The real things are;
1 I face the prospect of being unemployed. Having never been unemployed before - like ever - this is pretty scary. I know lots of people face this in their jobs everyday but I work for the public sector ffs (usually anyway). I am an essential profession surely? Everyone wants to know how to read Shakespeare. No? Also, it turns out that twenty years of teaching has provided me with literally no transferable skills whatsoever. So if anyone needs someone with a wide range of put downs, the ability to get teenaged boys to listen to me without removing any clothing and the skill of spotting a spelling error at 20 paces then I'm available.
2 Darling Dan is planning for us to move abroad. Exciting perhaps, but so far I don't know where. Or how. Or what for. Difficult to make plans or get excited, and a country which only gave women the vote in 1971 makes me nervous.
3 That man will become president of the USA. Ugh....
4 There is unlikely to be a General Election, and if there were, then the Labour Party are unlikely to make great gains.
All these things feel like a huge weight of snow somewhere just up the mountain. I've been watching Les Revenants and I feel like creepy little Victor has appeared at the door and warned me not to build the dam. Then he walked off and I foolishly dismissed his warning. There is an avalanche of misery threatened and simply moving off the mountain into unknown territory might not save me. In Les Revenants death got them all in the end. Oops, spoilers, sorry.
I choose something else. I choose life, in a clever double-edged tribute to both the first popstar I ever loved and the upcoming T2 Trainspotting. I choose a job and a career and a family and the fucking big television. (The last is rather more Dan's choice than mine, but I choose Dan so..) I choose a different view of my avalanche. Instead of seeing this as a threatening weight hanging over me I am going to take on the power of the snowflake. Each of us is a delicate, individual and important snowflake and each of us has limited weight and power on our own. But even a light fall of snow can disrupt public transport, can make it dangerous for us to travel to work and the buses to get to school. Even a couple of days of snow can "cover the muck up" and make us see the magic in our local environment. Together we can be the avalanche that changes things and starts to push back. The people who voted for Donald Trump or Nigel-rhymes-with-garidge are not the silent majority, we are, if we don't use our voice for good.
This is not a list of New Year's resolutions. I have neither the will power nor the commitment. Yes I need to lose weight and do more exercise and save money and eat more spinach but writing it down isn't going to help. (Being unemployed might, but probably won't pay the fixed interest mortgage repayments.) I am committed to carrying on doing the stuff that I do well. I am not perfect, none of us are, but sitting here and moaning about it and merely writing it all down will achieve nothing. I am trying to live the life I want. I will carry on defending those who are threatened with losing their jobs because they have challenged the assumption that they will carry on working for nothing, I will give up my time to help others, I will feed my children less meat. These things alone are not enough, I know, but as one snowflake that is all the power I have. I have made a start, I will keep writing and I will keep acting on my beliefs, if you like what I do, then you can do it too; I am not a special snowflake, we are all snowflakes.
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