This is a story about being disconnected...

I've received a bunch of messages from people who care about me, over the past few weeks. I haven't responded - yet - but I'm not intentionally ignoring anybody. I very much want to reply, but I've struggled to know when and how to do so. I very much want to stay connected but I reached breaking point.

I started writing this blog because my life was in danger but it was too difficult to keep anybody informed about what was going on: my life was too chaotic and unmanageable. I needed a mechanism to keep anybody who was concerned about my welfare informed. Writing a blog post on a regular basis was the easiest way to keep kind and caring people in the loop.

A group of people emerged, who have supported me. I literally owe my life to those who contacted emergency services when I tried to end my life. Without the intervention of those who read my words and decided to act, I should not have made it this far. I have received aid in my hour of need thanks to people who were strangers until they read my blog and decided to help me.

There is a certain amount of thought and effort ploughed into each blog post. There is an investment of time and energy. There is a risk that my words might be used against me. There is fear and there is shame, every time I share something that's unflattering or otherwise make myself vulnerable. There is a sense of responsibility towards those who read and those who care, who have taken the time to understand a little about who I am, and those who have gone to the effort of making a human connection.

I know that if I don't write regularly then people won't check regularly to see if I've written anything new. I know that it's the regularity with which I write which sets me apart from the vast majority of bloggers, who quickly tire of the chore and abandon their blogs. I know that if I stop writing I stop existing, in a way. I know that if I stop writing, regular readers drift away.

What is the reason I need regular readers?

I started writing this blog because my life was in danger. That I write this as a "suicide note" is only partly tongue-in-cheek. That it seems somewhat melodramatic, alarmist, attention-seeking or hyperbolic is a reflection of how little wider society really cares about suicide, and how society loves to call people's bluff.

The reason I couldn't write for the past three weeks is that I was overcome with several competing messages. I wanted to write about the happy thing in my life: that I was getting to go away on a lovely holiday. I wanted to share my amazing holiday photos. I wanted to share something positive, after a very long time spent moaning and complaining about my miserable life. However, money worries and uncertainty surrounding my income, plus a lot of stress about an invasive security vetting procedure, were consuming me. I was filled with dread about the future. I was consumed with anxiety. I was constantly assaulted with an imagined future, where I become penniless and homeless, after such a protracted lengthy struggle.

I thought about presenting the lovely images of my holiday alongside the inner turmoil I was suffering. I thought about sharing picturesque holiday photos with unrelated text, explaining how depressed and anxious I was about the future.

There's a slim chance that the wolf might be kept from the door for another couple of months. After my holiday was finished and I was back in the UK at the airport, I received an email which said that my contract could possibly be extended for another couple of months.

However, my security clearance has foundered. Before I departed on holiday, I was told that I had failed to respond to some correspondance and the assumption would be that I had abandoned my application. I wrote back and said that I had responded within the hour, but then I went on holiday. I just checked: my application is closed and I have no idea why.

I'm unsure whether I should assume the worst or not. There's a chance that I can speak to the powers that be and get my security clearance process re-instated. There's a chance that I don't even need security clearance. There's also a chance that there's problems and there's a chance that those problems could cause other problems, and all my hard work is for naught.

I had thought that my source of income was secure until the end of the year. I had thought that this income meant I had adequate funds to take a holiday and could feel secure in my home. I had thought that my hard work had secured me the support of my colleagues and the organisation who I work for, thanks to the contribution I've made to the projects I've worked on.

I'm not so sure what the future looks like now. It's not utterly bleak, but it's very fragile and precarious.

I'm not sure if the universe wants me to succeed or fail. I'm certainly prepared for failure - insofar as I'm prepared to kill myself if I've been wasting my time - but I must admit that I was quite easily tricked into believing that success was within the realms of possibility. I thought that my struggles against adversity and my hard work was going to be rewarded; my modest desire to live without the tyranny of penniless destitution hanging over me appeared to be within grasp, but perhaps I was quite wrong.

There are systems in place that will quickly swipe my legs out from underneath me and cast me out into the street like a piece of trash. There are systems in place to ensure that I'm expelled from civilised society and unable to put my skill and experience to profitable gain. There are systems in place to thwart and frustrate me; to leave me stripped of dignity and to deny me opportunity. There are systems in place to keep a good man down.

We shall see what comes to pass this week. I have faced a lot of adversity over the past few years and managed to navigate some very nasty situations, somehow keeping hope alive. I've overcome some extremely difficult obstacles. Whether the present difficulties are just more of the same, and I will find a way forward, I have no idea. At the moment I feel as though my exhaustion and depression are going to get the better of me, given that I already used up all my reserves getting to this point. I should be cruising and having an easier time of things, but it appears as though things are going to get harder, if not impossible.

I have a limited amount of time to re-start my daily writing and re-surround myself with my support network, on which I have relied heavily to get to this point. I fear that I've left myself exposed and inadequately protected.

My downfall will be shockingly swift. Depression and exhaustion will rob me of my ability to continue to work and then rent, bills, taxes other demands for money with menaces will bankrupt me, see me evicted, label me as "undesirable" and make me unemployable and unhousable. With a wrecked credit rating and the black mark of a bankruptcy, I won't be able to get well paid work or rent a home - society will have ejected me and I'll be left to sleep rough. It seems hard to imagine that I could fall so quickly from a position where I appear to be wealthy and hold a respected position of responsibility, but I know how quickly everything will fall apart.

I have proceeded with a positive attitude, assuming that everything will work out OK if I just keep working hard, but in my experience nothing works out. Instead, all that happens is that there are major roadblocks. Instead of being able to continue on my trajectory, obstacles are thrown into my path and I am bombarded with missiles. All I want to do is to do my job and do it well, and be able to have a roof over my head, but instead things happen which could not have been predicted by me and which are not my fault. I am continuously thwarted.

I'm sick of being thwarted.

Undoubtedly I work hard. Undoubtedly I'm good at my job. Undoubtedly I will achieve my objectives if left unmolested.

At some point I get so sick of everything that I don't want to carry on living. It's not much of a life, being constantly thwarted. It's not much of a life living with constant precarity, anxiety and insecurity.

I decided to write this blog because it proves my dedication to a project and what I can achieve if I'm not thwarted. I decided to write this blog to prove my work ethic, even if this blog brings me no income. I decided to write this blog as a testament to my own creative and productive powers. I decided to write this blog because nobody could stop me, divert me, distract me and derail me.

I took a holiday.

I took a holiday from my paid income and I took a holiday from my unpaid project. I took a holiday from everything. It would have been nice to relax, secure in the knowledge that I had income and housing to look forward to when I returned, but that was taken away from me; my future was stolen from me, as usual. I was given nothing except anxiety and depression, as usual, as stress was heaped upon my head and my security was snatched away, as usual. I took a holiday anyway, because I was exhausted as hell.

Now, who know what awaits me, except further struggle, further stress, further anxiety and further frustrations and people sent to thwart me. In the context of this uncertainty, forgive me if I decide that I've had enough and that I would like some certainty. This is how I arrive at the conclusion that the only certainty that's available to me is the certainty of suicide. I would like to die with some dignity.

How many productive years do I have left? I'm 40 years old now - happy birthday to me - and I'm exhausted. The prospect of continuing on with such struggle, stress and strain is not at all appealing. I fail to see any kind of enticing future that's realistically attainable, given how hard people have worked to thwart and frustrate me.

In short, I hesitated to write for the past few weeks, because my situation is not improving, although it seemed churlish to complain when I most certainly did have the holiday of a lifetime. Still, it would be dishonest not to admit that most of my waking hours were consumed with stress, anxiety, depression and hopelessness. I didn't quite know where to begin, so I was uncharacteristically lost for words, perhaps only because I never committed pen to paper. Now that I've opened the flood gates, far more words have come rushing out of me than I anticipated.

Given that it's counter-productive to bombard my readers with far more than they can digest, I'm going to wrap this up now. I need to write regularly again. I hope that I have better news tomorrow and my outlook is more positive, but I need to write come what may, because it's my coping mechanism and my lifeline; my blog is my consistent reliable companion and the people who it connects me with are my dependable support network, though the bad times.

Thanks for reading.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #depression #anxiety #suicide #homeless

This is a story about a negative outlook...

I've been staring at the cursor for about five minutes, unsure of quite where to begin. I know that it would be wise to avoid conflict and destruction - deliberately looking for trouble - but my mind continuously prompts me to write about the situation which is causing me the most stress at the moment, which is the obscene amount of money I've spent on a holiday for my girlfriend and I, and the horrible flashbacks this is giving me from the time when I was taken advantage of and left for dead.

There's no need to publicly attack my girlfriend. She seems well-meaning enough. If I give her the benefit of the doubt, she hasn't got a bad bone in her body. However, the reality of the present situation is that she's spent a vast amount of my money and has no credible means to pay for her share. I know that the fault is mine, for getting carried away, but the situation is indisputable - she has profited handsomely from my vulnerability, which is something I've been harmed by in the past.

My brain feeds me a constant stream of negativity, because I have made overly-aggressive medication changes. I'm tormented by nightmares in my sleep, and from the moment I wake up until the moment I finally get to sleep, I suffer from invasive thoughts and an incredibly dour outlook on the future. My brain feeds me constant doom & gloom. My brain instantly leaps to the most negative possible outcomes.

I'm disappointed and frustrated that I might not get the opportunity to finish the project I'm working on. My contract is being terminated early, through no fault of my own. I had worked very hard to build a great reputation with the organisation I work for, but it's all for naught. A colleague gets paid more-or-less the same amount and has more-or-less the same job title, but that person has a fraction of my productivity - why did I burn myself out? Why did I work so hard? Why did I bother? It doesn't bother me so much that my colleague is useless and in some ways I find it kind of admirable when somebody gets paid so much for doing so little, but it bothers me that I might not get to finish what I'm working on - I like working hard and I like completing projects. It bothers me when somebody gets in the way of a successful project, by being thoroughly useless. It bothers me that I have to work much harder than I would have to if the under-performers were simply sacked. I have plenty of time and patience for my junior colleagues, but I have no patience for highly paid colleagues who're supposed to do the same job as me, who are not up to scratch and who are jeopardising a project.

I can see that my irritability and intolerance - my lack of patience - is symptomatic of burn-out. I've worked for too long at too high intensity. I've lost all balance in my life. I've lost all perspective. I've lost my health.

My colleague has the right idea. It was a mistake to get emotionally invested in my work. It was a mistake to become excessively obsessed with the project. I hate that I'm being bitchy behind my colleague's back. I hate that I hate my colleague's ineptitude.

I want to go back to the version of me who handles stressful situations with a smile.

I've faced very dangerous situations so many times that I'm usually cool and calm in a crisis.

Why am I so irritable?

I'm losing my grip.

I find myself in a precarious position. Perhaps not more so than other times in the past, but it feels more precarious than ever, maybe because I'm aware that I've got a winning strategy, but I'm still a long way from security. I've got a nice place to live and I've feathered the nest a little, but I don't feel very well - I have no idea how I'm going to avoid a breakdown and keep working at the same intensity, in order to cement my gains. I feel certain that the combination of luck and hard work is too demanding, given how burnt out I am. I needed better luck - I needed my contract to be extended, not cut short. I needed to reap the rewards of the hard work I invested into the current organisation and project... not to be having to prove myself in some new organisation; starting from scratch.

Every morning and every night I have a huge amount of dread: I have the uncertainty of a very invasive security vetting procedure hanging over me, and I have the uncertainty of the local contract market to face. I know that psychologically I'll be destroyed by relatively minor setbacks. I know that I'll find work in the private sector if the public sector won't have me. I know that my skills will be in demand somewhere but I'm sick of living out of a suitcase.

I know that my health is failing. I know that exhaustion is catching up with me. I know that when depression takes hold it will be long and destructive, leaving me unable to work, unable to get out of bed, unable to answer the phone... completely dysfunctional. I know that I'm completely burnt out.

I need to pack bags and travel. It might seem like a nice problem to have, but the holiday will leave me worse off financially and worse off in terms of relaxation. I need to spend 6 weeks in bed with the curtains closed, but instead I'm bankrolling somebody else's dream holiday; for me a living nightmare of stress and hassle.

Perhaps a lot of my perspective comes from medication withdrawal. It makes sense that I would be overcome with anxiety and insomnia, given that I was so dependent on sleeping pills and tranquillisers. It makes sense that my view of the world would be coloured by the destabilised brain chemistry, having abruptly stopped taking strong psychiatric medication.

I wonder what will happen - whether my relationship can withstand this dark mood; whether my colleagues can tolerate my irritability; whether my fragile health will collapse completely and leave me unable to work. I'm not coping at all well, and unfortunately I need to be able to cope with ludicrous amounts of extra stress at the moment. Things will get a lot worse if they're going to stand any chance of getting any better.

Tags: #anxiety #depression

This is a story about psychoanalysis...

I'm trying to think of a time in my life I'd happily return to, but if I'm honest there are things I've learned and perspectives I've gained that tell me that I'm better of now, here, today, in the present. Of course my life could be a million times better if I could re-live a substantial portion of my life, but that's equally applicable to all of us. With the benefit of hindsight we'd all be astonishingly successful, but that's not the way life works.

My present-day existence is tolerable, only because I've embraced traumatic events, instead of trying to run away from them. The trauma lasted so long and was so, well, traumatic, that the only way I could make sense of the world around me was to turn my experiences into stories. Pretending like bad things never happened to me wasn't working - I became paranoid about anybody ever discovering the truth about my dark past. Now, a lot of the trauma from the past 4 years, and some of the trauma that predated this public over-sharing, has now been turned into harmless words. It's hard to attack me about things from the past when I own those things; I've accepted those things.

Perhaps it's a little defeatist to tell stories about sad and bad events. We seem to assume that we must become rich and powerful before we have a God-given right to share our stories. We seem to assume that only famous people are allowed to take to the stage and tell the world about their lives. We seem to assume that only stories of conventional success are interesting.

Perhaps my story is not interesting.

It's interesting to me.

To make a realistic appraisal of my insignificance in the universe would be fatal to my sense of wellbeing. Nobody wants to truly perceive just how much of a non-event they are. Nobody wants to accept that their entire life's achievements will be soon forgotten. Nobody wants to accept that the deeds of even the greatest humans are comparably insignificant to any other human who ever lived and died. To gain true perspective and see yourself as just another nobody in a sea of 7.6 billion nobodies is deeply undesirable; extremely toxic to a person's mental health. So, almost all of us imagine ourselves to be leading lives of significance; we imagine that it makes a difference whether we live or die, even though this is demonstrably untrue.

I've grappled with a strong desire to kill myself for as long as I can remember. The struggles haven't seemed worth the effort. Whether it was loneliness as a child, growing up without any siblings to the age of 10, bullied every day at school, or whether it was as a frustrated young adult, held back by ageism and somewhat slow to gain an identity that I was comfortable with - to grow into my own skin - I always had a fairly clear idea of what I wanted from life, and how life should treat me. Life began to yield eventually, but there was always a fly in the ointment; something that spoiled things. I wonder if I've learned to be more content. I wonder if I've lowered my expectations.

I think I've adjusted my life goals to suit the limited opportunities available to a person who has been smashed to smithereens. I've contented myself with simple, basic achievements, like having a girlfriend, a kitten, a house, a job, a car etc. etc.

I've given up on the idea that I might achieve anything which would bring me fame and glory.

This must be a coping mechanism. My brain must have decided that it was too frustrating and upsetting to go through a lengthy period of traumatic events, leaving me far too disadvantaged to be able to achieve anything except mundane ordinary existence. I congratulate myself at the end of each working week, for the mediocre achievement of not dying. I congratulate myself for things I achieved when I was a young adult. I congratulate myself for very ordinary boring things, such as doing chores or getting out of bed.

This is my life now; my future - killing time waiting to die, trying to keep myself reasonably comfortable while my body slowly deteriorates. I wonder if all my tough talk about life being not worth living will turn out to be hot air. Will I get a sensible job with a good pension? Will I start planning for retirement? Will I start trying to preserve my dying body? Will I grow to fear death?

The biggest achievement that I'm pleased with in my life so far is that I'm still alive. I've doggedly and determinedly kept going through ridiculous adversity, not with any particular grace or dignity, but with a bloody-minded stubbornness, working through the most intolerable conditions. I wouldn't wish the unsettled life of precariousness on my worst enemies. I wouldn't wish the boring monotony of rebuilding a life, dollar by dollar, upon my very most hated foe. Years and years this so-called 'recovery' has dragged on, with so few surprises, so little joy and so much boredom. When people speak to me about wanting to do something they love, I almost want to spit in their faces, because they do not know how privileged and entitled they are.

Perhaps it is me who is entitled. I am, after all, alive and well am I not? I have the girlfriend, kitten, house, job, car etc. etc. when so many people have so little.

Sure.

But I also paid a very high price. I'm not saying I earned what I have or I deserve what I have, but I definitely paid a very high price. The hardest part has not been the hard work, but the acceptance of my circumstances: that I would be better off pushing through years of miserable boring toil, than cutting my losses and suffering irreparable damage. It would be easy to re-invent myself and pursue something new and exciting except that reality forbids it. Bills still need to be paid. I need a roof over my head. I need to eat.

Pursuing a life that's more compatible with my mental health is not an avenue that's open to me. I'm forced to do what I'm good at, because it brings in the cash, even though it's destroying my happiness. I've chosen the path of least resistance, because I'm not in a position to put up any resistance, lest I drown.

I'm not sure what I'm rambling about. I suppose I'm just making a general complaint about spoiled brats who do whatever the hell they want, thanks to their wealth and privilege. Perhaps it's hypocritical, given that I've written so many words that are practically career suicide - who am I to write so honestly and candidly, when it obviously puts my lucrative career at risk?

I suppose I'm daring the universe to take away my hated career. I'm daring fate to block paths for me so that I don't have to suffer the consequences of my rational decision to take the highest paid work, doing the most unsavoury and unethical jobs.

My mind is meandering because I'm thrashing around trying to find some meaning in a cold uncaring godless meaningless universe.

I write and nobody challenges me. I write and nobody tells me to stop. Nobody tells me I'm out of order. Nobody tells me I've gone too far. I push, but I'm not pushing against anything. I write as therapy, without a therapist.

Tags: #depression #suicide

This is a story about keeping people updated...

It's been nearly 2 weeks since I wrote last. I know I've had gaps but this feels like a really long one. Gaps are usually a very bad sign. It's worth worrying about me if I'm not writing. Things are probably going badly if I'm not writing.

I was coping by using a combination of alcohol, sleeping pills, tranquillisers/sedatives and a heck of a lot of comfort eating. I've been teetotal and medication-free for a while now. I'm dieting too. I'm slimmer but I feel awful. Stopping taking all the pills has been brutal. Not having anything to 'take the edge off' has been horrible. The anxiety has been unbearable.

Some concerned friends have sent me messages, but I've felt too swamped to reply. Work is exhausting and there has been the looming holiday, which has caused added stress rather than being something to look forward to: How am I going to afford the loss of earnings as well as the expense of the holiday? My work situation is looking very uncertain for when I get back from holiday, which is a horrible situation to be in, worrying about money instead of enjoying some well-earned time off.

My relationship is good but it's caused some sleepless nights. I'm desperately trying to avoid worsening my exhaustion and sleep deficit, but it's almost impossible to catch up. Stopping the sleeping pills has caused my sleep quality to deteriorate. It's a miracle that I'm still reasonably productive and functional.

The last thing I want to think about is the travel and logistics of going abroad. Buying holiday clothes sounds like fun, but it's another item on a todo list which makes me very stressed out. I'm struggling to figure out when I can fit in all the things I need to do between now and my departure date from the UK. I suppose as long as I've got my passport and a buttload of cash then I can figure things out, but it's not pleasant to be so ill-prepared for a trip.

I'll be 40 years old in exactly one week. I decided to have a barbecue at my house when I was feeling somewhat more buoyant about the way my life was going. Now I feel like cancelling the gathering, because I'm stressed about the extra unnecessary hassle. Having guests over to my house reminds me that I've still barely moved in - I don't have much furniture and the place is a bit of a mess. I don't feel well placed to make my guests comfortable. I have a lot of anxiety about it being a really awkward occasion, with a handful of my long-suffering friends having made the long journey to the provinces, in order to make smalltalk with strangers... a real chore for them.

I'm working as hard as I can in order to feel proud about my contribution to the project I'm working on. I'm desperate that my contribution be remembered as something valuable and that my colleagues recognise the effort I've ploughed in. Work's become a bit of an unhealthy obsession and I'm significantly over-invested, emotionally. I can picture myself getting very depressed when I'm forced to leave the project because of contractual shenanigans, and through no fault of my own.

My life is deeply unbalanced; unhealthy. I'm not drinking alcohol and I'm dieting, so I've lost weight, and I've managed to get a bit of sun, so I look quite healthy, but inside I'm very sick. The stress of the past years seems to have ratcheted up as my life has become more 'normal' and 'stable' recently - things were easier when I was living out of a suitcase, in some ways, although I appreciate that I was very miserable and living much more unhealthily.

Readers who've followed me for any significant length of time will probably have a better idea than me as to whether I'm in a better place today than I was a few months ago, a year ago, several years ago. Things feel terrible but they probably aren't.

The stresses seem to be the same as ever, particularly concerning my security vetting. A colleague contacted me to say they were reading my blog. They seemed enthusiastic about the prospect of working with me, despite what they'd read, and the feedback seemed generally positive. It's the first time that a colleague has been brave enough to tell me that they've been reading my blog. Of course, the security vetting people have been reading too. I wonder if the security vetting people are as sympathetic to my stresses, and look favourably upon my ability to maintain an impeccably high standard of professionalism in the office, whilst undergoing some horrendous chaos in my personal life; struggling so much with my mental health. I wonder if all the talk about being sympathetic towards mental health issues is just hot air.

I wanted to write a short update, because I know people are worried about my uncharacteristic quietness. I've kinda failed. I'm doing OK, but I'm also really struggling too. Plenty of reasons to be concerned, but things are not completely ruined and on collision course with disaster... in fact I might even weather this storm and emerge in a reasonably good situation.

I'll try to write a little more regularly, but I don't want to be a stuck record, endlessly moaning about how unpleasant the effect of stopping medication is. I don't want to wallow in misery.

It's summer. I have money. I have employment for a little while longer. I have an awesome holiday booked. I have a very nice girlfriend. I have a cute kitten. I have a big house. Things are not terrible.

I'm not taking any medication, not drinking, dieting. I'm losing weight and my brain is getting back to a stable state without any alien chemicals. It's good to be free from the shackles of chemical dependency.

If I can push through this tricky period and keep the wheels turning, then I think my forties are going to be a much better period of life than parts of my thirties. It does feel good to be turning a corner as I reach an age when I should be growing old less disgracefully.

I've written more than I wanted to but I hope you'll forgive me. You're all up to date now.

Tags: #anxiety #alcohol #depression #medication #bipolar #career #holiday

This is a story about bad character...

I have been thinking about changing my tagline from "the world's longest suicide note" to simply "Nick Grant - drug addict". The reason for doing that would be exactly the same as writing and publishing 1.2 million words which very publicly document every facet of my flawed character. The idea is to thumb my nose at the notion of having a 'perfect' CV with no gaps on it; to ridicule the concept of living a blemish-free existence of civil obedience; to write down all the things that we would normally brush under the carpet and pretend never existed.

We have become incredibly paranoid about our so-called reputations, when demonstrably the world is such a big overcrowded place that nobody is really paying very close attention. You can squat on your boss' desk, curl out a gigantic turd onto his or her keyboard, wipe your ass with your resignation letter before casually tossing it onto the floor, pull up your trousers and walk out of your workplace, and I promise you that your precious reputation will not be soiled, unlike the aforementioned keyboard.

Perversely, I wrote a very long suicide note - the world's longest - as insurance in case I did kill myself, but also as a therapeutic process as I tried to talk myself down from the ledge. The same is true of "Nick Grant - drug addict" - I would never label myself as such except in pre-emption of those who would like to find a convenient pigeon hole to put me in.

Because the words "drug addict" have such negative connotations I would never be so bold as to label myself as such if I was a drug addict. I choose this emotive label for myself because I feel confident that I'm the living embodiment of the antithesis of what we imagine a drug addict to be. I choose this pejorative term deliberately because it makes a mockery of anybody who attempts to sum me up in two words or fewer - I've written 1.2 million and do not yet feel satisfied that I've written enough to capture my essence on paper.

Analytic data tells me that colleagues have found me via Google and have read a little about me. I am undergoing security vetting and I know that this website has been viewed by people who are partly responsible for the information gathering, which will ultimately result in the decision to approve or deny my security clearance. These people scratch the surface. These people come looking for easy answers; a convenient couple of words to sum me up. Why not give them those words? I say that those words should be: drug addict.

My achievements in my career are beyond reproach. My contribution in the workplace has proven to be exceptional on countless occasions. Records also show that I've never been charged with a crime, convicted of a crime, declared bankrupt or otherwise fallen afoul of the courts of law. One might say that I'm a model citizen.

Why would a model citizen write 1.2 million unflattering words about themselves? Why would a model citizen risk their reputation, by way of candid public declaration of their faults and mistakes?

I'm completely fed up with the way that society is constructed: the way that we are continually looking for faults and reasons to reject people. I find it quite tiresome and bothersome that so many so-called gatekeepers exist, whose purpose only seems to be to pointlessly thwart, frustrate and annoy. Would I care if our nuclear weapons were guarded by violent criminals or our banks lent our savings to reckless bankrupts? The question is a non-sequitur, because it pre-supposes that the gatekeepers are being successful; it presumes that the systems are working and society is functioning effectively - it is not.

Technocrats have forever dreamt of being able to capture enough statistical data on every individual that behaviour can be predicted and the future can be known. There is a widespread belief that something as brief as a curriculum vitæ can tell you everything you need to know about a person's value. With credit checks, criminal record checks and other searches of vast databases, we presume that we can know a person's character, and deny them access to mortgages, loans, rented accommodation, mobile phone contracts, jobs and myriad other things we might consider to be essential parts of life. We presume that school attendance records, exam grades and university diplomas are "good predictors" of future success, and I would agree, except that it's straightforward to see that conventional success is only available to those who look good on paper - correlation does not equate to causation.

Our 19th century education system was designed to destroy free will, independent thought and break children's spirit, to prepare them for a life of manual labour, toiling in the mills and factories. Our ubiquitous snobby worship of "A" grades and first-class honours from Oxbridge does not acknowledge that 99.9% of our citizens will reach their mid-teens feeling like a failure, which is entirely the point. "If only I'd paid attention at school" we are supposed to tell ourselves, for our whole lives, accepting of our abysmally awful place in society.

I write this document because I hate the destructive force that the pressure of academic and career achievement is placing on society, to the detriment of our mental health. I think it is grotesquely unhealthy to live in a permanent state of anxiety, believing that a single slip-up - a bad exam grade or a gap on our CV - could ruin our entire future.

I loathe those who seek to reject. For those who seek a reason to reject me, please have one: drug addict. There you go. Please take those two words and f**k off. Leave me alone. I'm too busy trying to stay alive to be swamped with anxiety about lazy, simplistic, crude attempts to pigeon hole me and toss me away like a piece of trash. If you came looking for some dirt I'll save you the digging and send you away with a handy soundbite; a convenient label.

It pleases me that my 22-year career contradicts the label which could easily consign me to the dustbin. It pleases me that hundreds of colleagues from the past two decades would bear witness to my manyfold valuable contributions. It pleases me to send you away with two words - drug addict - which conjure up in the mind a character so different from the one who has spent 40 hours a week working very hard, and achieving a great deal.

In summary, Nick Grant: drug addict.

Tags: #career

This is a story about todo lists...

My list of simple mundane and relatively easily-achieved tasks seems to keep growing, despite the frenetic pace with which I am doing things. Most of my energy is ploughed into the project I'm involved with at work, which is reaching a critical juncture, but there are also other deadlines bearing down on me.

My car's roadworthiness test must be completed within the next fortnight. I had few problems with the car last year, but it's getting very old so I am not expecting to be so lucky this year. Certainly, there is a wheel bearing which needs replacing and the dashboard tells me that it's 5,000 miles overdue for a service. I would be very surprised if it did not cost me several hundred pounds and leave me without my car for a few days. The timing is not good, because I really need to be in the office every single day of the working week at the moment.

It might sound silly, but my hair needs to be cut twice in the next month. My hair is well overdue being cut - especially in the warm summer weather - but I will also want to get my hair cut again soon before going away on holiday. I'm planning on spending quite a lot of time in the sun, so it makes sense to have my hair cut short before going abroad, otherwise my skin will be pale under my mop of hair.

For a whole week of the holiday, I will be expected to wear quite smart clothes - a collar and trousers with some smart shoes - instead of the casual beachwear which is my usual attire when on holiday. I like to spend my entire holidays wearing a T-shirt, board-shorts and a pair of flip-flops, but the resort where I'll be staying insists on outfits more befitting of a golf clubhouse or country club. I usually stay in laid-back surfer crash-pads, and I'm not a member of a golf club or a country club, so my wardrobe lacks chinos, polo shirts and other clothing items which are de rigueur in the kinds of places where rich old men hang out, flaunting their wealth. Therefore, I need to go shopping, to buy a whole bunch of clothes which I only really need because of the dress code at the holiday resort where I'm staying for a week.

My clothing situation is generally pretty bad. I only have one pair of jeans which are not completely worn out, and wearing board-shorts to work would be unprofessional. I wear a smart dress shirt every day along with a fine-gauge knitwear V-neck jumper - it's a kind of uniform for me. However, the weather is improving and the office has no air-conditioning, so I would like to have a lighter pair of trousers to wear and some other shirts, which will look smart and professional without a jumper. My summer shoes are falling to pieces. Some of my colleagues wear sandals, but I've never seen any colleagues wearing flip-flops and I think it would be unprofessional of me to do so.

In order to pay for the most ludicrously expensive and over-the-top ridiculously luxurious holiday I've ever had in my life, I will have to do some quite clever accounting: juggling money around the place, so that my cashflow is not impacted. There are lots of parts of the holiday with a balance to pay, and I need to be careful to make sure that I don't use up more than 50% of the credit limit on any of my credit cards, which would adversely affect my credit rating.

My credit rating is super important right now, because I'm undergoing security vetting which is an incredibly invasive and exhaustive examination of every aspect of my life, including my credit history. It's important that I manage my money well so that part of the vetting process proceeds in an unproblematic fashion.

Spending 17 nights away from home and skipping 12 working days poses a big problem for the project I'm working on. The timing is less-than-perfect, putting it mildly. I need to take a holiday - I'm exhausted - but I also need to ensure some very important milestones are not jeopardised, plus my job is under threat and the loss of income is a source of stress. I will not be returning from holiday feeling relaxed, because I will need to secure myself a new contract as quickly as possible.

My todo list also includes difficult things, such as tapering off medications which I no longer want to be dependent on. There's relentless pressure on me to keep cutting my dosages, so that I'm medication-free by the time my holiday starts.

I need to get ready for a barbecue I'm planning on throwing to celebrate my 40th birthday. This requires the purchase of an actual barbecue, plus charcoal and all the food, of course. Further, I will probably have to make sure I have adequate beds and bedding for any guests who are staying over. I have plenty of time to prepare, but it's another deadline that is looming.

My kitesurfing equipment really needs some TLC before I go away on holiday and I need to purchase her a kitesurfing harness for my girlfriend if I'm going to teach her how to kitesurf while we're on holiday. Some of my kitesurfing equipment is more than a decade old and likely to break, unless I replace the worn-out parts. Having an equipment failure in a remote part of the world is likely to be expensive and/or cause me to lose valuable time on the ocean.

None of this is beyond the wit of man, but it's very hard to take care of all these odds and sods when I'm extremely time poor and quite exhausted by my very demanding job. I suppose things will happen at the last minute and everything will be alright, but I also anticipate that the next two months will drain every bit of energy I possess. I suppose there will be the occasional moment - on holiday - when there is nothing pressing in the complex itinerary: a flight to catch, a long drive, or indeed a smart outfit to be donned in order to simply grab a bite to eat.

These are almost all first-world problems, and indeed wealthy middle-class problems. I know that many British people on low incomes will struggle to get their decrepit old cars through their roadworthiness tests, but at least I have the financial means to pay for any unexpectedly high garage bills, although at some point it's not economical to spend hundreds of pounds on a car which is worth less than my smartphone, and I would be better off buying a new car, which at least I am fortunate enough to be able to do... although I would question whether it's a smart move getting a new car when my future employment is uncertain.

As you can see... I've got quite a lot going on at the moment, and not enough hours in the day.

Tags: #stress #holiday #career #anxiety

This is a story about going on a diet...

571 days ago I decided that I was allowed to drink heavily and eat whatever I wanted. I had at least a bottle of wine every day and ate mostly fast food. I decided that this was my reward for working virtually non-stop: to guzzle gallons of alcohol and devour mountains of fatty food. My evenings were spent in McDonalds, KFC, curry houses and pizza places. My evenings were spent drinking glass after glass of red wine.

Unsurprisingly, I put on weight.

I was living in a hotel for a while, which was next door to a gastropub. I lived on calorific food, like lasagne & chips, washed down with large glasses of red wine. When I got back to my hotel room, I would continue drinking large glasses of wine. I decided that it was my reward for the miserable life of living in a hotel, to eat and drink with gay abandon.

I put on more weight.

Then, I noticed that I was putting on weight. I noticed that I had a tummy. I got out of the shower one day and I saw my own reflection in the mirror, and I realised that I had gained a belly. I've never really had any problems with my weight, so I was kinda shocked, although by this point I had been gaining weight steadily for roughly 9 months.

I didn't change my behaviour.

I did stop living in the hotel. However, I lived on takeaways and beer. I had a takeaway almost every night of the week, and I washed all that fatty food down with vast quantities of beer. I was going to the supermarket on an almost daily basis to re-stock the fridge with beer.

Then I stopped drinking.

My alcoholic friend killed himself. He drank himself to death. His alcoholism had raged out of control for a long time and hadn't claimed his life, but health complications quickly began to create a compounding problem and he knew that he was going to die; his quality of life was rapidly deteriorating. This event, coupled with my unhappiness about being a little overweight, was enough of a catalyst for me to quit drinking.

I was teetotal for nearly 5 months.

Then, I started drinking heavily, eating restaurant food and having takeaways on a regular basis. I drank loads of white wine and ate lots of very rich gourmet food. I had lost some weight by simply being teetotal. I had reached a point where my weight was under control and I felt better about my appearance, but then I quickly undid that by drinking and eating so much.

Now, I'm trying to lose weight again.

I'm not trying very hard to lose weight. All I've done is cut my daily calorie intake. I've stopped drinking - mostly - and I've stopped having takeaways and restaurant food - mostly - and I've stopped having large lunches. I've stopped eating breakfast. I've stopped snacking. On average, my weekly calorie intake has been cut pretty drastically.

I still don't do any exercise.

I joined a gym at one point, but I never actually went. The circumstances of my job changed and I found myself living in the hotel. It was hard to motivate myself to go to the gym when I had the miserable existence of living in a hotel. The highlight of my evening was my gastropub meal and red wine, so I can't imagine that there'd have been much point going to the gym.

I should do some exercise.

I'm making some very big changes to my medication at the moment. I'm tapering off high doses of tranquilisers and sleeping pills, in order to be medication-free by the time I go away on holiday, the day before my 40th birthday. I have less than a month to rid myself of physically addictive benzodiazepines and highly psychologically addictive sleeping pills. I have a horrible month ahead of me, filled with rebound anxiety and rebound insomnia. It's not easy to stop taking medication and it's extremely unpleasant to rapidly stop. Going cold turkey is not even an option - I could have seizures.

I'm making good progress.

Apart from last night, where I got extremely drunk and ate a gigantic burger and chips, Friday night where I drank two bottles of white wine, and Monday evening when I had a takeaway, I've not been drinking, eating takeaways or eating in restaurants. I've also managed to reduce my sleeping pills by 33% and my tranquilisers by 50%. I'm changing a lot of things all at once. It's very difficult to change so many things all at once, especially while I'm going through a very stressful high-pressure period at work, with some very demanding tight deadlines.

It'd be wonderful if I was superhuman and I could work full-time, have very little sleep, write every day, look after my kitten, keep my house clean, quit drinking, go on a diet, stop taking addictive medication AND do some exercise, but I'm afraid that it's too much to ask - the exercise will have to wait until life gets a little easier.

I know that I'll get more enjoyment out of my holiday if I'm fitter and in better shape, but the holiday is the respite I desperately need; the rest and recuperation; the reward for 571 days of almost continuous work, with the exception of a week-long jaunt to Turkey and two weeks in Mexico. My last holiday was nearly 7 months ago, and I've been through a house move and a breakup, as well as working exceptionally hard.

The beach body will have to wait, although my small lifestyle adjustments will help. The weight isn't just going to magically disappear, but I shall have to content myself with stopping the rot - I simply haven't got the bandwidth to be able to exercise on top of everything else on my plate.

Tags: #weight #diet #exercise #gym #food #holiday #career #alcohol #medication

This is a story about brain training...

I spent a week living in a Warsaw hotel, making sandwiches in my room, using a shoe-horn to spread mayonnaise and mustard on the long-life bread bought from a nearby convenience store which mainly sold alcohol and snacks. This would hardly be a great example of ingenuity - a sign of a brilliant mind at work - but it certainly addresses the first part of this short essay: hunger.

Hunger is not just about food, so I thought I would get the food part out of the way at the beginning.

We can be hungry for sex, love, companionship, social contact. We can be hungry for thrills; adrenalin. We can be hungry for substances of abuse, including alcohol, tobacco and caffeine. There are all kinds of hunger, not all of which can be satiated with food, although we can often try to use food to fill the gaping void inside ourselves. Comfort eating is something I find myself doing when tired, bored or otherwise hungry for something other than food.

I wanted to write about intellectual hunger.

There are some questions which don't require much brain-power to answer, such as: how am I going to feed myself cheaply for a week in a hotel that's nowhere near anything except a couple of shops which mainly sell alcohol? The answer to this question is not one requiring intellect, but instead the answer simply requires lowered standards and the willingness to suffer a little.

Another question might be: how am I going to increase my standard of living as much as possible, as quickly as possible?

Again, this second question is quite easy to answer and requires very little thought or effort of the mind. The answer to the question simply requires more lowering of standards and willingness to suffer. Ultimately, one can always sell a kidney or make bodily orifices available for sexual gratification of paying punters. Problems of this nature are not taxing or interesting, in an intellectual way.

With too much of life occupied answering trivial questions and doing the unpleasant obvious things - prostituting yourself and living in vile conditions - we arrive at a far more interesting question: why bother?

4 years ago it was obvious to me that I knew exactly what I needed to do, how I was going to do it and how long it was going to take, in order to restore myself to health, wealth and prosperity. The prospect of repeating tasks which had become so repulsively boring and easy to me, although somewhat stressful too, was doubly abhorrent because of the lack of novelty combined with the lack of intellectual challenge.

I think in many ways it would have been much easier to accept a fate imposed upon me by circumstances, and abandon the pursuit of an outcome which was almost too far out of reach; almost too unbearable to suffer while en-route.

When I say "easier" I mean intellectually nourishing.

What right do I have to spend my days talking to interesting intelligent people? What right do I have to spend my days reading interesting books? What right do I have to explore ideas, have discussions and write down my thoughts? What right do I have to publish what I write? What right do I have to be allowed readers? Why should I be entitled to have any of those things?

I suppose I accepted that a more interesting course through life was not available to the likes of me. Those who are fortunate enough to ask themselves "what kinds of things do I find interesting?" or "what would my perfect job be?" and to then use these answers to formulate a life which is compatible with capitalist society, are not in the same socioeconomic boat as me. This is not to say that I'm deprived and disadvantaged, but merely that I'm incredibly pragmatic and quite unwilling to risk a decline in my living standards, back to a time when I was sleeping rough and the most pressing question of each day was: where shall I sleep to stay dry and keep me safe from violence and robbery?

So, my 4-year writing project began. I scratched my itch as best as I could with the facilities at my disposal. I have written and published as if I am one of those entitled brats who gets to spend their time choosing from an almost unlimited menu of very pleasant options, because their socioeconomic circumstances protect them from the peril of destitution.

I'm still surprisingly far from ever being able to ask myself "what would I like to study?" or "what is my dream job?" but the vast majority of us will never be fortunate enough to be able to do anything other than suffer the coercion of capitalism, and to do unpleasant things in order to survive.

It seems churlish to complain, given that I have certainly been able to feather the nest recently, and I do my complaining in far more pleasant surroundings than a bush in a park, sleeping rough.

Although I'm time poor and nowhere near being financially comfortable enough to feel confident in risking any major alterations in my chosen life course, I am lucky enough to be emerging from an incredibly lengthy period of suffering, in order to shore up life's practical considerations: housing etc.

Theoretically, it's now a matter of months until some very real and tangible results arrive as a result of a very sustained campaign, which has been excruciatingly boring and predictable, with very little freedom of choice.

In conclusion, I appreciate that my situation is fast becoming an enviable one, and soon I will have the freedom to make choices which offer more intellectual nourishment, which has been so lacking during the 4 year period where I simply had to do whatever it took - to suffer - in order to preserve all future opportunities, and avoid any catastrophic life-changing disasters which would force me down another path.

Tags: #homeless #career

This is a story about modern slavery...

A friend and I had been puzzling over how to stop a massive influx of spam comments from spreading all over my beloved blog. The fact that it's possible to leave a link back to your own blog - if you have one - is too much of a temptation for those who are trying to get websites to appear higher up the Google search rankings. I have done the hard work of writing more than 1.2 million words, which have been indexed by Google, and lazy individuals are attempting to profit from my labour, by associating their crappy websites with mine: so-called 'backlinks'.

Having a link from a reputable website to another website is seen as an endorsement, in Google's eyes. High-ranking websites confer some of their pagerank 'score' to other sites which they link to. It's an SEO trick that's been around almost as long as Google - trying to get links onto other people's websites... especially high-ranking ones.

Google has now punished me harshly for not staying on top of my spam comment problem and has removed me from many searches. If, for example, you were to search for my name - Nick Grant - you would have found me on page 2 or 3 of the search results, but now I've disappeared completely. As far as Google's algorithm's are concerned, this website is a contrived creation, created purely to help people promote their dodgy websites. I'm not even going to write about what the kinds of grim and immoral services these sites are offering, because to use those words would further hurt Google's algorithmic perception of me and my website.

I had presumed that it was bots leaving the comments, so a friend helped me to introduce a couple of mechanisms to stop automated comments from being left. Surprisingly, the comments kept coming - there are real people whose job it is to sit at a screen and click those annoying ReCaptcha things, and then copy-paste in links to websites along with some nonsense made up text that's supposed to look like a genuine comment.

I'm not even going to share the kinds of comments that these clickfarm people leave, because it would again detract from the 1.2 million words that I have painstakingly written in clear plain English, with good grammar and highly considered sentence construction. I have taken the time to structure my writing into concise sentences and paragraphs, and express myself with great clarity, while there are an army of people leaving comments which are almost but not-quite nonsensical.

Google's natural language analysis is able to tell that what I write is genuine human-generated content, but it's also fooled by stuff written by people whose job it is to write generic comments for the purposes of search engine optimisation (SEO). The volume of text that Google scrapes from the web and indexes includes vast swathes of nonsense from social media, where literacy standards are woeful, but the majority of content on the internet is at least user-generated. It's hard for a search engine like Google to punish the spammers and the scammers, while also making sure that an ordinary member of the public who builds, maintains and publishes to their own 'home-brew' website, is not caught in the same net.

The same friend who has been helping me with my spam comment problem was also associated with a popular forum which had millions of visitors, at one point in time, until the site was completely over-run by bots. It's hard to battle bots and suchlike, when you're just a tech enthusiast who's making their small contribution to the body of internet text, and you don't have heaps of spare time to innovate and stay one step ahead of the spammers.

For me to comb through all the comments that have been left on my blog and delete the spam ones would be something which would either be a time-consuming manual task, or a time-consuming and technically difficult job to automate. Obviously, automating the task seems like the smart choice, so that the job of deleting all the spam is easily repeatable, but it would be work that's very similar to my day job - the whole point of writing for pleasure is because I have no opportunity to do so in the office. Doing "office work" in my spare time seems like an unfair burden, given that all I want to do is write and publish my thoughts, for the benefit of genuine readers - why should spammers benefit from my efforts?

Ultimately, the spammers might sink my website, just as spam Twitter accounts almost sank my social media presence. I can't help it if I don't have the resources to painstaking delete, ban, block and otherwise defend myself against those who are making money off the back of my effort, energy and generous contribution.

I do feel a little sorry for the poor people whose job it is to click on fire hydrants and traffic lights, and paste gibberish into comment sections of a website. In fact, I feel very sorry for them. That's a terrible job to have.

Anyway, any website link you leave now will not link anywhere except back here, so I'm sorry spammers: you're wasting your time. Leave me alone. Not that you read my blog anyway.

Tags: #socialmedia #seo #writing #blog #searchengine #computing #capitalism

This is a story about our maritime climate...

The UK experienced an exceptional couple of summers in 2017 and 2018, but this year our luck seems to have run dry. During the Easter bank holiday weekend, the weather warm enough to make barbecues and picnics a pleasant thing to do outdoors - although I strongly advise against indoor barbecues - and shorts and flip-flops briefly became suitable attire.

Since Easter it's been pretty wet. Of course there have been many pleasant days, but not enough to encourage me to spend much time outside. It's about 14 degrees celcius at the moment (57 degrees Fahrenheit for my North American readers) which does not feel at all summerlike.

Often times, our peak holiday months of July and August can be a washout, but May and June are warm, dry and very pleasant, and September can be a wonderful time of "Indian summer".

I've made plans to be abroad for my birthday - my 40th - so I should be guaranteed good weather, although I suppose it depends on what your definition of "good" is. I shall be very happy if it's windy, seeing as I'm going kitesurfing on a little island off the coast of Africa.

The seasons and the weather affect my mood a great deal and I have neither the energy boost that summer brings or the lethargy of winter at the moment. Flying to more southerly climes seems very decadent in the middle of the UK's summer, when our weather is supposed to be at its best, but I have the excuse that it's my 40th birthday so I should celebrate in style.

I'm attempting to complete my thirties with dignity more becoming of a man entering his forties. My thirties were a real mixed bag, which included some incredible achievements, but also some jaw-dropping adversity. The "wealth" that I carry into middle age takes the form of an immense amount of extreme experiences, including a great many which I do not recommend other people to imitate, but I still treasure them all - even the bad ones.

This summer seems to involve a lot of hard work. There is a lot of pressure on me at work, as well as some financial worries caused by job uncertainty. However, I cannot deny that there are elements of my life that far exceed my wildest expectations: my beautiful girlfriend, my gorgeous kitten, my lovely house... and I'm having a reasonable year in terms of getting back in contact with my sister and my friends.

I'm writing sporadically at the moment, because of the many competing demands placed upon me. After boasting yesterday about how well my kitten was doing at using her litter tray, she soaked my duvet in the night, and then took a pee on my work shirts in the morning, leaving a trail of pee across the bedroom floor as I hurriedly moved her into the correct receptacle while she continued to urinate.

If I'm writing in a bit more of a "this is what I had for breakfast" boring diary style at the moment, I apologise. Lots of irons in the fire. Spread very thin. I promise to write some of my usual off-the-wall bizarre essays again soon.

Tags: #weather #summer #rain #holiday #birthday #kitesurfing #writing