This is a story about national security...

"I've decided to take my work back underground, to stop it falling into the wrong hands". I suppose any of our creations can take on a life of their own and have unintended consequences, and I'm certainly catching some flack as a result of my 3-year daily writing experiment at the moment, which is not entirely unjustified.

My daily writing habit is a useful exercise for me, so I'm sure I'll continue to write in some capacity, but I'm almost at the point where my blog has given me the therapeutic benefit of restoring me to stability, health, wealth and prosperity, and I have to tread carefully so that I don't undo any of the good work.

I started writing when I had my back to the wall. I started writing when I didn't feel like I had anything particularly to fall back on. I started writing when I didn't feel proud that I'd achieved anything - my life was incredibly fragile. Nobody could argue that this blog hasn't anchored me in the world, bringing me into contact with many lovely people and providing me with a creative outlet, a sense of accomplishment and some routine in my otherwise chaotic and stressful life.

I doubt very much that I'll be able to change my habits completely, but I do need to adapt to my present paradigm - I can't keep writing as if I've got nothing to lose, because it's not true at the moment.

Perhaps I'll have to start keeping a private journal, because I've been using writing as a mechanism to flush out all the bad and stressful thoughts that have threatened to overwhelm me, but a large part of my present worries revolve around imposter syndrome. I make no secret of anything, but I'd still prefer it if my colleagues and other important gatekeepers in my life didn't read what I write - with my defences down - and leap to the wrong conclusions. It's been hard enough to date girls when I'm so easily cyber-stalked.

Given the choice between a digital identity, or a healthy set of local relationships, I would have to choose the latter if I was forced, although having the former is very useful as a fallback option. Three times I've lost a lot of friends due to a break-up, with one of those times very nearly costing me my life, and the other two not exactly faring much better either. I've not been very successful at building robust local social networks in the last few years. I need a group of friends I see and speak to regularly, that wouldn't be affected by any breakups. I need that safety net. In the absence of the time, money, energy, transport and a number of other things, I've not progressed things very far yet, so I'm very grateful for my online social network and I always will be, but I do need healthy local face-to-face relationships too.

Getting a girlfriend can be a quick-fix when you're lonely, as it's so easy to be the +1 and tag along to all of her social events, and ingratiate yourself into her social circle, but it's a dangerous strategy. It's too much of a dependency on one person. It's a mistake. Thankfully, I have valuable and important local friendships that predate any of my dating shenanigans. I need to continue to make friends of my own, and establish a pattern of social engagements which are not couples-only events.

Work colleagues and a great team environment can make a huge difference, and sadly that's been lacking in my life recently. Hopefully that's going to be rectified really soon. There's a slight danger in mixing personal life with work too much, when you're in the position I'm in, where I'm trying to get myself back into the respectable world - some of the recent events in my turbulent life are not office-gossip friendly. I've not got anything to hide, particularly, but I'd rather not challenge anybody to be open minded, if it's at all avoidable.

I'm treading a fine line between trying to do what I have to for my own sanity and stability, balanced with the needs of those who I have relationships with and my responsibilities regarding confidentiality, secrecy, discretion, professional conduct, respect of privacy, not causing shock, alarm or distress. It's a fine line between keeping my support network informed of what's going on during a time when I'm very vulnerable, and saying things that're going to paradoxically make me more vulnerable. It's one thing to confide in friends behind closed doors, and quite another to write publicly on a website.

Me being me, I doubt I'll be able to make a sudden overnight change, and I don't want to lose this valuable therapeutic tool, but I do need to start changing my behaviour in light of my new circumstances.

I doubt I'm going to be writing about what I ate for breakfast and live-blogging about the fresh paint that's drying on the walls, but things might have to turn a little more pedestrian for a while... at least until things are more settled.

Presently stressed out of my mind with the transition from one life to another, but hopefully everything will work out and go smoothly.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #career #friends #relationships

This is a story about past performance as a guarantee of future performance...

In the space of a few photos - arranged chronologically in my album - we jump from my wedding, a Formula 1 racing circuit, skydiving and dawn breaking over London, photographed from Primrose Hill. These were the only things that seemed worthy of a photograph, sandwiched in-between my honeymoon and my separation from my wife. My niece was born in this period, but I keep my special photos in a different place from my everyday snaps - I photograph a lot of random things for my visual diary.

I was chatting to a friend and former colleague and he asked me if I'd "dealt with any of [my] demons?". I wonder what he meant. When we started working together I was nearly bankrupt, living in a hostel (i.e. homeless) addicted to drugs and having mental health problems. Yes, I suppose I've dealt with a few demons. I don't want to make excuses for past mistakes, or assume that everything's going to be plain sailing again in future, but that job we did together where I was working six and a bit days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day, and trying to get myself clean and off the streets.... it was a challenge.

There was that time that I moved to a city I'd never visited before, moved into a flat I'd never set foot in before and started work on an incredibly ambitious project, with no team supporting me. I had a tiny hiccup - also known as a medical emergency that left me in a coma in intensive care - which caused me to lose two days at work, and that was the end of that, even though I'd delivered 85% of the project.

A guy rang me up, asked me if I could do a piece of work for him. I said it would take me 6 weeks. He asked if it could be done in 3 weeks. I said it could, but the end result would be rubbish. I've been working on that project for 12 weeks and the result is great... in fact, I finished 6 weeks ago and I've been killing time ever since, because there isn't anything left to do but the guy wants to retain my services. This guy STILL wants to retain my services. One very happy client. I'm not good at being bored though.

Wherever I've gone, I've delivered value; I've improved things; I've earned my money. Wherever I've gone, I've made stuff work, on time, exceeding expectations. Wherever I've gone, it's been of substantial net benefit to my client. However, the mileage has varied.

During that period when I didn't take many photographs, I spoke to my boss. He'd rung me up to congratulate me on a really important piece of work that I'd done, and tell me that I was getting a special commendation award and a hefty extra unexpected bonus in my pay packet. Ironically, I was just about to go into hospital for a month-long stay. I knew I was sick. It was bizarre to be having this conversation, knowing that I was in the middle of a crisis.

Some people are steady Eddies. Some people will be consistently mediocre. Some people will never disappoint you, because they inspire such abysmally low expectations. I've never really had much interest in steadily and slowly plodding my way towards low quality, late, over-budget and depressingly below-average outcomes for projects that ultimately end in failure. Fail fast.

We're very afraid of failure in the corporate world. Nobody fails, in fact, we just succeed in unplanned ways: "think about all the lessons we can learn from this project" we say, as we realise that it's a pile of stinking crap that's never going to fly. It's not really in my DNA to be part of that culture.

Failure is a huge part of who I am. Failure to get to work on time. Failure to get through an entire year without having a single sick day. Failure to be content to just take my wages and ignore problems; not try to improve things; not to try to make things into a success. I fail. I can get sick. I can drink too much coffee and start shooting my mouth off - become overconfident, arrogant and deluded due to lack of sleep and too many stimulants - and I can become depressed and unable to get out of bed. Sue me. I get shit done. There's my consistency: when there's a deadline, I consistently meet it. I consistently deliver on time and on budget. I'm highly INconsistent when it comes to when I'm going to turn up in the office, or even IF I'm going to turn up in the office for a few days.

With this do-what-the-fuck-I-want kind of attitude, I've had a string of successful projects and happy bosses and clients, but it occasionally causes resentment amongst the morning-lark steady-Eddies whose only virtuous attribute is that they're always there at their desks on time, despite the fact they're fucking useless at their jobs. In fact, this statement is unfair. An organisation needs a mix of steady Eddies and sprint'n'coasts. I don't really sprint and coast... it's more like work my bollocks off and burn out a little bit, but it gets stuff done.

It's difficult for me, because there will always be some bosses who will gleefully receive the fruits of the labour from those incredibly productive periods, and then think that it's 'normal' and sustainable. When it becomes expected to work at a super high level of intensity, there's no gratitude for the incredible cost of such a feat, and there's no allowance for the fact that for every up there must be a down - people have to be given time to recover after exerting themselves.

I really don't think that there's a 'slow and steady' way to achieve some things. Fast is the only way to go, and the faster the better. The sooner you see something that's real and tangible and working, the sooner you know whether it works the way you expected it to or not. There's no value at all in something that's only half-built. I'd rather have people say "I wish it did this AS WELL" rather than "I wish it worked". Even if people say "that's not what I expected" at least they've got something that they can use, or can serve as a prototype.

A lot of managers don't really know what they want when they're recruiting. They'll hire a lot of folks who are very good at playing buzzword bingo, answering interview questions and keeping a low profile in organisations so they can keep getting paid - but those aren't exactly great qualities for getting projects delivered.

The precarity of my situation should have pushed me towards meek compliance - perhaps I too should have learned to keep my mouth shut, cover my arse and spin jobs out so that they last as long as possible. Perhaps I too should have learned the fine art of looking busy and coping with the soul-destroying nature of pointless work and projects that are doomed to failure. Perhaps I need to stop caring so much. Not my circus, not my monkeys, right? Not my money, so I shouldn't care, right?

I feel terrible imposter syndrome, because I've had a turbulent few years. I feel terrible imposter syndrome because it wasn't very long ago that I had a pretty horrendously insurmountable heap of problems. I feel terrible imposter syndrome because my past performance is no guarantee of future performance, despite a 20+ year career where my achievements completely eclipse and nullify any of the very few hiccups, none of which has meant that there hasn't still been a successful project outcome.

I don't know how to characterise myself. In the corporate world, nobody talks about any difficulties they've faced - everything is given a positive spin. In the corporate world, gaps in your CV and things like that are severely career-hampering blemishes; black marks. I think it's a huge strength, that I've made positive contributions to important projects, despite having to deal with some incredibly difficult things in my personal life at the same time. If the corporate world could wrap its tiny mind around it, I'd love to give the background context to my employment history.

Thus, mileage can vary. If you hire somebody who's never had a problem in their life, assuming that their spotless record is going to remain so forever, you might be disappointed if they ever face any difficulties, because they're probably not the kind of person who's ever had to deal with challenging circumstances. You might hire somebody because they've never had a mental health problem, but anybody can get depressed. A person who's experiencing problems for the first time in their life is going to be less able to cope and communicate and manage effectively, than the person who's been functioning with those kind of problems in their life for years and years. Every set of circumstances is different. Every set of pressures is different. Every time is different.

I just keep rolling the dice. As long as I'm allowed to keep rolling the dice, I'm winning more than I'm losing.

Tags: #career #mentalhealth #bipolar #depression

This is a story about doing things you dislike...

Pretty soon I'm going to have to start turning up at work on time, because I have a good first impression to make. Pretty soon I'm going to be commuting to work along with lots of other miserable people, clogging up the roads and getting stressed out of our minds. Pretty soon I'm going to have to pretend like I'm a regular office worker, and suffer the cold early mornings - getting out of bed when it's a really miserable time of year, defrosting the car and pretending like it makes perfect sense to be acting the same as if it was the middle of summer.

I'd worked really hard so that I could start to take it easy, maybe switch careers or maybe reconfigure my life so that I work less and get paid more, or at least I'd be somewhat my own boss. Everything went to hell in a handcart, so instead I'm still stuck in the rat race. It's not that I haven't worked hard and achieved a lot... it's that I went backwards rapidly for quite a few years. Instead of just wiping the slate clean, I'm trying to do the honest decent thing and live my life the hard way - to pay the price for those years I lost in the wilderness, where everything I'd worked so hard to build ended up getting messed up and destroyed, and I got in a right old mess.

I could just say "screw it" because I've rebuilt myself from nothing a couple of times already. I've already proven the point - that I know how to get my life sorted out when it's in a mess. It's been really disheartening to fight back and rebuild my life, only to have it fall to pieces again - a lot of the reason being that working hard to achieve something is one thing, but working hard and achieving nothing is soul destroying. All my hard work amounts to nothing - I still don't have health, wealth and prosperity, so why did I bother? All of my hard work hasn't even managed to get me back to zero yet - I'm still stuck in a very deep hole.

You might think that the hole I'm in is because I made really bad choices, and there's some justice, but what you don't realise is how vulnerable people can get when they're unwell. I've been ripped off for thousands of pounds by people who've sought to take advantage of me when I've been sick. I don't really begrudge it, because that's the kind of society we've built, where we trample on each other to get ahead, but it's pretty hard to accept that - for example - one guy doesn't even think he's done anything wrong, even though he owes me thousands of pounds.

To live life with honesty and integrity is really hard work and I don't think that there's enough appreciation of that fact. While there are lots of rich people who are financially reckless, leave their staff members unpaid and declare bankruptcy owing millions and billions of pounds. While we say that a 'self-made' successful entrepreneur must be really smart and totally deserves their fortune, we fail to give acknowledgement to all the smart hard-working people who've led lives with more risk-aversion and prudence because they simply couldn't afford to fail - they had rent and bills to pay, and no wealthy family to bail them out of any financial difficulties.

It would be lacking in humility to claim that I'm a hard worker, and dishonest to say I don't have some element of my risk underwritten. My risk is underwritten in strange ways - I know that I do a very good impression of a well-mannered posh person, which seems to be quite endearing... I seem like a worthy cause to those who are charitably minded. I think it would be unfair to say that I've ever mooched off anybody's kindness or otherwise taken assistance without the intention of using it to improve my life as intended, but I've definitely had help that would never be forthcoming for less fortunate members of society who are easily identifiable as "undesirables". Nobody wants to help a white trash football hooligan drug addict, for example, which is why I can't begrudge any wealth that's been redistributed from my pocket into the pocket of somebody who nobody else would help.

Wealth has flowed through me and into other hands. I'm a model citizen in a way, because wealth really has trickled down in my world. A lot of money has come my way, but I haven't hoarded it - it's all gone back into the economy, and you'll be very glad to hear that only the teeny tiniest fraction was spent making enterprising drug dealers on council estates any richer, and most of the dosh has been spent making the rich richer - rent, interest, taxes etc.

The future that lies ahead is going to involve a lot of the same crap I was doing 20+ years ago when I started my career - it's practically the same job. My future is going to involve working just as hard as I did back when I was trying to escape from the rat race. My future is incredibly disappointing, because I should have been very comfortably wealthy by now, and it's only because I was abandoned when I was at my most vulnerable that so much stuff got ruined and I'm having to rebuild from a position that's *WORSE* than starting over. I'm starting from a *HUGELY* disadvantaged position.

The only slight comfort is the fact that it's seemingly quite "quick" for me to get back to a position where I'm doing OK. It might take most ordinary people a hell of a long time to dig themselves out of the kind of hole I've got myself in, or even leave them with no option other than to declare bankruptcy and start again from the bottom rung of the ladder, but I'm "lucky" enough to get to "quickly" recover, although you don't realise just how exhausting it's been to be flirting with disaster for so long.

So, I have to put up and shut up for a while longer. Even though I'm taking the fast-track it feels like it's lasting an eternity, because it's so unbearably nasty to be going through an all work and no play struggle, with horrible stuff hanging over me. This isn't my comeuppance - this is me paying the price for all the people who've gleefully come and picked my pocket when I was vulnerable. I haven't lived beyond my means - it's a miracle I've lived at all... I should be dead.

The main message I've been receiving in life is "hard work doesn't pay" and "give up and kill yourself" because every attempt to work my way out of poverty has burnt me out and not got me anywhere. Every attempt to play by the rules of the game has been futile. Every attempt to act with honesty, integrity and personal responsibility has made me feel mugged off.

I don't really know how to give up. I don't really know how to accept defeat. Maybe I'm a bad loser, but the game's not over, so I'm playing on. That might sound really positive, but I'm not going to need much of an excuse to throw in the towel - it wouldn't take much to make me decide that all the effort and the stress just hasn't been worth it, and that everything's hopelessly ruined.

Friends think they see repeating patterns in my behaviour, but don't they see that there are patterns everywhere? Sleep and wake. Work and leisure. Feast and famine. Sprint and coast. Yes I've tried the same strategy quite a few times, but it's always had different results. Yes there are things I've tried before, but don't you think that the remarkable thing is that I've avoided bankruptcy, destitution, permanent debilitating mental illness, chronic drug addiction... and an early death, of course. If anything, I've been trying some of the 'same' things because they work very well - for example, I would have thought that being well paid is far better than being really badly paid, but it's true... I've never tried the latter - maybe that's where I've been going wrong all along!

Maybe I have been making bad career choices, but most jobs all involve the same things: desks, offices, email and meetings, plus horrible commutes to work. Most jobs seem to involve being awake when you don't want to be and doing things you don't like doing. If two jobs are more-or-less identically horrible, why would I choose the underpaid one?

So, I'm sticking with offices and 9 to 5 and Monday to Friday and desks and computers and emails and water-coolers and all the other shit that goes with the territory. I'm sticking with having to get up even though I want to stay in bed, going to a place I hate and doing work that I hate, because it's essential if I'm going to have another shot at trying to build a more pleasant life - we can't do anything we want, until we have a shitload of money in the bank, and my only source of money is selling my brain and body to the highest bidder.

It sucks, but it's always sucked.

Tags: #career

This is a story about the limits of human endurance...

It'd be easy to believe that everything comes very easily to me when I need it; that I get everything I want. It'd be easy to believe that I live a charmed existence and that my life is all puppy dogs, rainbows and candy floss. It seems churlish to write about my struggles, when on paper my life seems quite straightforward - when I need money, I go and get a really well paid job; when I need a place to live, something miraculously falls in my lap; when it looks like everything's screwed and I'll never be able to recover from a setback, things somehow seem to work out for me in the end.

There's a toll that this rollercoaster ride exacts upon me - it's exhausting; emotionally draining. I really would like to just give up and to prostrate myself at the mercy of the state. It would be so much less energy-sapping to stop striving... to abandon my ambitions of getting back to health, wealth and prosperity. For all the hard work, there doesn't seem to be the commensurate rewards. Why did I bother? I often ask myself.

I have a banging headache, a chesty cough, cold sweats and shivering, aching legs, runny nose. It's just a cold, but it's the final straw. All I seem to be able to do is sleep and cry at the moment. I find myself on the verge of tears all the time, or actually crying. I cried through the whole of a rugby match I watched on the TV, but I don't know why. I cried while taking my shoes off. I'm crying for no reason at all, seemingly.

The pieces of the puzzle that make a liveable life - a home, some money, a job, a girlfriend, a car - are tantalisingly within reach. There are some things that I can compromise on, such as living with my friends, but there are some things that I can't, such as continuing to work in London without any work colleagues to talk to or a project to do. Why do I need a car? When you live and work outside of London, a car is essential for getting to your job, and generally getting around. It's been exhausting using public transport. Yes, there are lots of people who get around on the buses and trains, but they've chosen a different life strategy - I need to be at my desk from 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. I can't deal with unreliable, expensive and slow public transport on top of everything else. What's the point in working if it's going to cause intolerable levels of stress and misery?

In theory, I'm just a few months away from financial security and having my life back in good order. In theory, if the job I've been offered works out OK, then I'll be feeling quite secure and wealthy, within a couple of months. In theory, my life's going to be a lot easier when I can drive to work, instead of travelling for hours across the country, and living out of a suitcase. In theory, my working week is going to be a lot better when I'm working with a team of interesting people, and I have the social interaction that's completely absent in my current job.

In theory, everything's just peachy.

In practice, I'm exhausted. In practice, I've suffered too much and for far too long, and it's broken me. In practice, I've got nothing left to give. In practice, I can't suffer any more setbacks, because it'd destroy me.

Yes, fine, I concede that some fantastic opportunities have fallen in my lap, but things are by no means a done deal. There's still so much hard work and stress ahead. There are still so many obstacles to tackle. Yes, fine, I can see that there's a slim chance that things might work out, but the anxiety of the situation is unbearable.

I have *just* enough money to buy a car and insurance. I have *just* enough money to last me until my invoices hopefully get paid. I have *just* enough time to get all the ducks lined up. There's the slimmest of chances that everything might go to plan, but there are an infinite number of ways that things could go wrong.

I've had enough. The pressure and the stress has been too relentless for too long. Yes, I've caught some 'lucky' breaks, but you really don't know just how hard I've worked, and just how psychologically torturous it's been. You think it's been easy to get to this point? You think it'll be easy to carry on; to keep up the good work?

If anything, the stress is getting worse, not better, because I know I'm really close to getting a bunch of things that will really improve my life. I'm struggling with insomnia because I'm so stressed out about all the possible reasons why I might lose the things that are within my grasp. I'm itching to throw everything away and give up, because the anxiety is unbearable.

Yes, it looks like I've got nice problems to have, but it's not like that at all.

Tags: #career #mentalhealth #recovery

This is a story about quality of life...

You would have thought that rock bottom would come when you're sleeping rough, arrested by the police, thrown into a cell, you've spent all your money on drugs, you've got a physical dependency, you end up hospitalised or locked on a psych ward. You would have thought that losing your job, your apartment and tarnishing your otherwise squeaky clean CV, credit score and other things that are important to give you access to well-paid respectable work, would be the most crushing blow. In fact it's the lead-up to the point where you lose everything that's far worse. Once you're cut adrift and tossed by the wind and the waves, then you might as well just relax and go with the flow.

I woke up this morning, having been awake since 3am, worrying about the tricky transition between two contracts that are worth six figures, annually. It's a nice problem to have, right, to have two companies offering to pay you big fat wads of cash for your time and expertise, but the reality is somewhat more complicated.

I've drained my business bank account, because I've needed to buy plane tickets, book hotel rooms, train tickets and AirBnB rooms. I've been working for three months, but I'm still waiting to be paid - these are the commercial challenges I face. You've got to speculate to accumulate.

I have borrowing facilities available to me, but a substantial portion of my income is wasted on interest, paying for the money which I've needed for cashflow. Cashflow is tight when you're only managing to work 12 weeks a year, because you've been so unwell. I was hospitalised with DVT and both my kidneys had failed. I was hospitalised after a massive overdose - a suicide attempt. I was hospitalised and sectioned for mental health reasons, for my own protection. These are considerable obstacles to earning money, despite the fact that I discharged myself from hospital against medical advice, so that I could struggle into the office and not lose my job... but I lost it anyway. After my suicide attempt I struggled into the office, but I lost my job anyway.

I'm struggling into the office every day. I'm working Tuesday to Friday, for 4 hours each afternoon. My colleagues look at me like I'm taking the piss, as I saunter in at lunchtime and leave soon after 5pm. I travel across the country on a Tuesday morning, and I travel back the other way on a Friday evening - over 3 hours each way, which some people might scoff at. I know that there are many people who do long commutes, but I doubt many of them do them in the same year they were hospitalised as many times as I've been, due to medical emergencies.

This is my rock bottom - I'm only able to work about 16 hours a week, but it's killing me. I woke up this morning and I'm properly physically sick. If it hadn't been for the fact that I had to check out of my AirBnB, I would have stayed in bed. You'd have stayed in bed too, if you felt like I do. This is rock bottom - struggling along and barely managing to survive, even if you think that my situation is not very desperate.

I'm quite qualified to tell you what's desperate and what's not, because I've slept rough on the streets; I've lived in 14-bed hostel dorms and psych ward dorms. It's not a competition. Either you accept that I know what rock bottom looks like, or you don't.

What you can't see - because you only look at the good bits - is how quickly my life could unravel. I've got no safety net; I've got no cushion. My life hangs by a few slender threads. Of course I accept that I've had a run of good luck, such that I haven't ended up bankrupt and sleeping rough again. Of course I accept that I've had a run of good luck that there are still opportunities available to me; there's still a slim chance that I might rescue myself from my desperate situation.

There's an infantile attitude that I have to constantly suffer, like life is simple and all I need to do is get a job stacking shelves in a supermarket. You don't understand how real life works. You're not acknowledging reality. In reality we can't just abandon all responsibility and pretend like it's not psychologically destructive to lose hope; to have our dreams shattered. Loss of status and having a black mark against your name is a big deal. Being chased by debt collectors and bailiffs is a big deal. Having court summonses and court judgements and being sued into oblivion is a big deal. Getting fines and charges and all the other things that get slapped onto a poor person whose life is imploding, is a big deal. Real life... REAL LIFE involves earning as much money as you can, so that you don't have to take a calculator with you to the supermarket and ration out the value-price beans. Your infantile fantasies that we can just abandon everything that society holds dear - bank accounts and credit checks - and instantly switch our lives to be free and easy... this is complete and utter horse shit.

The reality of life is that there's a great deal of precarity. It might not look like it, but I've worked very hard to get myself back on my feet and I'm still a long way off. It might not look like it, but I couldn't have put in any more effort; I couldn't have handled any more stress - it's enough to give the most stable and secure person that you know a massive nervous breakdown. Eventually, we all reach our breaking point. We can't tolerate mental torture forever.

I've got my 3+ hour train journey, then a night in one place, a night in another, a night somewhere else, then it's back on the train, back to my job, time to check into yet another AirBnB I've never set foot in before. I need to buy two birthday presents, get a haircut. I need to do some washing. None of this is beyond the wit of man, but I'm so mentally and physically sick that I need to spend at least a week in bed, but I can't. I've got to keep the plates spinning.

Yes there are parents out there who are stressed out of their minds. Yes there are starving Africans. Fuck the fuck off. You think I've only got nice problems to have? You think my life is rainbows and puppy dogs and candy floss? Fuck the fuck off.

This is my rock bottom, because I want to throw everything away. It's too much effort. It's too much stress. It's causing too much anxiety. It's too exhausting. You think what I do is easy? If it's so fucking easy why isn't everyone doing it? If it's so easy, why aren't more people bouncing back from divorce, losing their home, drug addiction, alcoholism, bankruptcy, trouble with the police, mental health problems, suicide attempts, physical health problems and all the other things that bury people? Why aren't more people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and getting themselves back on their feet?

It feels like I'm really close to a breakthrough, and that's what makes it so hard. All the time I'm thinking "it's only another 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months... until I'm all fixed up and back to health, wealth and prosperity". It seems like it's no time at all, but that's because you're an idiot. You just don't understand how the shortest possible time can feel like an eternity, when you're in agony; when you're in such distress.

So close but yet so far.

Tags: #career #addiction #alcohol #homeless #drugs #suicide #hospital

This is a story about barriers to entry...

I'll admit that as a child I took the path of least resistance. Instead of dentistry, which I realised was going to be monotonously boring - if you've seen inside one mouth, you've seen them all - I chose a route that would lead to getting rich quick. Soon, I had a wonderful lifestyle and I never really had to kowtow to any gatekeepers or doff my cap in deference to the slave-owners.

I thought about what I was going to write tonight and I thought I'd come up with a really great blog post title, but it turns out I already used it. In fact, I've written so much that somewhere there's something that perfectly captures everything I'm going through.

I wrote at length about the indignity of being subjected to external scrutiny, when I consider that my 20-year career should have now put me beyond the awfulness of such a process - who the fuck are you to judge me? Of course, if you were hiring somebody for their specialist skills, how would you be able to judge whether they are competent or not, unless you yourself are an expert? One does not have a dog and bark oneself, etc. etc.

Thus, we rely mostly day-to-day on a web of trust. Somebody who is recommended by a friend is much more trusted than a total stranger. Friends of friends are our friends. We stick together. Homo sapiens is a social animal.

What happens when our social network disintegrates? How do we ever rejoin civilised society?

Speaking from personal experience, re-entering the game is very difficult. It's nigh-on impossible to get anybody to take a punt on a talented nobody, versus a talentless fuckwit who knows how to play the game. I don't begrudge the fuckwits - so long as they stay the fuck out of my way - and perhaps it's me who's got things wrong. Many colleagues of mine are qualified for nothing more than keeing a seat warm, reading the news, listening to the radio, watching videos online and counting down the hours minutes and seconds until it's time to go home. If you were hoping to get ahead in life on merit, you're going to be sorely disappointed and frustrated.

It would be unfortunate if I was mischaracterised as somebody who's not a team player. I love my colleagues and I need human interaction, although it seems like my work has a kind of purity that means there's always a right answer and a wrong answer. I'm a fucking wet dream for greedy bosses, because I deliver early and under budget, which is unheard of in my industry, but perhaps it's me who's letting the side down - I should deliberately work at the pace of the slowest worker, because of worker solidarity.

I'm rambling, but I've reached the ragged limit of what I can handle. Either things go my way, or I feel like life's not worth living. I'm blackmailing life to give me what I want, using my own life as an expendable hostage.

Whether I deserve to succeed or not, given the rough ride I've had and the effort that's been expended... these are questions of worthiness that you should answer by having two tramps fight to the death over a half-bottle of wine, just for your own sick amusement. All I can tell you is that having worked my way back from the brink of death and destitution, all I've got to say is fuck you, buddy. You think I should curtail my efforts and scrub toilets for minimum wage, living in some shithole? Fuck you. I'd rather die.

There are matters concerning loss of status and loss of dignity - these are not trivial. If somebody lives the high life and they fall from grace, it's not realistic to expect champagne and sportscars any more, but what about some dignity in labour? What about being paid a wage that reflects a person's skills and experience?

Of course I'm raising the wider question about whether anybody is really paid what they're worth. Of course, we all know full well that the value that we deliver in terms of pure pounds and pence that we put into the pockets our slave-owning capitalist tyrants, does not at all reflect our effort and our productivity, but you know what? The question still has to be asked and has to be answered.

I might seem like some bleeding-heart left-leaning-libtard who thinks they're owed a living, but the evidence doesn't support your assumption. Through all my turbulent times, I've never claimed incapacity benefits, job-seeking benefits, housing benefits, tax credits or any of the myriad forms of state support that are supposedly available to me. I'm trying to play an honest game. I'm trying to play by the rules of the conservative politics that seem to rule the day. I'm trying to work my way out of poverty and back to a position of health, wealth and prosperity.

If I fail, what does it mean? Failure could be utterly catastrophic for me. Even though I have friends who somewhat underwrite my risk, offering to give me a roof over my head, can you imagine working your bollocks off through a 20-year career and having nothing to show for it?... not even some kind of state handout. I thought it would be awful to be dependent on the welfare state, but it's actually more awful to be dependent on out-and-out charity, which could end on a whim.

I don't want to hold a gun to my own head and make my demands, but I came a long way since rough sleeping in a bush. If anybody ever had any doubts about employing an ex-homeless, ex-junkie, washed up loser weirdo who's lost everything, then haven't I proved the case for my fellow unfortunates and myself? When's a guy gonna catch a break?

I'm not trying to elbow my way to the front of the queue. I'm no more deserving than the next person who's equally needy and in distress. To the casual observer, I enjoy a whole host of advantages over the struggling masses. It's not a competition. It shouldn't be a competition.

If you think life's all about survival of the fittest and "it's a jungle out there" then fuck off and de-evolve already, you knuckle-dragging c**t.

Tags: #politics #capitalism #career #suicide

This is a story about sociopathy...

How do I write anything at all without making it seem like I'm making everything all about me? How do I have thoughts or even exist, without relating everything to my own personal experience; my own perceptions? What am I, if I'm nothing except an audience member; an observer?

"You're out of tune!" shrieks the little girl, except she's wrong because the keyboard won't even play the notes out of tune - you can press any keys you want and the keyboard will *always* play in tune.

I woke up and I wanted to slit my own throat or to take an overdose. I need to go to sleep but I want to hurt myself. You know what? Fuck you. That's what - fuck you. It's not about you as much as it's not about me. It's not about *ANYONE* if you want to play that fucking game. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.

I've had enough. I've taken enough. I've heard enough. I'm fucked off.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about cyberstalking...

Things are starting to happen faster than I thought they would. I'm not prepared. I didn't think things would slot into place so easily. There's a slim chance I might get a couple of things I really want and need, but the very existence of this blog jeopardises those things. Being sensible, I'd just cut the power and abandon this blog, because the stakes are too high.

How much digging are people prepared to do? There's the best part of 825,000 words here, if you wanted to read it all. Would you be able to say that you reached the right judgement about me, unless you read absolutely everything? Is it really fair to judge somebody on the chapter of their life you walked in on? Can you claim that a small random sample would be representative of who I am?

The easy answer, for most, is not to make so much stuff public. It's simple: Don't write a public blog. Keep things so utterly boring that nobody would get any further than the first few words. I should write about what I ate for breakfast. I should write about things that nobody can relate to. I should write about things that nobody's interested in except for me... well, maybe I do that already.

I'm really badly exposed. I could lose a couple of things that are really important to me. I have the opportunity to build a nice quiet little life in anonymous obscurity, but the cat's out of the bag - my whole psyche is on display on the pages of the internet, for anybody who wants to take the time to Google me, although mercifully I'm a little bit buried thanks to a rapper who shares my name.

I'm changing mindset. In London there are so many people that you can do anything you want and nobody will recognise you or remember anything you've done. In London there are so many people that there's anonymity in the crowd, even if you're doing something that would ordinarily draw attention to yourself. I need to change my mindset to get into the small community mentality, where my face and my deeds are more likely to be remembered. I'm still an nobody; a nothing, but I want to keep it that way - there's no sense in making a fool of myself. I've gotten so used to saying and doing whatever the hell I want, because there are no consequences in London, but in a small town that's not the case. I could end up making myself undateable and unemployable.

I'm trying to tread a fine line between the humble assumption that nobody gives a shit who I am and nobody cares what I've got to say, versus the very real possibility that somebody somewhere might notice me - I really don't want to mix my blogging identity with my professional identity, for the sake of my career. I'm quite careful not to drop the names of my clients or any details of the projects I work on, but I'm not anonymous - I use my real name.

This blog is an experiment. I don't want to be anonymous, but London forced anonymity on me. I could have died in a ditch and nobody would've noticed. I wrote this blog because I wanted to raise my profile. I needed to raise my profile, because anonymity had led me to the point where I felt like nobody cared whether I lived or died, and nobody understood what was going on.

I have ethical objections to anonymity and the pressure to maintain a spotless corporate-friendly immaculate CV with no gaps, and a whiter-than-white social media image. I think it's too much pressure, to ask people to hide their faults. I think it's bullshit, to pretend like we don't have mental health problems, or have made any mistakes in our life. I think anonymity is a fate worse than death. Fuck anonymity.

I hope that one day, I can unify my dating profile with my CV and my LinkedIn and this blog. I hope that one day it's socially acceptable to announce my faults along with my achievements. I think that too many talented people; too many valuable lives are squandered because we insist on presenting such a bullshit image of perfection, when humans are anything but perfect. I think it's making us sick and anxious, having to wear a mask all the time, for the sake of our pathetic salaries.

It's me who's going to end up buried, potentially, if I'm not careful and I don't shut up. One slip, and you're labelled as undesirable, unemployable, undateable... the wrong sort of person. One slip, and you can find yourself shunted into the sidings. There are so many gatekeepers who are looking for a reason to reject you.

So, I challenge those who would skim a tiny fraction of what I've written and decide that they've read enough to judge me, to either read more, or not to bother trying to leap to any quick conclusions. If you want a synopsis of me, it's there to be found in the form of my CV, my LinkedIn and my other sanitised bullshit that you see every day. This is something special that you don't normally get to see, so treat it with respect. Everybody has a real life which doesn't fit onto 2 pages of A4 paper, and contains mistakes as well as all the good stuff, but you don't get to read about the bad stuff, normally.

I think what I'm doing is brave, and it helps me so I'm not going to hide it. I think that we should be moving towards honesty, transparency and authenticity. I think we've been living for far too long, with an encroachment of the workplace that forces us to present ourselves in the very best possible light. I think that society is facing an incredible amount of problems because we can't talk about our mental health problems; our stress levels, for fear of being seen as sick, weak and unreliable by our employers. I think that I'm living life the right way, even though it could potentially be very costly for me. Somebody's got to be brave enough to do it first.

This is my 'baggage up front' declaration, and I refuse to back down even though I'm scared. I'm scared I won't be able to get a girlfriend. I'm scared I won't be able to get a job. I'm scared that people will judge me and think that I'm a bad person. It's scary, to write down everything that goes on in my head like this, but it's also cathartic and helpful to me. There's an epidemic of mental health problems and most people are just about managing, and this seems to be the antidote to me - to write with candid honesty about what's really going on, rather than the usual "I'm great" bullshit mask we have to maintain. It's hard work, pretending to be a perfect human being.

So... let's see what happens. I might go broke and be single. If nobody does the experiment, we'll never know the outcome.

Tags: #writing #career

This is a story about a functional nervous breakdown...

I'm sleeping 12 to 14 hours a day, yet I don't feel refreshed. I'm commuting and I'm working, but I'm spending less than half as much time in the office as I'm supposed to, and when I'm there I'm not productive. I reach the weekend and all I want to do is collapse in a heap. I get stressed out about seemingly trivial things - buying a train ticket, booking a hotel, buying some birthday presents, social engagements, the pressure to be a good friend, the need to stay in contact with people. I feel like I'm going to burst into tears when I'm in the shower, or just before I walk into the office. I'm a complete wreck, but to an outside observer I'm a picture of good health and a productive member of society. My colleagues seem to have been duped - they compliment me on the work I've done and they want me to stay longer; they want to give me another project to do.

I had prepared myself psychologically for 6 weeks work in London, but it's been 3 months. I had prepared myself psychologically to get to the end of the contract, but not a single day longer. I'm barely managing to cover up the fact I'm very sick - I arrive in the office at 1pm most days, and leave just after 5pm. I don't turn up for whole days. I sit at my desk endlessly skipping through music, trying to find a song that will lift my mood, but I can't. Life's pretty torturous, even if there doesn't seem any reason why it should be.

Everything feels like it's going to require the expenditure of more effort and energy than I could possibly muster. I get exhausted at the thought of speaking to agents, or challenging myself to do something "new and interesting". What sounds like fun to you, is something that makes me feel even more anxious and depressed. I just want to curl up in a ball.

Those who are happy and healthy say things like "you're only one gym workout away from a good mood" or they suggest things I could do with my spare time. It doesn't look like much of a life, working and sleeping... oh I do quite a lot of moaning and complaining too, but surely I must want to learn to weave baskets or dance salsa, mustn't I? The truth is that I'm 99% shut down - I'm in survival mode, clinging on by my fingernails as I attempt to earn as much money as I can, as quickly as I can, so that I can afford to have a nervous breakdown.

"Nervous breakdown" sounds really shocking and alarming, but I'm actually quietly having a breakdown. I've had persistent paralysing depression for more months than I care to remember, but I'm somehow forcing myself to keep going. "You can't be depressed if you're getting up and going to work" you might say, but you seem to have forgotten that I'm bunking off loads of days, and going in to work 4 hours late on the few days when I do make it. I'm working the very bare minimum I need to, in order not to lose my contract. If I just collapse in a heap and refuse to leave my pit of despair, I lose everything. If there was any way in the world I could just draw the curtains and convalesce, then I'd do it, but I'm trapped by circumstances beyond my control.

I have a week and a half left to go, and then I've finished my contract in London. I have to do 4 more 3.5 hour train journeys. I have to stay in two more AirBnbs. I have to suffer two more Mondays (although I'm planning on bunking off at least one of them). It might not sound like very long - just 3 months - to have been travelling all over the place and doing a job that's been mostly isolating and lonely, and has left me twiddling my thumbs a lot of the time, but the time has really dragged... the time continues to drag.

When you're not feeling good, it really takes an emotional toll. It's really not nice to spend weeks and months, hating your life; hating your circumstances. Yes, I'm very well paid and there's no such thing as a perfect job, but the money really has not been great compensation for the psychological suffering it's caused. I'm perfectly capable of making a mercenary decision to earn a lot of money doing things I don't like doing very much, but it's damaging to my mental health. I really am at my wits end with the London contract.

Who knows what'll happen next. Maybe I'll have been made too unwell by the present contract to even think about the next one, until I've had some rest and recuperation time. You might think that I should be very well rested, because I've been having 3-day weekends and only working half days, but those things are a symptom of just how exhausted I am. It's very hard to explain how I'm emotionally exhausted, even though I seem to be physically rested. It's hard to explain just how draining things have been this year. Seasonal affective disorder, depression and a bit of residual rebound anxiety from medication withdrawal, have conspired to create a viciously awful low mood and sense of despair, which has been hugely exacerbated by being bored at work, with no colleagues to talk to or project to keep me busy.

Finding a new client locally is going to be stressful. I need to meet a whole load of new work colleagues and impress them. It's going to be exhausting. It's going to be destabilising. At the moment, I just want the current contract to be over, so I can curl up in a ball and not leave the house. I want to draw the curtains and turn off my phone. I want to collapse in a heap and yell "ENOUGH!"

It sounds to me like it's some kind of breakdown, but I don't understand why I'm still apparently quite functional. I don't understand why I'm not stripping naked and running through the streets, before smearing jam all over myself in the supermarket and talking in tongues, or whatever other image "nervous breakdown" conjures up in your mind. Perhaps you think of me uncontrollably sobbing, or going mute. Instead, I'm just kind of hollow and empty - I've got nothing left to give; the petrol tank has run dry.

The challenge, of course, is what I do next. Do I collapse and become so dysfunctional that there was no point in exerting myself? Do I lose all the gains that I've managed to achieve, because it was so costly to my mental health to push myself so hard? Have I stored up some kind of almighty breakdown, by limping along for so long?

I've been offered a contract extension. There's no way on earth I can do it, of course. Don't you understand? The money might be incredible, but I don't get paid if I'm not in the office, and I'm already almost at breaking point. Money's not going to get me out of bed. Almost no amount of money is worth the emotional damage that's being done; the emotional exhaustion of the situation.

Of course, there's an argument that I should have just taken medication to prop myself up artificially - to allow myself to be doped up and carry on with a job and a situation that's intolerable. There's an argument to say that it's me that's faulty, for not enjoying living out of a suitcase, working a project that I finished ages ago and just having to look busy, in an office all on my own with nobody to talk to. There's an argument that says it's me being a silly billy, and I should just pop pills and shut the f**k up and get on with life. That's life, right? Life absolutely sucks and it makes us want to kill ourselves. Life destroys every single ounce of happiness and wellbeing, and the only way to put it back is with powerful psychoactive medications.

On the flip side, I've been glad that I've kept my mouth shut and limped along to the end of contracts before, without making too much of a fuss. I'm going to get a good reference and I've earned quite a lot of money. This is the strategy: short-term pain for medium-term gain. I've left jobs on good terms before, and then found it's immensely improved my mood to free... free to do what I want; free from the oppression of a horrible job. I very much expect that my mood will improve massively when this contract is over.

There it is: I need to keep venting and complaining and whinging, because I've got another week and a half of hell to get through. It sucks, and I bet you wouldn't put up with it if you were in my situation.

Tags: #career

This is a story about burnout...

There's a lie which we're all guilty of perpetuating: Work hard and you can improve your life; if you work hard enough you can achieve anything. It's not true and it's wicked to repeat the lie, because we end up blaming ourselves for our appalling living conditions. "If only I'd tried harder in school" so many of us wail, but "if only I worked harder" is not something that a dying person ever says on their deathbed.

It's obvious that there's a grotesque disparity between hard work, dedication, passion, productivity and personal wealth. If you're going to try and argue that the owner of a large property portfolio works harder than a nurse, then you deserve a punch in the face. If you believe that the beneficiary of a trust fund, who doesn't have to work at all, is somehow more deserving than the person who cleans toilets for a living, then you must be suffering from psychosis.

I've heard it said that life is fair, because it's unfair to everybody. Human afflictions don't care whether you're rich or poor - a billionaire still needs an ambulance and a cardiac surgeon if they have a heart problem, and money can't buy them immortality. However, this does not seem to consider the great injustice of the world: that our efforts and actions will make virtually no difference at all. It doesn't matter how badly you want to study at Oxbridge and enter a lucrative profession - if you were born into the wrong socioeconomic circumstances, you're not going to be able to achieve your potential. It doesn't matter how badly you want to elevate yourself from poverty, and how hard you work - you're trapped and you'll never escape.

The media love to shove folklore heroes in our face. The media work very hard to assist our willing suspension of disbelief. Little girls think they're going to be like Kate Middleton and marry a prince - the tale that we're told is that she's an ordinary girl and that any one of us could be plucked out of poverty, but it's bullshit... she went to a very expensive private school. Little boys think they're going to become 'self-made' men, and there are plenty of examples of entrepreneurs who claim to have not received any assistance in building their business empires, except that close scrutiny reveals that they had their risk underwritten by friends and family; they have access to wealth and connections that ordinary people don't.

You show me the success story and I'll show you the unfair advantages that the person enjoyed. Nobody got to the top on merit. Nobody gets anywhere by working hard - it's a lie.

In fact, to work hard and assume that it's going to lead to pay rises and promotions is a kind of mental illness: it's called "Tiara Syndrome". It's a bit like the fantasy of a knight in shining armour coming to rescue us - a person who has Tiara Syndrome is expecting that somebody will come along and put a tiara on their head, just because they work really hard and they're good at their job. Sadly, it doesn't happen.

Behind every fortune is a great crime. The only way to get ahead in life is to lie, cheat and steal.

"The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited upon the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land"

A Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England (1649)

So, if we've been writing about this problem for the best part of 400 years, things must be alright, mustn't they? Don't fix what ain't broke and all that. Why rock the boat?

Life expectancies are starting to fall - people are dying younger. There's a mental health epidemic. There's an opioid epidemic. Living standards are declining. Billions of people live in poverty, and within our lifetime we'll witness a Malthusian catastrophe that will dwarf any other mass extinction event seen on planet earth. If you thought the Ethiopian famine was bad, wait until you see what the next few decades have got in store for us. With high-yield modern mechanised farming techniques, we have plenty of food, but we are staggeringly bad at sharing things fairly. If you believe that the present situation of wealth disparity is acceptable, then you're signing the death warrant for billions of people - a holocaust knowingly perpetrated on the human race, for no better reason than sheer unadulterated greed.

Remember that none of the Nazis were allowed to say "I was just following orders" as any kind of defence. To fail to act and to say that you're just doing what everyone else is doing, is immoral. To be passive and turn a blind eye, or to throw up your hands and say "there's nothing I can do" is not acceptable. Yes, it's our instinct to look after our own families, but the day is coming when that selfishness will backfire. Your kids are going to need a place to live. Your kids are going to end up in debt. Your kids are facing a shitty future, and your grandkids are going to inherit a completely hopelessly screwed situation - do you think they'll agree with you, that it was right that you sat back and did nothing?

If you think you're helping your kids by instilling some kind of 'work ethic' in them and getting them to study hard, you're making a mistake. Remember: nobody ever got anywhere by working hard. Hard work can be a useful thing, but we must consider what our labour is being used for - if it's making weapons and oppressing people, then hard work is immoral when it contributes to the war on humanity. Sometimes the best thing to do is to withhold labour - to deprive the tyrants of the manpower they need to conquer and achieve world domination. Sometimes the best thing to do is conscientiously object; to nonviolently protest.

I've thought long and hard about how I can make a difference. I thought about medicine. I thought about law. I thought about politics. I thought about science and engineering. I find myself in technology, and I'm desperately disappointed. No amount of smartphone apps and websites is going to address the problems at the root cause, which appears to be competition. Why must there be competition? Why do we have to measure and grade people, and declare that some of us are not worthy of consideration? Why do we have artificial scarcity and force people to fight over an artificially limited amount of so-called 'money'? Why do we put artificial limits on the numbers of people who can pursue a certain professional discipline? Why do we want to have elitism? Why do 99% have to be told they're shit and they don't matter and they're expendable, so that the 1% can feel special?

I was on the fast-track. I was made unconditional university offers and allowed to skip entire academic years. I got onto a graduate training program 3 years sooner than any of my peers. I got pay rises and promotions so quickly that I was earning six-figures by the age of 20. I'm an example of one of those success stories that you might read about, that are supposed to make you believe that with enough hard work anyone can reach the top of the pyramid - be a CEO or a prime minister or a president, or a king or queen. It's bullshit. Why would I turn on the system that's given me everything I've ever wanted? Why would I bite the hand that feeds me?

No amount of houses, sports cars, yachts, speed boats, luxury holidays and all the other trimmings of a wealthy life can ever make you quite feel like you're content with the way things are, because you can never fully insulate yourself from the suffering and poverty that surrounds us. The fact that you're reading this on a PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone, means that you're one of the lucky ones - you're somewhere that has electricity and the internet, which means there's probably clean drinking water too. If you think about those less fortunate than yourself, they're probably considerably well below your standard of living. Wherever you are in the pecking order, there's always some unfortunate who's desperately in need of help, because we've set up society to fail people - the very process of succeeding ourselves means trampling others underfoot to get ahead in life. It's a zero sum game - for somebody to win, there has to be a loser.

Life doesn't have to be like this - so adversarial. There's no limit on the number of "A" grades we can give out, or the amount of money we can print. There's no limit on the number of doctors we can have. We live in a world that's been artificially constrained to create winners and losers. There's no need to have competition so inbuilt to society. Yes, we might see that nature is full of competition - survival of the fittest - but we're not beasts. We've become super-intelligent and capable of producing vast surpluses of everything we need. With high-yield farming techniques and agricultural mechanisation, we can feed ourselves until we burst. With mass production and factories, we can have a virtually unlimited amount of goods - clothes and shoes and building materials, as well as pointless consumer crap that we arguably don't need.

Like the many utopians who I studied while doing the research for my second novel, I can see a world that's jam-packed with all the technology that we need to improve the human condition, and elevate half the planet out of poverty. I can see that we already possess everything we need - we don't need nuclear fusion or flying cars or any other sci-fi fantasies... we already have the means at our disposal, to improve our lives.

As a person who wants to make a positive difference - to effect meaningful change - I find it very distressing that those who are working very hard to improve the world are being thwarted. Imagine all the effort put in by doctors, nurses, politicians, charity workers and myriad others who do what they do because they want to make the world a better place... but it's not working, is it? The world is getting steadily more and more fucked up.

If you think I'm seeing the world through a 'blue filter' and my depression tinges my perceptions, we only need to look at the hard data - homelessness, depression, anxiety, alcoholism, drug addiction, poverty, crime and all the other indicators we have of the health of our society are telling the same story: Things are getting worse, not better. Your kids will have to get into heaps of debt to obtain their education, and then they won't be able to afford to buy a house. Your kids are going to struggle to find work. Your kids are going to struggle, full stop. Your grandkids are absolutely fucked. It doesn't take a genius to extrapolate from the data and see where we're headed. Things aren't just going to magically improve without anybody doing anything. Don't look to politicians to cure society's problems. Don't look to charity to cure society's problems. Don't look to the church to cure society's problems. If any of the existing status quo members were going to do something to fix things, they'd have done it at some point in the last 400 years, wouldn't they?

I haven't figured out what I'm going to do yet, but the best "not in my name" protest I can think of is to kill myself. The best way I can think of to register my objection with the status quo, is to end my life.

Maybe I have a lemming-like instinct to kill myself because of overpopulation. Perhaps my genes are telling me to kill myself for the good of the species. Certainly the self-preservation instinct feels much weaker than the powerful emotions that tear through me, thinking about the futility of the oft-tried ways of making a difference.

If there's no opportunity to make a meaningful contribution, why go on?

Tags: #career #banking #capitalism #politics