Blood, Signs and Fears

Occasionally I write a blog post with very little idea about what the post will contain. This is one such blog post, where I just let the words drag me in whichever way they want to.
Yesterday I made what is probably my only contribution of any value to society. I don’t currently pay any income tax because I don’t quite earn enough and even when my income dips over the threshold in the new financial year I’ll pay so little it will virtually be negligible. In fact I technically owe the state around £25,000 in student loans but I’m not earning enough to start paying that back either. The one thing I do have to offer though is my blood. The NHS relies on thousands of people donating blood every few months to provide blood transfusions for those who need them.
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It feels a bit like this when you give blood. Sort of.
It’s an unpleasant few minutes but the thought that my actions could save someone’s life make it worthwhile. Yesterday was my tenth donation and I was given a thank you card, which was nice. Frankly though, it’s not about the rewards- the reward is that feeling that for once in my useless life I can actually do something which makes a difference.
I urge you to give blood if you can- if you are in the UK you can find all the info here.
One thing I never really expected the new Dan to be was one that knows sign language. Children with autism have huge difficulties with communication and using sign language is a way to help them. I started a ten-week course learning signalong, a sign language which is based on British Sign Language. I learnt a massive amount about how it all works in the first session and am looking forward to a time when I can sign quite naturally. It’s important to me that am learning new skills and developing, rather than stagnating.
This brings me on to the big issue that I still cannot come up with a solution for. I have realised that I’m now halfway through the academic year and have really got to start thinking about my future. Not that I’ve ever stopped thinking about it, it’s just that I haven’t come up with an answer. The big problem is that although I quite enjoy my job, there’s no way I’m ever going to be doing it long-term. There’s literally no hope of career progression from it and although my pay will go up the longer I’m there it isn’t really enough to live from. It’s fine at the moment when I’m living with my parents with very little cost to me but at some point I will have to support myself and this job won’t allow me to do that.
My original plan was to stay until at least the end of the academic year, in July, but I’ve now decided to extend that to the end of the calendar year. What I really need is an idea of what to do next. I’m essentially unqualified, with my primary education degree being perhaps impressive but not very useful to employers. One option is to return to university and get another qualification. I quite like the idea of this now, I quite miss studying, but I can’t really come up with anything I could study that would really help me get a job I’d like to do.
Alternatively, I could search and apply for some different jobs, maybe with children or maybe something mundane but better paid, like working in a shop. Maybe I just have to face the fact I might not get to spend my life doing a job which is fulfilling. My current plan is to work until Christmas this year and be unemployed for a short while in the new year. I could possibly take a holiday and then work hard on applying for jobs and starting something new. This may well change but that’s the plan at the moment. I still find it terrifying that I have no real plans for the rest of my life.
Well there’s some things from my head. I have come up with a title and I’m a little unconfident about it. I mean the blood and the fears bit works really well but the signs should be ‘sweat’ or at least rhyme with it. It’s the height of winter and pretty cold at the moment so I can’t even come up with a sweat-based story just to make the title work. Sorry about that, but I tried, really I tried!

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