when it’s really big stuff, but we’ll continue to try to keep it out of Digi and BYAMPOD. 

However, If you do want to read it, please be aware that some of the topics I mention might be upsetting.

Anyway. Here goes.

How do you deal with a difficult time?

Go online, and there are all sorts of articles, videos, and the like, suggesting ways in which you can hold onto yourself when the going gets rough. There are as many methods for self-care, self-help, and self-actualisation as there are people in the world, because what works for one person doesn’t work for another. 

We all have our own ways of dealing with things. Some of those ways are harmful, or toxic. Some are benign. Some are prescribed, and I’m a big advocate of using anti-depressants – IF they work for you. They don’t for everyone.

And then some of us just get lucky.

I’ve probably had four really challenging times in my life – not bad for what has been a long life already – where I’d say I was struggling, or low, or feeling hopeless.

The first was when my 9-month old niece died, when I was 12. A week later my beloved grandad died as well, in a sort of passive suicide (the day she died, he stopped taking his heart medication, surely knowing it would kill him). School back then was a daily ordeal already. I was pretty badly bullied, and losing two close family members just got piled on top of it.

The second time was in my late-20s, when things started to really south in my first marriage. I got very badly hurt.

The third time was when Teletext cut Digitiser in half, and I didn’t know how I was going to support my family. Or, indeed, what the hell I was going to do with my career and life. It was the confrontational manner in which the news was delivered that was the real knife to my heart. 

The fourth time was five or so years later when I got trolled off of the Internet, acquired a stalker, and hit what I now look back on as rock bottom – because it was a trigger that caused a lot of things came to a head.

Realising I was at my lowest ebb, I took steps to make right a lot of things that weren’t working, and I worked on myself, and I got stronger. Strong enough to feel I could resurface as Mr Biffo when I was ready some seven years later. I do, however, regret the time and momentum I lost during those years away. I sometimes wonder how my career would look if it hadn't happened.

I suspect that when I look back in years to come, the fifth time will be right now. Assuming this is a 'time' and not 'forever'.

Regardless, it’s hard to think of a much more challenging set of circumstances than what my family is going through at the minute.

IT’S NOT WORKING

As I’ve written about at length, I’ve gone from being one of the top kids TV writers in the UK to being unable to even get a job on a show as a writer-for-hire, because the goalposts have shifted so dramatically. 

Everywhere in TV they’re looking for more diverse stories - rightly - and I no longer fit the profile. That's added to a very challenging post-pandemic market, where every streamer, channel or production company is looking for the most insanely specific ideas. Or, at least, won’t even consider something if it doesn’t already exist as a book (yes, I’ve been writing a book, but that sort of writing doesn’t pay the bills).

The consequence is… even with almost 25 years of experience, awards, and all that guff, I have been left feeling washed-up, almost overnight. I don’t feel I ever fully lived up to my potential. I’ve got all these ‘ifs’ and ‘should haves’ floating around my head: should’ve tried harder to break out of kids TV… if I hadn’t stayed on 4 O’Clock Club as long as I did… etc. etc.

What’s worse, is that while I still adore writing… I’m losing my enthusiasm for working in TV. I can feel it ebbing away with every slammed door. You can only hammer on those doors for so long before your knuckles break, and mine feel like they’re shattered. 

I get it, y’know: you don’t want me at your party.

Logically, I shouldn’t be having to fight so hard at this stage in my career. It’s what newbies do, but here I am. I had near-constant work for almost 20 years, and now that I’ve experienced what it’s like to have that taken away, I don’t know if I would ever want to risk it again. I feel like I’d be a fool to keep trying.

It's not that I’ve lost my confidence. I know I’m good at what I do – without wishing to blow my trumpet, I’m bloody excellent at it, better than I’ve ever been – but I no longer fit the profile of what they’re looking for in a shrinking kids TV market. That’s what I’ve lost confidence in: everything else that I am as something that people would want to employ.

I’m trying to find other types of work, desperately, but things that look promising seem to keep fading away, or hitting walls, or they change their mind. I’ve applied for a ton of games industry narrative designer jobs – I’d desperately love to do that – but a lack of game development experience, and the sudden career shift, is counting against me. I'm too old in terms of most industries to start over. 

There’s one job I’m holding out for, but I’ve all but given up hope, given my disappointments elsewhere. I would have thought that having multiple BAFTA nominations to my name would give me at least a look-in as somebody with a proven track record of being able to write, but no. Apparently not. And I don’t know if that’s my age, or what.

SLIDING DOORS

All of this comes on the back of a tough few years since the start of the pandemic. Actually, things really started to go awry when Sanja and I almost died in that car accident on our honeymoon at the tail-end of 2019. That feels like our sort of sliding doors moment. Then the pandemic hit, then tens of thousands of pounds of income vanished overnight.

Fortunately, I had a job on which got us through 2020, and most of 2021, but then the work never returned. I’ve had one small scriptwriting gig in the last 18 months. I have another sort of creeping towards a possible development deal, but I’m already resigned to it probably not happening. 

It’s not even a lack of income that’s getting to me so much as it is a fear of never having a decent income ever again, of not being able to pay our bills and debts.

Weirdly, I’ve started to get the odd flicker of regret that the YouTube channel has never really taken off in the way that I hoped. I get why, but it’s playing into a fear of failure that is being stoked by my employment woes. 

Fortunately, it’s a train of thought that I can easily divert, because I think we’ve got a much more passionate audience than many channels 100 times our size. We’re able to crowd-fund big projects, put on sold-out live shows, and have a truly wonderful Patreon community. Not every channel manages that, even if we do remain relatively small and obscure. Yes, I know I’ve said this before, but by heck do I mean it.

None of this would be happening, though, if I’d stuck with the retrogaming! We’d be huge by now. At least Digi and BYAMPOD and all that remain a passion and a constant light for both Sanja and I. Thank god.

DAD

But… atop all of that, my dad is fighting for his life in hospital. Actually, scratch that: he’s not fighting. He isn’t even eating. He just wants it all to end. The man that I knew is gone. Six weeks ago he was still doing the shop at Tesco. Now, complications from Covid have left him frail, confused, bed-ridden, and terribly depressed.

It’s sudden and in some ways it isn’t. Three years ago I had to deliver the news that his younger brother had died, and in that moment I could see that my dad kind of broke. He was never quite the same again. He had a catheter fitted around the same time, and it took away the independence he always had. I’ve lost count of the times I had to take him to A&E because it got blocked. Then he got a very slow-moving cancer, and went on treatment that affected his mood and temper.

The three things together ate away at him, and he seemed to chang. 

I always thought I’d be kind of okay when my parents died, because I’ve lost so many people close to me over the years. People get old. It happens. The difference is, none of them suffered like he’s suffering. 

It’s heart-breaking to see, and constantly emotionally draining, from agreeing to do-not-resuscitate orders, to having him literally ask me to tell the doctors not to prolong his life. He cries all the time. So do we. 

His brother had the right idea: die in your sleep following an evening playing cards, during which you enjoyed a cigar and a glass of whisky.

My sisters, Sanja and I would be exhausted from the hospital visits, and the emotional drain alone, but we’re also shattered from caring for my mother. She’s blind, my dad looked after her, and now she’s alone in their house. First thing yesterday, we had to run her to the doctor as she walked into the bed and gouged her leg open. The rest of the day we were running back and forth with liquid food to prepare her for a bunch of hospital appointments today. Then to the hospital to see my dad. 

And this morning Sanja and I were up first thing to take her to those various hospital appointments.

We’re all so tired.

I do wonder whether what’s happened with my dad is distracting me from what’s happening (or not) with my job. I wonder whether I’d have slipped into some sort of a depression by now if I didn’t have to stay strong for him and my mum, and the rest of the family.

Instead I just get these days where anxiety and fear wash over me, usually during rare moments when not much else is happening. Seeing my grandson at the weekend, or being in Cheapshow Live on Saturday, were like islands of happiness and distraction. When those sort of things aren’t around, I just feel… scared. 

So, so scared.

MAYBE I’M AMAZED

I’m amazed we’re still going, frankly. I mean, I know I’m a fighter. I always have been. I’m not one to see myself as a victim of anything. I’m good at putting one foot in front of the other and soldiering on, but I do wonder how much longer any of us are able to. 

Obviously, we’re putting things in place to help with my mum - who isn't exactly coping with all this - but there’s so much unknown with both my dad and whatever the hell we’re going to do about my income. I’ve tried so many different options already, and I’m running out of ideas.

I get days where I just desperately want my old life back. I get jealous of holiday adverts on the TV. Yes, I was often stressed and tired from working too hard, but I miss being able to have the occasional meal out, or a date night with Sanja, or make fun videos, without the background hum of worry. I want that freedom back so much.

And yet despite it all… I’m coping. Sort of, tired and worried as I am.

Perhaps part of the reason I’m coping better this time around is because I don’t feel alone. In all of the previous bad times I mentioned, I felt very lonely, for one reason and another – whether that was because others were too wrapped in their own grief, or because I wasn’t in a supportive or understanding relationship. I always felt like I had to deal with things on my own.

My family, like all families, can bicker and argue, and fall out with one another, but we’re all pulling together when it comes to my mum and dad, and they’ve been incredibly understanding and kind when it comes to the work situation.

I also have the most brilliant friends, who I love dearly.

I’ve also got Sanja. My best friend. We’re both very good at talking about our feelings, and listening, giving one another space to feel our emotions. It helps hugely, and I’m blessed to have her at my side.

Plus… I’ve got all of you. I’ve already said how much I appreciate your support through this time. Those of you waiting on commissions, some of which I’ve already started to deliver at last, have been particularly incredible. Heck, you even let me write these big, long, blog posts, and put up with us not being particularly cheery of late. I don’t want to keep gushing about you, but man… thank you for sticking by us. And putting up with this sort of thing.

In the writing of this one I already feel better.

In all these cases, I know how blessed I am. Having been at points in my life where I felt I didn’t have any of those things, I don’t take a single one of them for granted.

Does it stop me feeling my feelings? No. But it seems to have stopped me being defeated by them. Whether it’ll stop those feelings getting the better of me forever I don’t know. In some respects, it feels like the clock is ticking down, and it’s about whether life improves before I get hit by the tidal wave.

For now though, I’m still able to build sandcastles on the beach.

That’s how I cope with a difficult time.

Because in so many ways I got lucky.

Paul