Since having needles driven through my flesh seemed like it would probably be less painful than seeing a billionaire benefits scrounger being given a gold hat, I went and got two new piercings this afternoon. So my left ear now looks like this:
I still have some way to go in healing some of these: in addition to the third lobe and helix piercings that were done today, the six-month-old scaffold/industrial is still having some issues with irritation and is not fully healed. There's also a lot of scope to experiment with different jewellery in some of these. But I think that as long as everything does heal up OK, then I am done making holes in this ear.
Given that I never really planned any of it out, I'm rather pleased with how it's come together. Now I just need to work out what, if anything, to get in the other ear. But given that I still won't be able to sleep on this side for several months, possibly not until next year, I will have plenty of time to think about it.