Monday 23rd September 2024: Long Covid + Wedding + How to Rest (again)

Hi everyone!

Miss ‘Rooonnnaaaahhh….

Okay, so, bad news out of the way first. I’ve definitely got Long Covid. Why? For much of this past week, I’ve been kicking myself for not getting enough done. I’ve been tired, felt uncreative and emotionally flappy. It wasn’t a good week, even if I do now have the majority of what I need to get the writing done, I have been too tired, too emotionally incoherent and too sleepy to do the 40 hrs + of writing I apparently feel the need to get done, beyond mentoring, admin and business stuff. I didn’t even write my diary for more than a couple of days (feel the shame coming off those words).

I do think there’s something about September that doesn’t sit too well with me. I expect myself to adapt to all the stress of a new academic year, like I’ve had to every single year since I was 3. In Holland, University starts not in early October (really late September) but in early September (really late August). Therefore, until I moved to the UK, I spent most of August terrified of going back to school/uni and all of September upset with myself for not having enough energy.

Okay, again, you’re avoiding the question. Why specifically Long Covid? Well, one of our best friends, the wonderful Max B, has long Covid. The thing that was particularly pertinent for him was the self-recrimination; WHY don’t I have energy? WHY am I so slow? WHY are emotional things affecting me way more? Post-viral symptoms, in neurodivergent people, have been shown to be more common. Here’s a paper by friend of the show Amy Pearson (LEGEND!!!) et al from 2023, showing exactly that:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.08.23291154v1

So, by Friday last week, my PA was subject to me giving myself an almighty bollocking. I was a waste of time and effort because I wasn’t able to do all the work, all at the same time. He reminded me that I need to treat myself as I would one of my mentees in a similar situation: your body comes first. If your body says no, you listen.

I know that. I say that to people. I even write about it in books – when I have the chance to write them. But I don’t feel that. Instead, I have Oliver Giraffe. This guy:

Oliver is a main character in Feeling Fast and Slow. This is both utterly gratifying and completely terrifying to Oliver, since he has a combination of a massive ego and very low self-confidence. #relatable

I’m just going to have to take it slow, as painful as that is. I need to wait on other people to do things so I can calculate how much time I’ll be allowed to rest. I think I’ve given myself a couple bits of quiet today, plus doing work for tomorrow’s QND session (led by Luke! Come join! He’s 29 on Wednesday!) so I have oxygen for the return of AutWell at Bath Spa Uni.

Wedding!

This Saturday, Luke and I were invited to the wedding of our friends Tiffany and Edmund. I knew both before they met each other. I met Tiffany on the day I met Luke, back in July 2017. Edmund was a senior teacher, so, effectively, my boss, at EF, when I joined in October 2017. They are perfect for each other, though their story is theirs to tell, not mine.

It was a wonderful day. Luke and I were wearing suits bought for us years ago, so we were relatively uncomfortable, but that’s why you pack a replacement outfit you can change into. It’s probably the first wedding I’ve ever been at where the majority of people was probably neurodivergent, and oh god was it wonderful. I cried in church, as I am wont to do. These two people are reprehensibly beautiful and I’m so proud to have played a tiny part in them getting together.

Luke was pretty burned out, after a long week. He wasn’t actually sure whether he even wanted to come to Oxford with me, let alone to the wedding. Instead, the wedding nourished him. It nourished me too, even though I was tired. I was very vulnerable to the moods of others. I started feeling drunk because others around me were, which is an odd thing to happen to me. More on that in FFaS too.

Edmund made a whatsapp group, called Cult Escapees. I agree that our work was very stressful, but that, frankly, it was a miracle we were even there. Most of us wouldn’t have been able to build a career in an increasingly cut-throat professional world. In the year before I joined EF, I fell into the trap of being overqualified but unemployable that so many of us fall victim to, seven firings in a single year. At EF, I worked fulltime for 3 years, only interrupted by a global pandemic. Still, most of us are in unstable employment, even decades after leaving education. I was in education for as long as was practically feasible and still found it difficult to find my bearings in the job market.

The fact I’m self-employed, after all this time, and can continue doing this, is because of you, who support me. I couldn’t do it without people recognising what I do and sharing that information.

But I’m still mindful that, without working for an evil multinational corporation run by and for billionaire climate change deniers, I wouldn’t have been able to do this. I needed my foot in the door. I needed to show I could pay the rent, by my own labour*.

• I know I’ve gone on record to say that working to survive is the WORST reason to work and we should all just be paid more than enough to live, by virtue of being born on this mistake of a planet, but I don’t apply what I think to my own situation. We know this, let’s move on.

Either way. I worked at EF for 3 years. I valued every moment, because I had a group of weirdos around me who valued me and made me feel less alone. One of my former colleagues, when I started, had just had a full-on mental breakdown next to the copy machine, and he was still there. I knew at once I’d fit right in.

EF Oxford was small enough, and also big enough, that we were left alone to focus on what we’re good at: teaching. That was priority one for us. We were allowed to show that. Was I underpaid and undervalued by upper management? Absolutely, but that’s a systemic issue in the sector. In this environment I could show myself that I could be an adult. And for that, I’ll be forever grateful.

Oh yeah, my title for the Alan Bennett play that the above image is a poster for is Four Weddings and a Cargo Cult. If you want me to appear as Bennett’s regular self-insert frazzled English teacher, contact Edmund, who’s now my acting agent or something. I don’t know. He was saying yes an awful lot on Saturday, might as well say yes to that.

Congratulations to the beautiful bride and groom. If we can’t beat heterosexuality, we can at least make it fun. And by golly we did.

Post-script

For people who used to follow me back in the early 2010s when I had a personal blog talking about doing comedy, they might remember Gareth Ellis. We collaborated, appeared on stage together and were friends between 2012 and 2015, when I was on drugs and doing comedy. He passed away earlier this year at only 34. Below is his obituary, written by his former double act partner Rich:

https://www.chortle.co.uk/correspondents/2024/09/15/56618/a_one-of-a-kind_on_the_comedy_scene_who_marched_to_the_beat_of_his_own_drum

I won’t be able to make it to Gareth’s memorial at the Backyard Comedy Club, but give my regards if you go. I’m getting to the age where people start falling off, rather than just joining my circle of connections. This is natural. No-one in my year at school has left us yet, only one person from my year in uni. Gareth’s passing, though, was unexpected. When we went to do a gig in Gent, Belgium, or when I spent Christmas with him and his parents – even if I mostly functioned as a human shield between the three of them – or even when causing mischief on my first podcast hosting gig in 2012, he was a total shambles, preferring to die on the basis of a terrible idea than actually submit to what the audience might deem ‘entertainment.’ This includes doing a minutes-long impression of Morrissey to a crowd that had never heard The Smiths, or a punchline ‘they motorboat’ without checking whether anyone knew what that was (I didn’t). I miss the man. I still have texts on my old phone, now alarm clock, dating from 2014. Through the fog of benzos, he shines out; even if a part of me is still convinced this is one big practical joke, which is definitely something he would have done. This time, though, he didn’t. What a strange, beautiful human being. I am proud of having been his friend.

If he is alive, though, he probably owes me £30.

Lots of love, see you next week!

J