This is a story about being absent without leave...

Friends quite rightly worry about me when I stop writing regularly. Usually, a gap in my daily blogging routine indicates trouble. Often, the trouble can be very bad - the kind that would threaten my life, my job, my shelter, my money... everything could potentially go down the pan, surprisingly quickly.

It's very nice that concerned friends check in on me if I go quiet. It's very reassuring that people care about me. It's very touching that people would take time out of their day to try to contact me, to see if I'm OK.

I am OK.

I've been pretty damn exhausted and struggling to catch up on some much-needed sleep. I've been under a great deal of pressure at work. I've been feeling a bit jittery and anxious - insecure - as I'm in a new relationship and I'm really crazy about my girlfriend, and I'd hate for anything to go wrong. I have a whole new set of responsibilities now that I have a kitten.

One thing I've been doing regularly, at the expense of my blog, is washing duvets and duvet covers, because my kitten has a habit of peeing on them. My kitten is house trained and knows where her litter tray is, but she seems to want to pee on the bed, every single day. She's now banned from the bedrooms. Mercifully, she hasn't peed on my sofa, yet.

Last night I let my kitten roam free and she didn't pee. She didn't spend much time in my bedroom at all. She likes to sleep on a duvet, but I was sleeping under sheets because the duvet was drying. I guess she's taken to sleeping at the top of the house, where it's the warmest - probably next to the boiler. I always worry when I can't find her, but after a while calling her name I can hear her scamper down the stairs, from the very top floor.

Other than washing cat pee, I had a friend visiting from abroad, which was wonderful, and I spoke at length to two other friends. Also, I see my girlfriend a lot, which is amazing - we have very similar tastes in arts, culture and politics, and we can talk for hours. There are lots of good things going on in my life, which is also perhaps why I'm writing less: I tend to use writing therapeutically when life is very difficult.

I'm drinking too much, not exercising enough and I still need to catch up on sleep, but life is very good. I have some stresses - such as an invasive security vetting process, renegotiating my contract at work, and getting official permission to have a cat from my landlord - but on the whole my life is busy, entertaining, exciting and has some extremely pleasurable periods.

I'm in need of a week of rest and relaxation, to recharge my batteries, but the project I'm working on is very demanding and it's an important time to be in the office, making sure everything goes to plan and the project is a big success. I'm sure I can juggle the competing demands on my time, because I've worked hard to earn plenty of brownie points and build a good reputation with my colleagues.

It is a little tricky finding the time to write every day, and I know that it's a healthy habit to write and publish every day. I know that it's useful to keep the people who care about me informed of what's going on in my life. I know it's a worthwhile investment of time, continuing to write this blog.

I am spread a little thin and I am having a few problems with drinking too much, and skating on thin ice with so few energy reserves, leaving me somewhat prone to have a moment of impatient unkindness, either at work or at home. I feel resentful of colleagues who produce shoddy work at snail's pace. I feel jealous of friends who aren't working, who are much more time rich. However, it's my own stupid fault for taking on too much and not looking after myself.

Hopefully, I can start to write every day again. The tone of what I write will probably change. A lot of what I'm going to write about is how I spent a pleasant evening on the sofa, with my cute little kitten curled up sleeping on me, like she is now.

If you're looking for drama, it never seems to be very far away in my life. I have no idea what's going to shatter my pleasant existence, but there'll be some unpleasant surprise waiting for me, I'm sure.

For now, no news has been good news. I can deal with a bit of kitten pee. My life is very good at the moment. Being busy with my girlfriend, busy with my job, busy with visiting friends, and busy with my kitten - that's a nice state of affairs.

Tags: #relationships #kitten #career

This is a story about basic human needs...

For a very long time I've been complaining about how slowly life has been progressing. It has been a source of immense boredom, frustration, annoyance, irritation, loneliness, unhappiness, dissatisfaction, exasperation, exhaustion and a general waste of my limited mortal lifespan, to have to sit around waiting for the hands of the clock to move; for the grains of sand in the hourglass to fall one-by-one through the narrow opening, at an agonisingly slow rate.

I've viewed life's core problems as fourfold: work, money, love and home. I can survive without a job, but I'm on borrowed time - eventually my savings and credit will be exhausted and I'll become destitute. I can survive without money, provided some good Samaritan is kind enough to offer food and lodgings for free. I can survive without love, but without it life seems pointless and unpleasant; not worth living for. I can survive with quite primitive shelter, but it's immensely damaging for my sense of wellbeing and self-esteem to be sleeping rough in Kensington Palace Gardens, for example.

Getting a job is probably the easiest of all the problems to solve. I've always been very employable and I command a high rate of remuneration wherever I am. My skills can be put to good use almost anywhere, mercifully.

Getting money follows as a natural consequence of getting a job. So long as I'm well enough to work, money will quickly follow. Mercifully, money flows in at a rapid rate, which can relatively quickly replenish my depleted savings and enable me to spend money on other things which are very cash-hungry, such as housing.

Getting a nice house is a little bit trickier sometimes as I'm occasionally classified as "self employed" and expected to prove to an unreasonable degree that my earning potential is far in excess of my financial obligations. I've previously been asked to pay an entire year's rent in advance, which is particularly unreasonable. To tie-up an entire year's rent in a single lump-sum payment poses significant cashflow problem, even for a high earner, especially if there is furniture to purchase and other moving-related expenses. To furnish my house with just the basics has been expensive and exhausting, and my bedroom still lacks a wardrobe and a chest-of-drawers. There is a long way still to go with furnishing my house.

Getting love seems like the final hurdle. I have very low self-esteem if I'm not working, earning, able to spend money and living somewhere lovely. So many people will ask "what have [I] got to offer anybody?" and tell me that I should be single, but those people are wrong. Sure, it might be a mistake to be in a bad relationship purely because of being too afraid of being alone, but it's so often those who have been happily married for years, who have forgotten how truly awful it is to be lonely, who offer the unsolicited advice that being single must be brilliant fun. It's not. I hate dating.

There are two important things I need to write about.

Firstly, I can settle for temporary relationships of convenience and turn a blind eye to red flags. I can make things work with a person who ultimately I can see I have no long-term future with. However, I never take my eyes off the prize. I know when I meet somebody very special - an incredibly rare event - and I know the difference between love, lust, temporary infatuation, and comfortable relationships which are only marginally better than being single. I'm quite capable of having a lovely time with somebody - something casual - but I have always maintained the hope of meeting somebody I'm really well matched with, who hopefully I can have a much more serious, loving relationship with. I have only been in love twice in my life, with a third time which was very promising but was never able to come to fruition - we'll never know what might have been. I use the word "love" very carefully and sparingly. When I say "I love you" or suchlike, a lot of thought has gone into what I'm saying, and there are deep feelings behind those words; those words are not said cheaply or easily, without a great deal of thought and scrutiny of my emotions.

Secondly, breakups do cause me a lot of distress, but I am not the kind of person who's unable to handle a breakup without it threatening my safety. Indeed, I very actively avoid the situation where I feel as though my world would be destroyed, leaving me suicidal, if I lost the love of my life. It's extremely unwise to over-invest in something so fragile as a human relationship, even if it appears to be fully reciprocated. I've been through divorce, so I know that even the most solemn of vows and binding of legal contracts, with the lengthy preceding relationship, is not enough to give any guarantees of security. I don't like unpleasant sudden surprises which will cause my life quality to be massively adversely affected, hence why I was so shaken by the events of last week, but even somebody who I'm totally in love with is not duty-bound to stay with me, for fear of me committing suicide. I would never say "if you leave me I'll kill myself" or commit suicide in direct response to a breakup.

Last week, my job was going incredibly well, my finances were in great shape, my house was looking amazing and my romantic relationship was awesome. I had a long weekend planned, which was going to begin with getting a kitten, and be spent in a state of domestic bliss, with the girl of my dreams, in an amazing home, loads of money in the bank, brilliant job and with a cute little fur baby scampering around.

Then, things looked like they were going to get ruined.

It's not that I was going to lose the relationship which was the sole reason why I went from on-top-of-the-world to suicidally depressed, but that the accompanying awfulness was too much to bear, as a sudden shock. Of course, I wouldn't have lost my money, my house or my job, but the approaching weekend - which I had been looking forward to so much - had a completely different complexion, as a suddenly single man.

What actually happened was that my girlfriend and I drove to pick up my little kitten, full of excitement and anticipation, drove the delightful little furball back to my amazing house, had delicious wine and Chinese takeaway and spend an amazing evening with my playful affectionate new pet. We woke up with a purring fur baby in bed with us. We spent the weekend on the sofa, eating delectable food, sharing our passion for similar cultural entertainment, and making a fuss over the cute little kitten... the most perfect weekend imaginable.

The difference between what actually happened and what could have happened might not seem great enough to have prompted the decision to not get a kitten and to hang myself, but we must be aware that it has been a very long hard journey from sleeping in a bush in Kensington Palace Gardens - utterly destitute - to get to this point.

Breakups have caused me a great deal of trauma in the past, with my divorce being the most extreme example, which tore through my life destroying nearly everything, myself included. However, I know what love is and I know what kind of life I want. I know the core elements that will make my life pleasant, liveable, sustainable and full of joy. I'm no fool: I know what I've got to do, and I've been patiently rebuilding my life, choosing very carefully.

As I write this, I have my little kitten peacefully napping on my chest, as I'm lying on my chaise-longue in a parquet-floored period home, with huge high ceilings and massive bay windows. I've had a great day at work and I've earned a lot of money. I have a beautiful girlfriend who I think is amazing, who will be coming to see me later. My life is exceptionally awesome.

How will I react if the relationship ends? Who can say? What I can say with certainty though, is that I've dealt with exceptional adversity in my life and survived, and of course I am incredibly unlikely to hurt myself while I still have the energy to keep fighting and patiently battling to achieve a decent quality of life.

Given some medical emergencies which have nearly claimed my life, and becoming totally destroyed by my divorce, perhaps I should be happy to live in a dumpster, in rags, with no love at all; perhaps I should just be happy that I'm not dead. No. I'm not content to merely be alive. I want it all: love, money, job and house... and a little kitten.

I hope that things work out with my girlfriend and I. I think she's amazing and I think we're really well matched, but who knows how things are going to pan out in future. Of course, I hope that she's "the one" but it's early days. If things don't work out, that's life - I still get to keep my great job, my great house and I still have the love of my little kitten.

This might sound quite different from how I sounded last week, but you have to understand the massive disappointment that I was facing. I would be disappointed if things didn't pan out with my girlfriend, but it doesn't have to be so devastating and shocking and sudden. Life is usually a little more stable and predictable.

Anyway, I had a great weekend of domestic bliss.

Tags: #relationships #suicide #kitten #cat #house #moving #career #money #capitalism

This is a story about broken dreams...

Here on the former site of Mount Cardboard are some of the various kitten-wrangling devices which I've purchased this week. I had been planning on collecting my gorgeous little bengal kitten tomorrow... perhaps at lunchtime. I've been wanting to get another cat for years and years. I've missed having a house and a cat. I've missed normal domestic life.

The only thing I'm missing is kitten food.

I need to go to the supermarket to buy kitten food.

In the small hours of this morning I decided I was going to buy rope instead.

Here's where I was going to tie the rope. I checked the height - there's enough.

Whether I bought kitten food or rope hinged on whether my life was "ruined" or not.

I've been through some ridiculously rough patches of my life. I've solved some ludicrously hard problems. I've overcome some incredible obstacles. How on earth could my life be "ruined" when there are so many good things which have been happening lately? How can my life be "ruined" when I've been talking so positively and with such excitement about the future? How can my life be "ruined" when I've gone to such extreme lengths to get myself into a secure position, financially, in the esteem of my work colleagues and in terms of settling in a great house in a great city?

I was so excited about getting a little bengal kitten and I knew that they love to play with water, so I bought this ridiculously expensive water fountain thing. I enjoyed assembling it. I took great pleasure from having such a nice thing for my kitten, hopefully making her life a little better. I want my cat's life to be as happy as it can possibly be.

I cannot have a kitten and kill myself. If I get a kitten, I'm staying alive to look after the cat; I'll be staying alive for my pet.

In the small hours of the morning, I decided I wasn't going to get the kitten anymore. I was going to buy rope, not kitten food.

How can this be? How can I be so unstable, when I seem to settled and secure?

To get to this point, where I was in an exclusive relationship with a girl who I'm absolutely crazy about, in a beautiful house, doing a job which I'm really good at, working on a flagship project for a massive organisation, with plenty of money flowing in... to get here was really f**king hard.

I cannot over-emphasise how hard it was to get to this point. I cannot stress enough just how difficult it has been to put all the pieces of a brand new life together. I cannot be excessively hyperbolic when I say that the journey to this point has exhausted every ounce of cunning, patience, perseverance and various other things, that I possess. I'm spent.

When I should have been thinking about buying kitten food, I switched to thinking about buying rope.

My life could collapse like falling dominoes. The plan to go and collect my kitten with the girl of my dreams, and bring the kitten home to the house of my dreams, all paid for with the job of my dreams... it would collapse so easily. The relationship has been damaged by events outside of my control, which threatens to ruin what had been an absolutely amazing thing up until last night. Losing the relationship means I can no longer keep myself safe, so I would have to hospitalise myself, which in turn jeopardises my job, which in turn jeopardises my house... and everything crumbles to dust.

I'm not being melodramatic. "The world's longest suicide note" exists because my life has been in danger for so long. I thought I was getting to a safe, secure, stable, sustainable place, but I suddenly realised that I had used up all my emotional reserves and I had no capacity to absorb a catastrophic event, such as losing this girl I'm crazy about. Yes, I'm scarily over-invested. Yes, it's dumb to make myself so vulnerable to events beyond my control, but I had allowed myself to believe I was going to get everything I want.

Then, suddenly, I was going to lose everything.

Of course, to you, the outside observer, you can't imagine losing everything but I really can because I've had to rebuild my life from scratch. Like, I've had to start from zero, zilch, zip, nada. I literally don't have any salt in my house, for example - I haven't run out... it's just one of a million items that I haven't yet replaced, because I had to start my life all over again, from nothing.

I know how it goes. I know how one thing leads to another. I know how a health problem - for example - can snowball into a catastrophe that destroys an entire life.

That's why I was going to buy rope, not kitten food.

I'm not prepared to lose everything again, and unfortunately I didn't feel like I had the reserves to be able to deal with a major setback. I really f**king like this girl, and it's unfair that the relationship got messed up by some outside actors. It was completely ridiculously crazily awful that this s**t got rained down on my head, just as my life was starting to come together.

It might seem crazy to throw away so much because of losing one "small" part - something which could be replaced - but I think you're failing to understand how vulnerable it's made me, working so hard for so long, in order to restore myself to health, wealth, love and prosperity. I've had enough of endlessly battling and struggling and striving. Time for the rope.

I'm not going to buy the rope. I'm never going to buy the rope. I know that it'll be incredibly hard if the relationship which was totally amazing is irreparably damaged, and I'm lonely and single, and my beautiful bengal kitten is almost a reminder of what might have been but I know that if I collect the kitten tomorrow, I'm going to look after her for the rest of her life. Yes, it'll f**king suck that a couple of dicks maliciously f**ked up my relationship, but I'll have to take things philosophically: if my relationship was so fragile that it couldn't withstand those malicious dicks, then how long could it have lasted anyway? Yes, I genuinely believe I'll never find another girl who's as perfect as this one, but then that's a lot of unhelpful pressure, isn't it? Better to try to get my feelings back under control and stop getting carried away.

You can forgive me getting carried away, can't you?

Literally the last thing I had to buy to make my life complete was some kitten food (oh, and maybe some salt) and then my life was ready to welcome a little kitten into it. All the pieces of the puzzle were finally falling into place. My life was seriously awesome, and getting more and more awesome all the time.

Then how on earth could I have seriously contemplated hanging myself in my hallway then?

I might look tough, I might have survived against incredible odds and I might have achieved unbelievable things, but it all takes its toll. I didn't even realise how close to the wind I've been sailing until I burst into tears in the office car park, despite the fact that I was planning on buying rope, not kitten food after work.

I know what I'm like. I know how calmly I would have just gone about the business of hanging myself. I know that I wouldn't have hesitated for a second.

I'm sick and tired of working so hard, and having my life ruined by things which are beyond my control. I'm sick and tired of getting so close, only to have some major shit which didn't need to happen - shouldn't have happened - spoil everything.

Perhaps it's ludicrously frightening to think that I would have gone and bought rope - instead of kitten food - and hanged myself, seemingly over something relatively inconsequential and solvable, versus almost every other major problem I've overcome in my life.

Does this mean I'm dangerously unstable; at risk of suicide all the time? No.

I'm under incredible pressure at work. Dating has been exhausting. Moving house and furnishing the place has been excessively demanding. There's been a perfect storm in my life, and yet I came so close to having everything work out, that it was an intolerable cruelty to have a malicious vindictive act perpetrated against me, causing so much damage. But, hey, s**t happens.

I need to go buy kitten food and other things now. You probably shouldn't worry about me. I'd be dead by now and I'd never have warned anybody if I was going to do it. You definitely won't get any warning if I'm going to kill myself, but you should be reassured that the plan is to get the kitten at lunchtime tomorrow, and then I'm damn well staying alive for that cat's whole life.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about being protective...

I read something the other day that said "imagine that you have a daughter and she's dating somebody like you". The suggestion was that if you wouldn't be happy with your own daughter being treated the way that you treat women, then you need to think long and hard about your behaviour and attitudes, and change.

The short answer to the question of whether I should be dating anyone's daughter or not is a pretty easy one: I try to be kind, considerate, respectful and honest; I try to bring joy to the life of the object of my affections, doing fun stuff and generally acting with a great deal of enthusiasm and passion for the things they love.

What's the catch?

If you're looking to find something wrong with me - a reason to reject me - then there's ample ammunition here, provided in exquisite gory detail on the pages of this website, which unflinchingly documents every aspect of my life and the contents of my brain, throughout a 4-year period, in an incredibly candid manner which is not usually found outside of a private journal/diary.

For those who seek to reject, they will find what they're looking for. My past is my past, and although I have the option of expunging my digital identity from the internet - erasing history - it would run contrary to a very meticulous and exhaustive exploration of a substantial period of my life, which was deliberate. We need to remember this: I deliberately wrote down things which were unflattering about myself, because my mission has always been to document things with as little self-censorship as possible.

Of course, I don't want to be harshly criticised or ridiculed, so sometimes I have tentatively written about the so-called "bad stuff" with caution, at first. We've all lived lives where we've made mistakes. We all have regrets. Nobody is perfect. We all have insecurities. We all respond badly under particularly adverse conditions. Whether it's something we said which was needlessly hurtful and/or caused upset/offence, whether it was an act of poor judgement, or whether it was something like a silly mistake which was quite embarrassing, we all carry these things around, and we never talk about them, let alone write them all down and publicly publish them.

I'm half-tempted to signpost people to the periods of my life which were most difficult, so that they can judge me and reject me based on something from the past which I have no power to alter. If you wish to reject a person, you're going to be able to find something, if you meticulously examine their entire history in search of something which ordinarily would be inaccessible to you - very few people have written and published so much about themselves, which leaves them so exposed to prejudice.

This is deliberate.

I ask the reader to follow the story, not to dig for dirt. The story is interesting because it has a beginning, a middle and an end. If you simply want to skim-read and find 'whodunnit' then you've missed the point: I'm a living, breathing person who is continuously telling my story, which has not yet ended. To know who I am and the nature of my character is best done by travelling along with me for a little while, here in the present, where you will find that I make my very best efforts to write every single day, and to do so with brutal honesty.

To study my past is cynical. It might tell you why my character is the way that it is, but it will not tell you what my character is, because we live in the present, not in the past; things are constantly changing.

If you're interested enough in me to go back through the archives, which stretch to over 1.2 million words, then I'm flattered that you would take such an interest in me, but I really don't wish to be held accountable for a version of myself that no longer exists. The very nature of this project has been to hold myself publicly accountable, and I'm very grateful to my readers, who are often kind enough to give me feedback that is relevent in the present.

I'm in an exclusive relationship with a very beautiful young woman, who I'm absolutely crazy about. We've deleted our dating profiles. We're cautiously but optimistically exploring the future, together. This website is incredibly tempting for not only her, but also those who care about her, in order to find things out about me.

In the ordinary world, we share relatively few details: we know where somebody works, what their highest academic qualification is and which institution awarded the diploma, and we perhaps know some details about whether they have siblings and if their parents are still alive. We attempt to distill a person down to a curriculum vitæ because it's more convenient shorthand than 1.2 million words, plus the messy complexity of a human being, who invariably refuses to be neatly pigeon-holed.

"What do you do?" is the classic middle-class question which attempts to get directly to the point: are you one of us?

I have a respectable job, a respectable house. I dress quite conservatively and I like to think of myself as well-mannered. Clearly, I can speak and write to confer the impression of possessing a modest intellect. I'm not addicted to illegal drugs, in financial distress and I haven't fathered a string of abandoned children. I haven't killed anybody or otherwise been convicted of a crime. What's not to like?

I'm undergoing very thorough security vetting - a process taking several months - and I work on an extremely high-profile project for an organisation which is a household name. One would have thought that I'm a good chap.

However, perhaps it's only those who are truly fearful for themselves and those who they feel protective about - for example daughters and any living parent - who would bother to do the due diligence of putting "Nick Grant" into Google. My colleagues see me confidently and competently doing good work every day, so why would they ever suspect that I would do something so unusual as to publish a vast trove of unflattering information about myself?

We are usually content that if a person has had a great career spanning a long period of time, working for illustrious organisations, then they are a trustworthy individual of fine character. However, I invite you to dig through the archives if you feel that you must... but I ask you to question why you are doing that: what you are hoping to find? I promise you that if you are seeking to expose me as a sham, then you will be disappointed, but if you are looking for any mistake I've ever made, in my entire life, you will find plenty and you will have the thing you wanted - a reason to reject me - or in fact a single tiny piece of information that tells you a minuscule amount about the history which has shaped the man I am today.

I caution you against making a judgement based on the chapter of a book which you opened at random, but I have nothing to hide: I'm one of the most thoroughly documented individuals who you're ever likely to be able to study, with the exception of course of those who are noteworthy and notorious enough to have had an archivist preserve their journals for academics to fetishise.

Is this an ego project? No. This is a coping mechanism and a form of therapy. This is something that brings structure and routine to my life. This is something that has brought me new friends, as well as allowing old friends to keep up-to-date with my life; a life which has been atypical.

Happy hunting.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #privacy #relationships

This is a story about nurturing...

My lounge is a place of contrast. I hate the style of the fireplace, but I love having a log fire. I love the parquet floor but it's completely different from the parquet in the rest of the house. The room is cold, but I wanted this room to be cosy - I spend a lot of time under a blanket, when the fire's not lit. My big sofas are super comfy, but I find all my furniture a little bland and generic; functional and practical. I hate the curtains: they're revolting and need replacing, but I do like to close the curtains and feel like I have good privacy.

Getting some houseplants has transformed how I feel about my lounge. Having some greenery really makes me feel many times happier about this particular room of my house.

The shelves were looking a little bare, as I lost a lot of my books during my divorce and many subsequent house moves. The weight of books that I was lugging around didn't seem to be worth it after I had moved for the millionth time, so the only books I have on my shelves are ones I've recently bought and read, or been lent.

I feel like it's a bit of a crazy idea to start accumulating more and more material possessions, including bulky items like furniture, and delicate things like houseplants, which can't be simply thrown into a box if I needed to put my stuff into storage.

However, I needed to put down some roots. I needed to feel settled and at home somewhere, at long last.

Did I mention I'm getting a kitten?

I've had enough of being young, free and single. I want to be comfortable and content. I want to be settled and secure.

This doesn't mean that I'm in some desperate hurry to find the woman of my dreams, marry her and start a family. I'm just enjoying simple domestic pleasures. I'm enjoying ordinary life. I like loading and unloading the dishwasher. I like doing my laundry. I like buying houseplants and other things to make my house look nice. I like mowing the lawn. I get plenty of novelty and pleasure from pottering around the house. That's not to say that I don't very much enjoy going on lovely dates, eating in amazing restaurants and watching arty movies, but I derive an unusual amount of satisfaction from making my house into a home.

It seems like I'm doing everything all at once: moving to a new city, getting a house, settling in, getting a pet, going on dates. Perhaps it seems like I have an end-goal that I'm rushing towards, like so many people do: either rushing towards having children, rushing towards their retirement and death, or both. I'm pretty content to have things settle down for a while. I really want to savour the next few years - I'm hoping that I can keep things steady and routine, enjoying the pleasure of foreign holidays, mini-breaks and fine dining. It might seem like I'm constantly yearning and striving, but as my quality of life improves, the pace at which I live my life is calming down.

Entering into an exclusive relationship might seem like I'm desperate to move my love-life forwards, but it felt like a very natural part of winding down from my rather frenetic period of activity, and was something I was overjoyed about given how crazy I've been about one particular special somebody.

All the things I'm really pleased about sound really ordinary and mundane, in a way: a slowly developing relationship, a steady working routine, minor home improvements. Getting a kitten sounds exciting, which it is, but I want the kitten to feel settled at home with me, and to become part of my day-to-day existence. I eagerly anticipate feeding the cat and watering the plants, as well as cooking ordinary meals for the object of my affections when she comes to visit; watching movies on TV, curled up on the sofa with the cat.

Have I lost my adventurous side? Of course not. I had a rough time when I lived a chaotic adrenaline-filled life without any structure or routine. I'm managing to gradually restore myself to sustainable health, wealth and prosperity. I'm bound to start doing lots of really exciting things - it's in my nature - but I'm going to be smart and keep my love life, my work life and my home life settled, secure, scheduled and sensible.

Future planned purchase: a watering can and some plant food. That pretty much sums up my attitude to life at the moment.

Tags: #house #moving #kitten #relationships #dating

This is a story about girls, girls, girls...

Life is always so filled with trepidation and uncertainty. My employment contract expires soon. My housing contract currently stipulates "no pets". My relationship status is still very much "dating". I can picture some kind of nightmarish scenario where I find myself homeless, jobless, single and with a hungry kitten to feed - that would be the worst-case outcome, which is of course what I imagine will happen when I'm feeling anxious.

On the flip side, everything could work out nicely for me. My contract could get renewed. My housing contract could be amended to allow me to keep the kitten I'm getting. My romantic interests could develop into a serious committed loving relationship. All these things are within the realms of possibility.

You could characterise me as somewhat of a control freak. I like to have things nailed down. I like to have certainty.

Perhaps I should have made different choices. I could have chosen permanent employment, instead of doing consultancy. I could have bought a house with no covenants or other contractual legal sticks to beat me with. I could have married the first girl who'd have me. Perhaps all these things would give me more certainty in my life - more security - but in my experience it's not possible to use legal contracts to guarantee anything: Life is intrinsically uncertain.

Empirically, it's obvious that most marriages will end in divorce. "Forever" is not something that anybody takes very seriously when they say their solemn marriage vows, nowadays. Perhaps it's always been the case that most humans are liars and cheats, and it seems to me like there are very few guarantees that you're not going to get your heart broken.

Our lives are based upon an immensely complex and surprisingly fragile economic system, which is liable to threaten our ability to house ourselves at almost any moment. Most people live lives of economic precarity, with very little money saved up in case they lose their job - two missed paycheques and the majority of people would be in a great deal of financial difficulty.

Humans are incredibly adaptable creatures and things which seem like catastrophes are often not as bad as we initially think: we so often find a way of overcoming adversity.

A considerable proportion of my time is spent worrying about losing my job, losing my home and having my heart broken. I suppose I've already had everything bad happen that could possibly happen - losing my job, my money, my house, my wife - and it felt like the end of the world; something I'd never be able to recover from. My life is certainly not fully repaired but occasionally I dare to dream that I'm going to end up in a far better situation than I ever would have been if I hadn't lost everything and been forced to start again from scratch.

It's not particularly in my nature to be risk-averse and I think I'm happier that I'm not trapped in a bad job, a bad marriage or a bad mortgage. My life is kinda scary, which isn't great for my anxiety levels, but there's no way that I'd be in such an enviable position if I hadn't taken huge risks. I'm glad that I'm taking risks and they're paying off, although obviously I'm aware that the more risks I take, the more chance there is of something bad happening.

Empirically and anecdotally, I do seem to get everything I want though.

One week from now I should have a gorgeous bengal kitten, all things being well.

Tags: #cat #kitten #relationships #homeless #career

This is a story about waking up early...

My brain has been buzzing this week. There has been enormous pressure on me to deliver a complex project and solve a complicated issue at work. My mind seems to be able to cope with juggling a lot of competing demands. Often when I'm doing OK and my life is going well, I find I have spare brain capacity to think about physics and philosophical questions, but not this week - I've been way too busy.

I was delighted this morning when a friend got in contact to say he wanted to ask me:

"about momentum of massless particle and solar sail"

I was awake well before my alarm because that's what happens when my brain is buzzing - I need less sleep. Nothing could have been better to wake up to than a difficult physics problem: how does a solar sail work?

Anyway, I shan't bore you with the details, but my friend and I both reached for our Feynman diagrams... well, I already knew that a photons can be absorbed by electrons and emitted, which could translate to a "sail-like" behaviour. Further, I was aware of a device called a Crookes radiometer, which could be said to demonstrate all the properties of a solar sail... although it's always been questionable whether such a device would work in the vacuum of space. Turns out my brain was working pretty well considering I had just woken up and didn't have to resort to textbooks or Google to be barking up the right tree.

I wonder if I'm affected my hypomania. Certainly, I'm working very hard at the moment. Certainly, I'm rushing around being very busy. Certainly, I could easily burn myself out if I'm not careful. Whether I'm hypomanic, I'm not so sure - the praise I've received from very important colleagues in recent days has confirmed that I'm not delusional, at least, although it's perfectly reasonable to assume that I might get carried away... as I often have done in the past.

The question for me is whether I can regulate my mood or not. I need to calm myself down, remember to rest, remember to relax and remember to pace myself: life's a marathon, not a sprint... although it's not if you're planning on dying young.

I'm certainly not bored at the moment, which is brilliant. I hate being bored more than anything in the world. I hate waking up and dreading having to go to the office and pretend that I'm busy doing stuff, when in fact I'm losing my mind with boredom and hating every single second.

I now need to transition from "working really hard" mode to "working at a sustainable pace" mode, without causing any issues. I've done a good job of impressing my colleagues, but it's dangerous to make people overly reliant on you, and I always disliked people who turn themselves into key-man dependencies. I'm genuinely a pretty good team player, I like to think - I'm highly productive, but I don't squirrel away in isolated obscurity; my work is always done in collaboration with my colleagues.

Long may this interesting period of my life continue, but I do have to calm down and find a sustainable pace to live my life at.

Tags: #physics #career

This is a story about repeating yourself...

The phone rang and I prevaricated about answering it. I was having about 5 simultaneous conversations - via text chat - with various colleagues and other people, while also doing a very tricky piece of work. I was sorely tempted not to answer my phone. I decline to answer most calls.

I answered the phone.

I answered because it was one of my very dear friends who has been very loyal, and has called at precisely the right moment; the moment when I've desperately needed somebody to talk to. He called me when I had lost my phone and all my phone numbers and I couldn't get on the internet. He called me when I was in a dire situation, cut off from the world.

"Oh no" I thought. "I'm going to have to fill him in on the news of what's being going on in my life" I thought. "There's so much to tell him" I thought.

It's strange, but I forget that I write a blog post every day, pretty much telling the whole world what's going on in my life.

"How does he know everything that's relevant and current? How does he know all my news? How is he so up to date?" I thought, puzzled.

It took me quite a while to remember that I write and publish quite a lot every day.

Today was a perfect example of why I write and publish so much.

I've been stretched very thin, what with dating, nest-making, having friends to visit and a mountain of work. I've hardly had a minute to do a single "leisure" activity. When I look at the clock, it's always time to do something. I'm always playing catch-up, but never quite managing to get ahead.

I have to publish this now... I have something happening in just a few minutes... tell you about it tomorrow.

Tags: #writing #friends

This is a story about overnight recovery...

One day you can't feel your leg. One day a leg is twice the size of the other one. One day your kidneys have stopped working. One day you're in agony from muscle and nerve damage caused by DVT. One day you're in hospital on dialysis and you're very sick. One day you're physically dependent on a medication which you've been buying on the black market, and you'll have seizures if you stop taking it. One day you're so addicted to a drug that you won't sleep, eat or drink, because you don't want to stop your binge for a single second. One day you're virtually bankrupt. One day you're homeless. One day you're jobless. One day your mental health is so bad that you're hearing voices, seeing things and you're paranoid about everybody and everything, to the point where you think even the person who loves you the most in the world is your enemy.

Then, overnight, you recover.

Overnight, all your physical health problems are cured.

Overnight, your mental health problems are cured.

Overnight, all your substance dependency - addiction - problems are solved.

Overnight, you have a house.

Overnight, you have a job.

Overnight, your debts are repaid.

Overnight, you have lots of money.

Nope.

Just nope.

I was rummaging in the boxes of stuff which managed to survive the chaotic years of my life and I found a pair of flip-flops with a piece of string tied to them. The string is there because I couldn't feel my foot and I couldn't control its movement - I couldn't walk properly. When I was walking in flip-flops, the left one would just fall off after ten or twenty steps, because I didn't have enough feeling in my toes to be able to 'grip' the flip-flop properly. The string was my improvised attempt to be able to wear my beloved flip-flops during some nice weather.

My attempt at using a piece of string to fix my inability to wear flip-flops was a lovely metaphor for the attempts I was making to solve all my problems, overnight.

That was two years ago.

Things got a lot worse before they got better.

Things were so bad that on the very worst day of my life, I woke up in an hospital intensive care ward, with a tube down my throat forcing air into my lungs, a tube up my nose and into my stomach, forcing activated charcoal and other things into me, 6 canulas all for pumping me full of various things, an arterial canula for measuring my blood pressure with incredible accuracy, plus I was attached to an 8-cable ECG machine, a clip on my finger measured my blood oxygen and I had been catheterised - I noticed that a tube coming out of my penis had been taped to the inside of my leg. The worst thing was that I was alive.

I did not want to be alive.

I had tried very hard not to be alive.

Physically I was alive, but I was still very sick - my kidneys and other organs had shut down and I had been in a coma - and I was also going through benzodiazepine withdrawal, which is both life-threatening and thoroughly unpleasant.

I was alive, but it turned out I didn't have a job or a home anymore.

I was single and without any friends. I was in a strange city where I didn't know anybody. I didn't have enough money to rent a place to live and support myself until I got my first paycheque. I was utterly screwed.

So, of course I still very much wanted to be dead.

Now, I have a nice house, full of nice things. I've made some friends and I've met some women. I go on dates. Sometimes those dates go really well. I have a job. I earn a lot of money. My finances are sorted out. I'm no longer addicted to drugs or physically dependent on medication. I hardly even drink - perhaps once a week, socially.

I can wear flip-flops.

Weirdly, the nerve damage repaired itself enough so that I have enough sensation in my foot to be able to wear flip-flops, run, go kitesurfing and do the other things I always used to do.

I don't know if I'm happy - there's still a lot of insecurity in my life; I live with an unacceptable amount of jeopardy for a person to have to suffer. I don't have enough friends in the local area. I don't have a girlfriend. I haven't established myself in my new home city. I've barely even started to unpack my stuff.

Compared with two years ago, my life does look like an overnight success. I'm good at my job and my colleagues are grateful for my contribution to the team and the project. The pieces of the puzzle are starting to fit together, and my life is beginning to look viable.

It's strange how people expect to be able to 'save' people who - on closer examination - have such a clusterf**k of issues that it's easy why some would think they're a "lost cause" and abandon them.

I'm grateful to that handful of people who didn't give up on me; who didn't write me off and abandon me.

Tags: #recovery #friends #addiction #debt #hospital #accident #homeless #drugs #moving #newhouse

This is a story about buyer's remorse...

A large part of my day was spent buying things of a very boring domestic nature. I bought curtains. I bought a vacuum cleaner. I bought an iron, ironing board and washing airer. I bought some plastic bins which organise my recycling into plastics, paper & cardboard and glass.

I got a bit carried away and started buying things which I have no urgent need for. I bought a coffee table. I bought a couple of lamps. I even bought two deckchairs for the garden, because it's been a beautifully sunny day and I thought I should be enjoying the brief period of nice weather in the UK, instead of being indoors.

I bought extra glasses, plates, cutlery and other little things, like nice wooden coat-hangers and some tiny shelves to put my toiletries and things on in my bathroom. I bought a new toilet roll holder, because the suction pad on the old one seemed to have failed completely.

I bought pillows and bed linen.

Who knows how much I spent.

While I was in Ikea I was looking at a sofa-bed which cost £140, which sounded very reasonable to me. I am not a price sensitive person. Whether something sounds "expensive" to me has been shaped by the privileged wealthy existence I've led. More than £20 on a bottle of wine is "expensive" from a wine merchant, but does not seem expensive in a restaurant. My purchases are generally categorised as either approximately £1,000, less than £500, approximately £100, or less than £50.

When buying something for around £1,000 I simply ask myself "is this a valuable thing?". For example, my laptop cost me £1,400, but I bought it without hesitation because I use it every single day and it's a tool of my trade - why would I even think twice about buying the very best available?

When buying something for under £500, I think much more carefully. Generally at this price point I make a lot more buying errors. I bought a £200 vacuum cleaner today, simply because it was a good brand. I have no need for a good vacuum cleaner - I only hoover once a month and I live alone so my house doesn't get very messy - so I could easily have managed with a £60 hoover, but my wonky thinking says "why worry about the £140 price difference? Just get the Dyson".

When buying products for circa £100, I don't make a lot of buying errors. My coffee table cost £90 and it's definitely worth £90 to me. To spend time trying to find a cheaper coffee table I like just as much would have been a waste of time. My curtains cost £90 and they're perfectly good curtains. In fact, the curtains block out the light really well and it was a really simple purchase - they were the right size and I didn't even check the price - I knew that they'd cost somewhere between £50 and £150. Perhaps if I'd got to the checkout and they turned out to be £200 I'd have felt like I made a mistake and should have thought about the purchase more carefully, but at £90 I feel like I'm much happier that I have curtains in one of my guest bedrooms, rather than no curtains - the value is hard to measure, but I'm definitely getting more than £90 worth of value out of the curtains.

Most of my purchases are less than £50, obviously. There are subtle gradations not worth exploring - for example, if I was charged £6 for a takeaway coffee I would think "damn that was expensive I won't go there again" but I wouldn't worry about it too much, but if the coffee was £4.50 then I wouldn't care. Similarly if I bought a sandwich and it cost £4.50 then I would pay the money and not worry about it, but if it was £6 then I'd be thinking "damn that's an expensive sandwich". To think about my price insensitivity at this level is too much detail to write about in the scope of this essay.

So, with the sub-£50 purchases, I spend more time thinking about things than the purchases which are circa £100. If I'm choosing a really nice bottle of wine, I'll agonise over the choices and probably buy a bottle costing no more than £25. Similarly, if I see some bed linen that I like but it costs more than £50 then I'll see it as overpriced and gravitate towards items which are priced less than £50. I bought a set of plates and bowls for £25. I bought a set of cutlery for £25. Comparable items could probably be bought for £10 less - saving me £20 overall - but I still feel like I got value for money. When I was unpacking all the knives, forks, spoons, etc. then I was thinking how much of a difference it's going to make to my life, to have an adequate amount of stuff to fill my dishwasher without leaving myself with nothing to eat with. Every purchase I made today under £50 felt like very good value for money, including an iron which will get very little use. Why do I need a fancy iron and a fancy ironing board, when I do so little ironing? It simply seemed like good value for money that I was able to buy high quality items for under £50.

Cumulatively, I've burned through a ridiculous amount of cash getting myself set up in my new house.

Most people, when they move into an unfurnished home and they don't have any kitchenware or other things like that, will buy things little by little. Most people will spend a lot of time choosing every single thing they have in their house. I'm not like that.

Of course, I'm particular about what I buy. I'm fussy about things. I'm house-proud and I like to think I have good taste. I very much wanted to share photos of all the little things which are slowly turning my house into a lovely home, but that will have to wait for another day - I don't want to spoil the surprise.

The catalyst for my money-spending and nest-making is that I have two beloved friends coming to visit soon, and I'm a house-proud person. I got this gorgeous house because I knew that it would immensely improve my self-esteem to be surrounded by some material representation of the hard work that's gone into getting myself this far in life. It might sound superficial and flawed, but it's very upsetting to be a smart person who's worked hard, but seemingly has little to show for it. If I'm showing off to my friends - that I have good taste - then I don't care. I want to look after them and make them comfortable in my home. I take enormous pleasure from being a host.

I can't stop to think about how much money I've spent getting my life rebuilt. I don't see the value in totalling up all the money I've burned. What use would it be? I could have scrimped and saved a little here and there, but I've not been profligate. Every single stupid domestic item brings me a little bit of joy, even if it's a washer/dryer, a vacuum cleaner or an iron... all these nice things cumulatively give me a nice life, which seems to correspond with the dedication to my career.

I rode my bike to meet a friend earlier in a local park for a picnic - a bike which is worth more than my car - and it brought me such a huge amount of pleasure to ride a bike which has been so heavily customised by me. The bike was one of the last purchases I was able to make before I became totally homeless, and yet I never regretted spending a significant sum of money on it. As I cycled home this evening, there was indescribable joy in the enjoyment of a bike which had spent a long time unused - when I was very sick - but has now been fixed up, and I'm able to use for the purpose I designed and built it for: urban life.

My colleague commented that my bike was "exactly what [he] expected [me] to turn up on" and that's completely the point. My home and my bike, for example, are an expression of my identity, and it's a deeply unhappy situation when we're forced - for example - to wear clothes which don't fit us and are not to our tastes. We should not underestimate the psychological damage that's done when we're forced into situations which clash with our identities.

My burn rate is obscene, but I'm aligning my identity with my surroundings, after a very long period where I was caused a great deal of distress by the economic limitations imposed upon me. Of course, I slept rough, slept in hostels and wore the cheapest clothes I could lay my hands on, in order to be alive today, but we shouldn't underestimate how intolerable that situation was at times. We shouldn't dismiss the self-esteem damage which drives people to commit suicide, as something which we can easily get over by simply suspending our identities and our need to choose our clothing, our home furnishings and decorations, which seem like such superficial things, but on closer examination, I can tell you for certain are vitally important.

I'm sorry if you're on a low income and what I have written seems disrespectful towards money, and indeed towards you and your struggles. Perhaps the money I "waste" is offensive to those who would gladly trade places with me, and would make much more considered decisions about spending... they would spend much more time bargain hunting, scrimping and saving.

I have a very unusual attitude towards money, perhaps because I can tell you precisely what exactly money is and where it comes from, because of my many years working in the banking industry, and of course because I've experienced long periods where I had more money than I needed... but please remember that I've also lived at the other extreme, where I was homeless and penniless. I do know how to live on a very tight budget, and indeed live on no money at all - I've run out of money plenty of times.

I shudder to think how much I've spent recently, but I know that it's been a long time since I made a foolish frivolous purchase. Sure, I have a lot of nice things but all my recent spending has been on very humdrum domestic items.

My approach to live is the same as it's ever been: high risk, high reward. As I slowly recover from years of illness and chaotic life, my surroundings do not look humble and ordinary. Why the hell should they? One slip-up and everything comes tumbling down, so perhaps I shouldn't be splashing the cash, but at the same time, why would I want to settle for mediocrity when I've worked so hard to achieve something special? It would be the most miserable thing, to end up with a life I could've easily had, without any hard work.

Of course, in conclusion, I must add that I know how much of a charmed existence I live. Lady luck has been kind to me. I hope that if you were to really get to know me - what I've been through and how hard I've worked - and you were to see the life I lead, then you'd say that I'm not entitled or spoiled; that my lifestyle is not excessively lavish, luxurious or recklessly profligate.

I've written three times as much as I intended, whilst sipping a glass of red wine from a bottle which cost somewhere between £5 and £35... but I can't tell you how much it cost because I'm pretty price insensitive in that price range.

Tags: #career #capitalism #banking #newhouse #moving