Yes, I did say I am the happiest I have ever been.

Yes, I still do mean it.

But yes, sometimes, life sucks and you have to cope with it.

Over the Christmas holidays, I realised that I was, quite simply put, broke. The money I would get my hands on would be dedicated to my rent, eating and, if needed, a bus ticket to the factory where my job agency sends me (which amounts to roughly twenty pounds a week). There was no more money to be used to go out and have a drink, no more money to buy a gig ticket, no more money to go up to London and see my friends. 

Of course, the concept made me slightly miserable.

I'm going to be blunt and honest for a second - I fucking hate the factory job. There are two factories where they send me. One is in Lancing, the other one in Newhaven, which are both half an hour away from Brighton on the bus. I start at seven in the morning and have to wake up at five and when I get there, I either put grease on plastic bits that are going to be used to make soap dispensers (the ones you find in public toilets), or I make some sort of whistles for asthmatic people (don't ask, I haven't figured that out either. I just know that I ended up with a whole lot of blisters). I also cut little pieces of plastic, put some others in boxes and made air vents. Sometimes, we have the radio on, which is okay because I can sing along to whatever pop song's on and Juice Radio (I think that's how the local Brighton radio is called) isn't too repetitive - I can deal with Hello by Adele or Sorry by Justin Bieber twice in seven hours. At the Newhaven factory, I am allowed to have my iPod on, which is good as well, because at least there's something that's taking my mind off the fact that I BLOODY FUCKING HATE THE WORK. 

(Also, everyone is from a Spanish speaking country, and even the people that aren't from Spanish speaking countries speak Spanish, and I don't, so, yeah, it feels incredibly lonely at lunch when you're sat down at the table and you're surrounded by what feels like the entirety of Spain, and your Spanish level is the UPA Dance album and La Tortura by Shakira)

Since I hated this job, I went to the agency to ask if they didn't have anything else, possibly inside Brighton because I was a tad bit too broke to afford a bus ticket. Their answer was just as blunt as this post - if I wanted something else, I had to register with another agency. I did try. On Friday morning, I dragged myself to six different ones and heard that I needed to send an email, that they were too specialised for me and that I wasn't specialised enough for them. I still felt like I was at the bottom of an industrial sized bin. So I took to giving away my CV in shops and restaurants and got a trial shift when I told a lady in a small, independent store that if I was to be sent to the factory again, I would probably cry. Sometimes, being emo gets you places. The trial shift went pretty well and I'll know more on Monday, but the job might not start until the week after, so I might have to go back to the factory. There still might be tears but, you know, I'm emo, what's new.

Coping with no money is a bit crap at first because when you feel at the bottom of the industrial sized bin, you want to move on to being the industrial sized bin - meaning you want to down Jäger shot after Jäger shot whilst dad dancing to your favourite band and forget all your problems for a while. But sometimes, you also have to be a real life grown up - you're not sure you can afford your rent, so you definitely cannot afford Jägermeister.

What did I do?

I created Broke Friday. The thing is, I'm not the only broke one at the hostel. Martina is still waiting for her scholarship and Margot has also been slightly fucked over by the agency (yes, the same one). We needed something to cope. So I created Broke Friday. The concept? If you can't have alcohol, you might as well have cake. With the bananas I had bought, the flour I had found in the free food box and the spices we had at the hostel, I made vegan banana bread. Martina made Swedish chocolate balls, which should be on the list of the Wonders of the World because dammit, they are brilliant and I want an endless supply of them. And we bought fajitas boxes from Aldi (more on this later) and a bunch of vegetables and meat (meat-free for me obviously, God bless Quorn) and we had Mexican food for, roughly, one pound per person, maybe? We had a good night and it didn't cost me anything and life felt a tiny bit better.

Also my banana bread is absolutely brilliant and I am stupidly proud of myself for actually making something with my own hands.

Aldi. Let me talk to you about Aldi.

It makes me feel like my standards are also at the bottom of the industrial sized bin we've talked about before, but Aldi is heaven when you're broke. The most expensive thing I bought there cost me £1.59 and it was cheddar. I don't mind braving the apocalypse-like rain and the twenty minute walk because if I can get a cucumber for 29p, that makes it worth it. It's just a way of eating healthy if you're broke and it's beautiful. I fucked it on my budget the first time I went but now I also know how to sort that out like real life grown ups do, so I suppose that's a lesson I learnt on my first week of being broke.

It's boring, said like that. My first week/ten days of 2016 consisted in learning how to budget and learning how to make vegan banana bread and learning how to make cauliflower pizza and it's a little bit less eventful than going to a gig and getting drunk and seeing your friends. I'm a little bit sad that next week, Panic! At The Disco are playing London for the release of Death of a Bachelor and I can't go. I'm a little bit sad that the next day, Cancer Bats are pretty much playing on my door step and I can't scrape enough cash together to buy a ticket. I'm a little bit sad that next Saturday, We Are The Ocean are playing a big show and I can't go support them for the first time in forever. I'm going to save up so I can go see Speak Low If You Speak Love at the Garage on the 29th and if I can do that, that'll be a big step - one that I hope will make up for the fact that I will have to cut on lots of gigs in February. Giving up on gigs is kind of like cutting my right arm or something, live music being a major part of who I am and the core of my social life. I suppose I'll survive this shit. But I can't pretend I'm not sad.

2016 has a bleak start but hopefully, it'll get better soon and I can go back to going to gigs and going out whilst still learning to make nice dishes because it's nice to have something you're proud of. It's looking up a little bit. There will be good days out of this. But, yeah, so far, 2016 is a bin and I'm in there with a homemade vegan banana loaf.