This is a story about wanting to feel better...

My mood viciously see-saws between two poles at the moment. Thursday night and Friday night were delightful. Monday morning and Friday morning were abysmal. Sometimes I feel like I have boundless energy and enthusiasm, and other times I just want to curl up and die. I feel weirdly mixed up - both manically high and suicidally low at the same time. I think I'm experiencing what's known as a "mixed state".

Not wanting to get too bound up in navel gazing and examining every minute change in my mood, I'm not going to write too much today. It's the same old stuff that's bothering me - a job that's boring and isolating, and a lifestyle that's unsettled and exhausting. In a few hours I have to get on a train, travel to the other side of the country and then check into yet another AirBnb that I've never been to before: The bedroom will be different; the bathroom will be different; there will be different noises that go bump in the night, waking me up. My life has very little stability and consistency.

I desperately want to reach for substances that will make me feel better. I'd love to pop some pills - like the California Rocket Fuel pictured above - in order to feel more happiness than sadness, but it would be highly likely to push me into out-and-out mania. I really want to quit my job and hide under the duvet for a month or two, but I can't afford to do that.

By the end of February, I'll have run out of money again. I'm burning lots of money on expenses, and I only get paid 61 days after having done my work, because of a strange contractual arrangement. Big outlay and big risk - I'm spending money I don't have in the hope of recouping it in future, which leaves me with nothing but stress.

It seems worthwhile to continue to work through February, even though it's making me sick. If I can finish the month, then I'll have a big paycheque at the start of March and another at the end of March, which will make me solvent again. If I quit now, I'll almost be worse of than if I hadn't bothered. It feels like I've achieved nothing.

My mood is desperately low, but at least my thoughts have turned away from suicide, and instead I think about running away to a hot country, or just stopping work and refusing to get out of bed.

I'm carrying some extra weight from Christmas. I'm unfit. My skin is pale and pasty. I'm still having to carefully budget, lest I run out of money before I complete my contract - my finances are still in a pretty dire situation. I wonder where the reward is for not killing myself. I wonder when - if ever - I'm going to feel glad that I'm alive.

My life is not entirely bleak, and I have brief moments where I'm really happy. There are things I look forward to occasionally. However, it's pretty misery-making that the pressures on me - career and financial - are taking me away from the things I care about, and the things that are good for my mental health. Circumstances demand that I continue to suffer long train journeys, lonely hotel rooms and a bullshit job that's pure torture.

I'm trying to vent and whinge and complain and moan like crazy, in the hope that it'll help me to limp along until the end of the month. I keep telling myself "it's only another X weeks" and counting down the hours, minutes and seconds, but it's pretty unbearable.

I wonder to myself if I should start drinking coffee again. I wonder if there's some kind of pill or powder I can get my hands on that will give me some relief from the dreadful depression. I wonder if there's some way I can earn money and retain my sanity, because the present situation is killing me.

I'm going to stop writing now, because I'm just making myself more miserable. There's nothing more to say. There's nothing that can really be done. I know what I have to do, and I know how much I hate it and how sick it's making me, but I've got to do it.

Tags: #career #depression #bipolar

This is a story about disadvantages...

There are a number of ways to get a black mark against your name. Every exam grade that's lower than a "C" is not going to be looked upon favourably. A degree of class 2:2, a third or - heaven forbid - a pass, is something that's going to follow you around like a bad smell. Any gaps on your CV are all damning indictments of your character. These are some of the least bad disadvantages that could be working against you in life.

Police cautions become spent on the day they're issued so you don't have to declare them to any prospective employer - unless you are subject to enhanced checks, because you work with children or vulnerable adults - but a criminal record has to declared up-front. Bankrupts are often compelled to admit to their financial misconduct and being a former bankrupt is often grounds for not employing a person. It even seems commonplace to perform credit checks on people now, as part of vetting for a job.

These are the disadvantages that people have, arguably because they're victims of circumstances beyond their control. The education we had, the friends we made, the wealth we've enjoyed... these are luck, not good judgement. We don't choose our parents. We don't choose to be born into poor uneducated families with a history of criminality, living in poor neighbourhoods - council estates and the like.

Then, we come to matters that are more obviously in our control - the choices we make as an adult.

What are all the things you'd think about when considering whether to get a tattoo or not? If you're a sensible chap or chapess, you'd think about all the bad fashion decisions you've made over the years, and rationally you would think that you wouldn't be able to choose a design that you'd be happy to wear for the rest of your life. Many 'tattoo fixers' are asked to erase the name of an ex - the ink was committed to skin when the relationship seemed as if it was going to last forever, but it didn't.

If you were still intent on making a permanent mark on your skin, you might consider where you're going to do it. If you get something on your foot, it's going to be visible when wearing summer shoes. If you get something on your arm, it might be visible when you roll up your sleeves. Why would anybody get a tattoo on their neck or face?

To all intents and purposes, I come up smelling of roses when the usual background checks are done. I have a fine set of academic qualifications, I have an all-star cast of multinational corporations on my CV, I don't have a criminal record, I've never been bankrupt. I enjoy a considerable advantage over many hopeful job applicants, who are paying a hefty price for something that happened years and years ago. To look at me, to study me on paper and pore over the vetting checks that are routinely done, you would see no evidence of any problems that the checks are supposed to find.

Did I say "look at me"? The careful observer might detect one little clue that I've not led an entirely blemish-free life. I have a black mark that clearly advertises that I've had problems. I write this blog, but you'd have to search for it to find it - you'd have to cyberstalk me - but there's a mark on my body in a totally visible place that you should be able to see, whatever clothes I'm wearing... I can't cover it up.

What the hell is a 35-year-old man who works in offices for prestigious organisations doing getting a tattoo in a visible place? Surely it would be career suicide? Everybody knows that people with visible tattoos don't get hired into positions of professional responsibility. Everybody knows that people with visible tattoos are not made of the right kind of stuff to enjoy positions of senior management responsibility. Everybody knows that people with visible tattoos are trash; scum; the dregs of society.

Getting a tattoo was stupid, of course, but it was also brave. Getting a tattoo was direct action: a protest about my sister having a hard time from my parents about her inked body. Getting a tattoo has been the best way to thumb my nose at bosses who desperately want my skills and experience, but who would never dream of giving an opportunity to somebody who's been less fortunate in life. Getting a tattoo is a running gag - a joke - which attacks all the gatekeepers who are seeking to keep the riff raff from getting ahead in life. When I sit down for an interview, my tattoo can't be seen face to face - it's behind my ear. It's usually too late - I've been hired - when the bosses first notice it. So many people don't get their foot in the door, because there's a black mark that causes them to be dismissed out of hand as an unsuitable candidate.

Why a semicolon?

If I was ever asked by a colleague, my answer would be that it's a programmer thing - I finished every line of computer code I've ever written with a semicolon.

The truth is that I'd been trying various ways to restabilise my life, which mainly revolved around earning bucketloads of cash as an IT contractor. The pressure and stress of one particularly nasty IT contract had pushed me to the brink of what I could survive. I'd asked to be hospitalised for my own safety. I flew to San Francisco, leaving myself just 4 hours to get to the airport from the time I booked the tickets, and went directly to the Golden Gate Bridge. I was erratic. I had no idea what to do, so I did everything. There was one thing that was constant: writing. The idea of the semicolon has come to mean that my story - this suicide note - could have come to an end, but I chose not to end it and keep writing. I jumped on a popular bandwagon. I joined a movement. I copied something that other people were doing. I tend to zig when everybody else zags, so getting a tattoo like other people's felt really good; it felt right.

Everything seems to piece together and make sense when seen as a whole. Writing under my real name and writing without a filter - completely candidly - and declaring my every fault is career suicide. Having a visible tattoo is career suicide. Those things together are the only way that I was going to cope when constantly dealing with gatekeepers who want to check my criminal record, check my credit rating, check if I'm a bankrupt, check my academic qualifications, check my references, check my passport and birth certificate. If the gatekeepers could, they'd pry into every single part of my private life... so I'm letting them. Here it is - come and fill your boots!

Who knows where this experiment's going to lead me. Perhaps I will suffer more discrimination. I've already lost two lucrative contracts as a direct result of living my life as an open book. Perhaps the disadvantages will continue to stack up and I'll be derailed from the fast track and shunted into the sidings, like so many people who've had the misfortune of accruing a black mark against their name.

If I seem at all disrespectful towards those who don't have any choice - they have criminal records, bad exam grades, a CV full of gaps and roles that don't have fancy job titles - then I apologise. Perhaps my little game can only be played by me because I'm so privileged.

I hope that what's going to happen is a move towards a more open society, where we can be honest about our past transgressions.

Tags: #tattoo

This is a story about the bitter end...

For a devout atheist, I can be surprisingly superstitious. I seem to have survived Jinxed January without losing my job, becoming homeless, going bankrupt, being hospitalised, getting sectioned, getting arrested, getting anybody pregnant, committing any crimes, taking any illegal drugs, contracting a terminal illness or dying. Epic win.

I looked in my photo archives to see what I was doing this time last year. Apparently I was pissing in a bottle, hospitalised on a high dependency ward with kidney failure. On my blog, I was writing about "what would Jesus do?" so I was clearly pretty deranged, but then I was on dialysis for several hours a day, which was not exciting so I'm sure my mind must have been wandering a lot. On Facebook I was jabbering about a cocktail of painkillers, sleeping pills and tranquillisers I was taking to try to get some sleep on the ward. I feel relatively sane and happy by comparison - my life looks quite peachy compared to that unfortunate period.

I looked back two years ago to see what was going on at the end of January and there's a gap. I simply ceased to exist for a few days, before popping up and writing over 3,000 words about all manner of things. It looks pretty conclusive that I was in the vice-like grip of madness and shenanigans.

I can't look back three years on my blog, because I only started two and a half years ago, but I do know that three years ago today I was staying with friends in County Cork, Ireland. My contract with Barclays had been terminated early, I'd broken up with my girlfriend, lost loads of friends because of the breakup and I had been evicted from my apartment in Swiss Cottage. I needed to escape from London for a bit, because I couldn't take any more, and so my friends looked after me in rural Ireland. Not so jinxed, but pretty jinxed because my life was still totally messed up.

I can see from an email that four years ago I was receiving inpatient treatment for dual diagnosis - bipolar and substance abuse - after the messiest and most acrimonious divorce you can imagine. My life was profoundly dysfunctional - I'd only just managed to escape "the poison dwarf" and the relationship that nearly killed me. My stuff was in storage and I was living with friends in Kentish Town. My new business had been put on hold because the divorce and house sale had been too much for me to handle. I'd been surviving by mining bitcoins, but the price had crashed and I was in big trouble, even though I'd managed to cash in at $1,100 per bitcoin.

I can't see my email from five years ago, because I lost my original Google Mail account, which I'd had since soon after GMail launched for public beta testing. I can see that I was late for my appointment to see a psychiatrist who I'd found (albeit a week later) so I imagine that things were pretty dire... although I clearly had the presence of mind to find a private psychiatrist and arrange my own treatment, so I'm guessing this was the beginning of the descent into Hell. This time five years ago - roughly - my new wife told me that she wanted to be a widow and that she wouldn't let me have the treatment I needed. This time five years ago, I was trying to find people to help me, while my wife and my parents broke my heart. This time five years ago, I realised that I needed to get my parents and my wife out of my life at all costs - I realised they're toxic people and that if I wanted to have any kind of future, they couldn't be part of it.

Five years of insanity is a hell of a long time. In those five years, things got a lot worse before they got any better. In those five years, I sorely missed my house and my cat. In those five years, I sorely missed the life I'd built for myself, with my friends and my good reputation and my good job. I threw away a lot, taking a gamble that I'd be better off in the long run. The last five years have been insane, but I don't see how I could have extricated myself from the situation any better. I've played the best I could with the cards I was dealt.

I'm sick and tired of Jinxed January, and I hope I've seen the back of it; I hope I've broken the curse.

Of course I tempt fate by saying that now I've had one un-jinxed January then I've got things sussed and it'll all be plain sailing from here. Of course there are going to be Foul Februarys and Miasmic Marches but January has been my nemesis for so long. I don't want to get cocky and complacent, but it's a big deal that I've beaten this dratted month. February and March are going to be dreadful, but at least I have a few quid in my pocket, no imminent threat of homelessness and nothing particularly awful on the horizon. I have another month of paid work ahead of me. For once, I have a few things going in my favour.

You might see that my biggest fight is with myself. Of course, there's work available year-round and my skills mean that I'm never going to go hungry and homeless, except through spectacular self-sabotage. It seems obvious that I should just quietly and obediently pop the pills and behave myself. It doesn't look that hard to just get my head down and concentrate on working hard to get myself back into a position of financial security. To say that by the end of the year I could be well and truly wealthy again, seems like no time at all to you. However, you must remember that I march to a different beat. My timescales are not the same as your timescales.

I'm not going to get paid for the whole of February. A very Frugal February beckons. The weather's just as dark and miserable in February and my job will be just as isolating, lonely and boring. The unfavourable conditions very much remain unpleasant and unconducive to any mood improvement. However, the so-called short month of February does seem like a less daunting proposition than Jinxed January was. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Another month without an almighty fuck-up is a huge achievement, in the context of my messed up 5 years of Jinxed Januarys. If I'm being superstitious, so be it, because it's helped me to avoid going off the rails.

I'm really pleased with where I'm at actually. Drink and drug free, unmedicated, as sane as I'll ever be, relatively settled in my home life, regular(ish) income and gainful employment. There aren't too many loose ends to tidy up. I'm on top of my taxes and my paperwork. To be in this position, at this dreadful time of year, where I don't have anything looming that's of major concern, is a really big deal.

I submitted another invoice to my client, and even though I lost over £4,000 of potential earnings this month, I'm still in profit after expenses. The money's not in the bank yet, but it's on its way. Perhaps it will be good to spend another month being a little thrifty - money after all, can be something that's triggering.

Of course, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm imagining that by the end of February, my financial woes will be mostly ended. I'm imagining that by the end of March I'll be feeling positively wealthy again. I'm projecting into the future, and that's bound to end up making me miserable. I still have a whole month more of my miserable boring contract to do. I need to start looking for the next job, at some point sooner rather than later. I can't make tomorrow come any sooner, and I shouldn't wish away today.

What can I say, except I'm slightly glad that I didn't throw away a perfectly salvageable situation. I'd still rather be dead, because it's been a lot of stress and hassle, but I'm alive so I'll carry on for a bit longer and see what tomorrow brings.

Tags: #depression #suicide #divorce #career #mentalhealth #bipolar

This is a story about music...

The only things that seem to be capable of making me cry at the moment are Disney movies and a 90-second passage from The Tempest, which is about dreams and sleep. I quote it now for your interest, and as I write this big salty tears are rolling down my cheeks:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air: 
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep.

It seems remarkable to me that I'm not able to resist the mawkish and emotionally manipulative thrust of the Disney movies, and I blub in all the right places and even some of the wrong ones. To accuse me of being emotionally unstable or having a tendency towards inappropriate emotional responses to situations, is grossly inaccurate and untrue. I would agree that I'm unguarded; trusting... a little vulnerable and certainly quite naïve, although I would argue that I prefer to be naïve than cynical and guarded.

In terms of protecting myself from whimsically falling in love and getting hurt, I would say that I don't protect myself at all. My emotions go where they want to go and I let them. I use the "L" word very sparingly and tend to distrust strong emotions, viewing them as transient; fleeting. I favour loyalty above everything else. I've got no time for game playing and wimpy wusses who are afraid of getting hurt.

Under a railway arch in Vauxhall, I experienced what the children of doting parents must experience their whole lives - to be loved, cared for; adored. I felt a sense of contentment and security that had been absent throughout my bullied childhood. I felt the warm embrace - the hug, if you like - that had been absent in my life and had turned me into an insecure person who completely lacked self-confidence and a sense of identity. I'd been through 8 schools and lost countless friends due to my druggie alkie loser parents not giving a shit about the damage they were doing. The experience of clubbing under the railway arches was curative - this was the love that had been sorely absent in my life. The catalyst? MDMA.

Fifteen years later, my marriage was collapsing. I needed to go to hospital. I was admitted to The Priory thanks to my private health insurance.

It's actually unremarkable that I grew out of a brief period where I dabbled with recreational drugs - ecstasy - and went on to have a 15-year blemish-free career, before the stress of a toxic and abusive relationship tipped me back into the very state I was in when I was a child: in desperate need of some unconditional love. It seems obvious that depriving a person of their identity and security, and bullying them, would result in trauma and psychological damage. It seems obvious that the same negative stimuli would elicit the same negative response.

While I was in The Priory, I handed in my iPod after a couple of weeks. I had decided that I was using music as a way of manipulating my moods, in a similar manner to people drinking, smoking and using drugs, in response to stress and other negative situations. I decided that if I was going to take treatment seriously, I would have to avoid things which I could use and abuse to alter my mood.

Presently, we seem to think it's virtuous to deny ourselves all the things we enjoy. Cream cakes (too fatty), fizzy drinks (too much sugar), beer and wine (alcoholic), masturbation ("wanker", "tosser" etc.), spending money (too fun) and all the other things that make life mildly bearable are given up for January, while we run on a treadmill in a gym, or lash ourselves with a bunch of nettles or whatever the f**k it is that 'virtuous' people do these days.

When I was seized with the notion that pure devotion to a 'natural' life would lead to happier, healthier times, it became as obsessive as anything else that might be characterised as an addiction. I became addicted to making every single tiny health tweak in my life that I could. I cut out dairy and gluten. I washed out my sinuses with saline. I probably would have done colonic irrigation if I'd thought about it at the time. The whole thing was dumb - pure superstition and pseudoscience.

Today, I take dietary supplements - 5-HTP, tyrosine and magnesium - which are supposed to provide my brain with the building blocks it needs to restore normal mood and improve my sleep. However, I've also abused simple amino acids and even pure dopamine - in the form of L-DOPA - to put my brain into a completely unnatural state, with the intention of achieving an otherwise unattainable euphoria or level of performance.

I've abused stimulants to stay awake and give me the energy to dance all night. I've used prolactin-suppressing medications to allow me to have multiple orgasms. I've used erectile dysfunction medications to allow me to sustain an erection for priapic lengths of time. I've used drugs to move my mood up, down and sideways - attempting to 'play god' if you like.

How many drugs and medications have I tried? Two hundred? Three hundred? More? This is not hyperbole - I had the time, the money, the determination and the means.

If you think I'm an idiot who makes bad choices, I ask you to look again. Imagine what my upbringing was like before I discovered that there was this chemical - MDMA - that unlocked me from that miserable prison. Of course I was going to mistakenly believe that it was a trick that could be repeated. In my desperation to escape a toxic abusive relationship 15 years later, I tried heroin, crack and crystal meth - amongst innumerable others - and none of them grabbed me. I methodically worked my way through everything I could get my hands on - illegal drugs, legal highs and black-market prescription medications.

The net result was not a predictable one. Instead of being dead in a ditch due to poly-substance abuse, I'm now quite averse to any psychoactive substances. I'm one of the few people you know who doesn't drink caffeinated beverages. That I'm unmedicated for my mental health problems is not because I think I'm "well" but because I know that I prefer to suffer the symptoms - very few people you know are prepared to tolerate depression and anxiety, but I do so on a daily basis without medication to assist me.

There's a part of me that wants to quit carbs, quit booze and join a gym, but frankly I've got enough shit on my plate just trying to get up in the mornings and not kill myself.

I loosened the purse strings and bought a few new clothes at the weekend. I went on a couple of dates. I'm listening to euphoric dance music, eating what I want to eat and drinking quite a lot. Fuck it. Life's too short to be miserable.

Last night, a woman ran up behind me as I was crossing the road and started asking for money. I said "sorry". She launched into an escalating level of abuse, accusing me of saying "no" and for toying her when she was "begging [for my] help". She was too busy yelling and screaming horrible names at me to be interested in the fact that I would've helped her, absolutely. In fact I still would. Fuck it, even if she was just rattling for "B and white" (heroin and crack, also known as "dark and light") and she was short for the score, I'd have helped. You've got to acknowledge the complexities of life and human nature if you want to help anybody. Expecting everybody to be gym-going, kale-eating, alcohol and drug free totally fucking ridiculously 'virtuous' people is absurd. Most of us have a vice.

When I think about how long I lived without my cat to stroke, and without the pleasure of snuggling with a girl I'm really into, I'm surprised I made it this far. What's the point of life without a good healthy dose of oxytocin? Is life even liveable without the bonding hormone? I really don't think it is.

So, as we approach the end of Jinxed January, I'm throwing caution to the wind little by little. I'm buying myself new clothes and having a haircut, because it's great for my self-esteem. I'm dating and having sex because it's fucking awesome. I'm letting myself do a million little things that just make my day a little bit more bearable, because that's what life's all about if you don't want it to be suicidal misery.

There's a chance that all the little changes in my life will destabilise me. It's all quite stressful, even if it's also fun. I'm quite well aware that something as simple as a late night can throw my world into quite a lot of chaos, but sod it, life's too short and I've waited and been sensible for long enough.

I don't think I'm going to go clubbing and take any MDMA any time soon though.

Tags: #relationships #sex #bipolar

This is a story about hitting a brick wall...

What happens if I can't get up and go to the office? I presume I lose my contract pretty promptly. I didn't have an interview to get my job and I'm very well paid. It seems like madness to risk losing my income, but perhaps that illustrates just how much I'm struggling at the moment.

By about 4:30pm this afternoon I was hungry enough to get up and go and find something to eat, so I can't be very sick, can I? When I was feeling too unwell to work a couple of weeks ago, I was suicidal. Today I haven't been suicidal, so I must be a lot better. Why would I throw away a great opportunity to earn some big bucks?

It's true that my contract was a gift which was perfectly timed to rescue me from financial ruin. It's true that I've been able to mess around with new technology and add some desirable skills to my repertoire. It's true that working has been good for my self-esteem. However, I've been too lonely, bored, stressed, isolated and having to pretend to look busy, for far too long. It's impossible to go into an office and sit all on your own, shuffling papers around your desk for 40 hours a week. I know it sounds like a cushy number, but I've been alone with my thoughts and with no distractions for far too long.

If I lose this contract I know I'll regret it. I don't mean to play with fire. I don't mean to be turning down well paid work when it's offered. I genuinely couldn't face it today. I genuinely couldn't face the many days I've bunked off this year, even though I very much wanted to work.

"You can't have wanted to work that much, can you?" you may ask.

I want to work and I want the money, it's just that there's a fundamental incompatibility with my current state of mind and my mood, and the grim task of having to sit and look busy at my desk, with nobody to talk to. The suggestion that I start random water-cooler chats with strangers is absurd. People are very busy. People have jobs to do. It would be far worse to draw attention to the fact that I'm idle, than to attempt to simply sit and wish away the hours, minutes and seconds, being miserable at my desk.

There are limits to how miserable you can get. There's a point where depression switches to the active pursuit of suicide. Once you go beyond the point where depression exceeds the survival instinct, you die, or at least attempt to die. Once you go beyond the point where work is far more miserable than being destitute, you'll cease to force yourself to go a job that's devastatingly awful for your mental health.

There's a chance that things could change at work and I could get a new project, but today's the first day that my client's back in the office after a two and a half week holiday, so they'll be dealing with a backlog of emails and other things to catch up on. Nobody really wants to have to find things for a so-called 'self-starter' to do, but I'm a thousand miles away from my colleagues, so it's not like I can just chat to them and see if I can make myself useful in some way.

I've always found that there's a certain amount of thumb-twiddling and doing pointless time-filling tasks just to keep busy, in the job I've chosen. I made some career changes to allow me to retain my sanity, but averse life events have caused me to have to go back to doing work that pays the bills, despite the detriment to my health.

It's true that I'm very lucky to be very well paid to do what I do, but it doesn't change the inescapable fact of the matter: I'm not coping without daily interaction with a team of people, and a certain amount of variety in my daily grind. Nobody's job's perfect, but mine's definitely not really helping me struggle through Jinxed January and stay stable through a stressful and testing time for my mental health and long-term wellbeing.

You know, lots of people choose their jobs because they're night owls, or because they can't stand working in offices, or because they thrive off the energy of people and their souls would be destroyed by having to sit and stare at spreadsheets for a living. Lots of people choose their jobs because it's something they want to do and it suits their personality. I'm doing my contract because I need the money.

I know I sound like a scratched record, but I'm barely limping along to the end of the month.

Would I rather be unemployed and broke? In a lot of ways, yes.

Tags: #career

This is a story about invasion of privacy...

I've lived my life online since the nineties, writing using my real name on parts of the internet which are preserved for posterity. Many websites have ceased to be maintained and entire online communities have been lost, along with myriad digital identities and all the words that were written. However, there's always the chance that something shared publicly might become permanently recorded. Sometimes, the internet never forgets.

It kind of goes without saying that I write mindful of the fact that people I care about might not appreciate being splashed all over the pages of a website. A friend writes a blog where he refers to people by the first letter of their name, but I tend to prefer not to write about my face-to-face relationships at all. It's a strange kind of double-life, where bloggers follow the trials and tribulations of each others' lives, but I have a completely private part of my life which I don't write about. It might seem like I'm a completely open book, and I certainly don't keep any secrets per se, but I do respect the privacy of my friends.

I've written in the past using the personal pronoun "her" to refer to my [ex-]girlfriend, but I wasn't broadcasting intimate details of our relationship. At my lowest ebb, when I was extremely unwell, I did share some stuff on Facebook - restricted to just my friends - which I regret and I deleted when I got better and understood that it was a stupid mistake. I enjoy the public scrutiny of my life, but it's not my place to share the parts of the story which overlap with other people. When something's very important to me, and I'm not able to write openly about what's bugging me, I write cryptically and I hope it obfuscates precisely who and what I'm writing about.

Being an open book and living a life that is unflinchingly candid, honest and authentic, is very important to me. I think I'll always write this blog, because it's been the best thing I've ever done to help me with my mood stability and generally regain control of my life.

I worry that I'm becoming a bitter, twisted, poison pen writer sometimes. Anything that's upsetting me and otherwise causing me emotional distress, gets written about here. Writing is a great way to work out my frustrations, without being snappy, bitchy or sharp-tongued with anybody. Writing publicly means that I write more considerately than I would if I felt my words would only ever be read by my intended recipient.

Because often times, private correspondence is now being shared far and wide, there can be unintended consequences for shooting your mouth off when you think it's just between you and another person. The more public scrutiny I'm under, the more my behaviour moves in the direction I want it to. There are things I'm incredibly hurt and upset about, and there simply isn't any way I could communicate healthily in 'private' because my blood boils. Writing publicly is brilliant, because I'm forced to be fair and reasonable, keep things civil, and I know that my words don't fall on deaf ears - even if my intended recipient ignores me, other people are reading and that means that those who have upset me are held accountable, so I feel satisfied that my point has been made. I feel like I've finally managed to get my tormentors - the bullies, the abusers, the oppressors - into the dock and I'm having my day in court. It feels like justice.

The unintended consequence of having a large digital footprint - a social media identity - is that those who are in your life who do not live their lives in the same way, have to be treated separately. It would be unfair, for example, to share the gory details of how my dating is going, or the particulars of life embedded in my friends' family (see The White Wolf and the Black Sheep).

Perhaps it's a good omen, that an increasing proportion of my life is off-limits for my blog. I won't write the name of the client I'm working for at the moment, although it's pretty obvious that it's an investment bank. I won't write about how I spend my weekends. I'm not documenting the details of relationships that are beyond the realm of social media and the internet.

It does pose some difficulties, that some of the things I really want to write about have to bubble and boil away until I burst into an incoherent rant, which hopefully could never be connected to the real-life events that precipitated it.

So, I'm not being quite as open, honest, candid and authentic as I could be, but I do have a responsibility towards people who don't want lurid details splurged all over the internet, becoming an unwitting part of the Nick "Manic" Grant show, although I do occasionally receive extremely angry messages from people who felt that they very much should have featured.

In conclusion, I'm pretty happy with the balance I'm striking. One of my closest friendships was tested, but I think things are all better now. Generally, it's better to assume I'm not writing about you.

To save you a lot of digging, you might be interested in reading So Lonely if you want to see the kind of stuff I write about other people.

Tags: #relationships #writing

This is a story about my totally normal life...

So the highlight of my week has to be these new chopping boards and cutlery. I mean, Monday morning was pretty exciting because it was time to go to work at my 9 to 5 job in an office, but these housewares are awesome.

From Monday until Friday, I did my work, which I'm perfectly competent at - I am consistently able to deliver average results and breathtaking levels of mediocrity.

Each night I returned to a dwelling of some description and slept on a real bed. The dwelling was either rented, mortgaged or owned outright.

I ate food. Sometimes as many as three meals a day. My diet consisted of a mixture of carbohydrates, proteins, fats and fibre. The food was broken down into glucose which, along with water and oxygen, gave my cells the energy to power my body.

As well as walking and running, I used forms of transportation to move me around different locations.

In order to procure the things I needed, I used promissory notes and coins, in lieu of labour, commodities or tangible assets.

Here is a list of things:

• Large detached house
• New car
• Substantial sum of savings
• Shares, bonds, gilts, foreign currency, investment properties, Bitcoins, gold and other precious metals
• Healthy pension pot
• Highly paid permanent job with health insurance

I cook. I mean, I can cook. I mostly don't cook, but I could, you know?

I chatted to friends using SMS, email, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Snapchat, Twitter DM, Instagram DM and even met them for real face-to-face interactions.

My week has been good on account of not being dead or terminally ill.

Having now begun dating, it struck me how I definitely have a social status and that girls would definitely have an opinion on that. It's so good that I'm employed/part-time/self-employed/unemployed/student, homeowner/tenant/homeless, owner-driver/public-transport/walk-everywhere, good-provider/bit-of-a-loser/scum [DELETE AS APPROPRIATE].

I'm glad that I neatly fit neatly inside the boxes, because I think that it would be quite difficult to navigate through a world that wishes to categorise me.

I hate my boss - the owner of the company I work for. He's miserable and he makes me work really hard for minimum wage. I have to work 40 hours a week in London and I really don't want to be working in London. He has unrealistically high standards, he's always telling me I'm not good enough and I should just quit. He's always telling me that I'm going to fail and that I'm a loser. He might be the managing director and the owner of the company I work for, but I think he's a bit of a dick and I hate him. At least the company pays me good dividends, sometimes. In fact, 100% of the company's profits seem to end up in my pocket. Also, the managing director does listen to every word I say and does exactly what I want. In fact, the managing director admits that the company would be nothing without me.

I have an absentee landlord. The person I pay rent to is never around. It's like they don't exist. Bloody landlords.

I don't own a home outright. Mortgage lenders are the title holder of the deeds to houses and apartments. It seems like most people who consider themselves to be homeowners should more correctly refer to themselves as mortgage payers, because they won't own their homes until the mortgage is paid off.

I might put some money in an ISA or a high-interest savings account. I'm saving for a rainy day, because I'm a sensible and well-behaved chap who does all the right things.

Here's another list of things:

• Professorship
• Doctorate
• Masters
• Undergraduate degree
• A-levels
• GCSEs
• SATs

Academic institutions - they exist and I've even seen them, been near to them and been inside them. What's my highest academic qualification? Why don't you phone them up and ask them? Don't take my word and my certificates and diplomas as gospel. Don't trust that photo of me wearing a mortar board and gown, clutching a scroll of parchment with a red ribbon tied around it.

Where did I go to university? Was it Oxbridge, Exeter, Durham, red-brick, Russel group, white-brick?

Where did I go to school. Was it Rugby, Charterhouse, Harrow, Eton or Winchester? Was it a good fee-paying independent? Was it a selective grammar school?

A remarkable amount of effort goes into teasing out where we think people are - or should be - in the pecking order. Snobbery is designed to elicit a kind of cap-doffing subservience from the lower orders. Know your place, underlings.

In the dating game, all my insecurities are brought into sharp focus. Every weakness in every area of my life becomes something which I'm embarrassed and ashamed of. Every seemingly innocent question about my life seems to be charged with a kind of "are you good enough for me?" and "are you beneath me?" kind of judgement. We sometimes think we're living in a classless society, but it's not true at all.

My life is laid bare for all to see - all the gory details are out on display for anybody who wants to go digging. It ain't pretty, but it's me. Happy hunting.

Tags: #dating

This is a story about non-pharmacological interventions...

The word "choice" is a little unfair. To suggest that people could help themselves by making better lifestyle choices assumes that our choices are unbiased. It seems obvious that we'd choose low-fat, low-carb, low-salt options because they're better for our heath, but we're biased towards things that taste nice. It seems obvious that we'd cut alcohol, caffeine, drugs and medications out of our life, because they all have nasty side effects, but we're biased towards things which make us feel good. It seems obvious that we should work less, spend more time with our families and not commute so far, but sadly it's not easy to up sticks and move closer to our jobs and often we have to do jobs we hate because we need the money.

At my meeting with a psychiatrist today we essentially agreed that I can manage my disposition towards mood disorder using lifestyle choices, but it's going to take a lot of hard work. I need to exercise more, I need to change my job and I need to cut down or even quit my alcohol consumption. As well, I need to continue to have strict bedtimes, avoid caffeine, dim the lights after dusk, use a light box in the mornings and eat a balanced diet. I also need to resist the urge to spend money, take risks, be promiscuous and dabble with drugs. All fairly obvious stuff, but none of it is much fun.

Aside from some disagreement over whether I'm type 1 or type 2 bipolar, and the severity of my illness, I actually got on pretty well with the psychiatrist. To hear the words "you have a chronic condition that cannot be cured" is not very nice and my instinct was to argue that I don't have a condition at all - my symptoms have been a product of my environment; caused by the stress of my situations I've been in. In actual fact, I concede that I've had symptoms of bipolar for as long as I can remember... it's just that my bosses and work colleagues have always been very understanding of my highs and lows. A lot of people would get sacked for coming in to work two hours late every day, or shooting their mouth off and throwing a tantrum in the middle of the office, but there's a place in the workplace for somebody who can work for weeks without any sleep when there's a crazy deadline to meet. I agreed with the psychiatrist that I've got a lifelong condition, which will need careful management. It doesn't scare or upset me, because I managed my condition effectively for years before things got dangerously erratic.

To hear lithium and sodium valproate banded around as potential treatments is not what I wanted. I prefer to think that I've got a mild form of bipolar which can be managed with a medication like lamotrigine, or no medication at all. I consider that my 'high' periods have been hypomanic because I had no grandiosity, psychosis or paranoia. The psychiatrist considers me to be a fully blown manic depressive, because my manic phases have lasted more than a week. I think we'll have to agree to disagree, because my mania does not seem at all severe, except when exacerbated by drugs and sleep deprivation.

I asked about talk therapy. There's an 18 month waiting list. I'm being referred, but 18 months is a heck of a long time to wait for psychological therapy. Getting some kind of talk therapy has become a crusade to me, because I first sought treatment in 2008, so it's been 10 years since I asked and I still haven't received any therapy.

In short, I think I agree that I have a certain amount of risk towards becoming really unwell, but it's not destiny. I have a lot of hard work to do, and I have to continue to make so-called smart choices, when really my life's not a lot of fun and I still have to figure out how to pay the bills somehow. I do agree that there's something about me - call it an illness if you like - that means I have to pay a bit more attention to my lifestyle than others might, who don't share the same predisposition towards mood instability.

I went into the psych consultation feeling quite unique and special. I was feeling pretty proud of myself for being unmedicated and having dealt with a lot of things that were definitely wrecking my life. Then the psych helped me see that a lot of people who are bipolar have a similar story of reckless risk taking, money spending, hyper-sexuality, drug taking, getting into conflict with bosses, drinking too much and all the other things that lead to a point where lives get utterly screwed up. I suppose there comes a certain point where a person just can't continue to live their life a certain way - the end of the road. Where my inclination was previously to commit suicide, I'm perhaps slightly erring on the side of trying to mend my ways and crawl back into normal society over broken glass.

I can see the temptation of a chemical crutch to aid my 'recovery' but I'm still pretty adamant that I'm going to go medication free. Actually, the psychiatrist agreed with me that something like sertraline, or even lamotrigine, could push me into hypomania. Antidepressants have always had a mood destabilising effect on me in the past. There's something to be said for feeling miserable: it does somehow make you appreciate the better times, when they eventually arrive.

So, it seems like a rather well-behaved life beckons for me. I don't relish the prospect of having to always make sensible choices, but I guess I'm not a young man who can bounce back from anything anymore.

Hardly thrilling, but the saga continues. I'll keep you posted on how it goes, doing the boring mundane stuff.

Tags: #bipolar

This is a story about doing no harm...

Imagine that somebody says to you "you're so argumentative". What could you possibly say in return? You can't say "no I'm not" because then they'll say "yes you are and the fact that you're arguing proves it". There are lots of other quirks of the English language that allow you to box people in, such as asking questions like "so when did you stop raping children?" or some other kind of fallacy.

I'm not actually against psychiatrists and psychiatric medications. Every psychiatrist is different. Most psychiatrists who work in the NHS have to deal with society's very sickest and most dysfunctional cases. Every psychiatric bed in England is filled with somebody who is being detained against their will for 28 days, or more likely for 6 months. There aren't any spare psychiatric beds for people who are merely having a crisis and who are in danger of committing suicide - the NHS will call your bluff and leave you to die, as so many do, because mental health services are overstretched and underfunded.

The kinds of treatment on offer vary from snake-oil bullshit, such as CBT and other behavioural therapies, to chemical coshes that will put you into the drugged equivalent of a straightjacket. For sure, there are some very sick people who are psychotically disturbed, but powerful antipsychotics are not a panacea for all problems of the mind. In some countries, physical restraints are more commonplace. In the UK, we dope people up to the eyeballs.

If you've never lost your liberty you won't quite be able to comprehend how terrible it is. We're free-thinking individuals who move through the world according to our whims - the illusion of free will. When locked into an overcrowded psych ward, even if you asked to be hospitalised because you feared for your own safety, you might suddenly panic that you won't be able to get back out.

Ironically, you can't say "I'm not argumentative" when somebody wrongly accuses you of being argumentative, and it's equally impossible to say "I'm not mad" when you're trapped by psychiatry. The only strategy you can play is to be calm and patient and ignore the provocation, which is easier said than done. It's a very natural reaction to want to defend ourselves against unfounded allegations. To have our character criticised by somebody who doesn't know a damn thing about us, is incredibly insulting. When somebody who hardly knows us has the ability to detain us against our will, and even to have us forcibly medicated, then the situation is unbearable.

I don't doubt that psychiatrists believe they have their patients' best interests at heart, but there's no acknowledgement of the antagonisation, frustration, anger and upset that they provoke. Nobody should have godlike powers over any other human being. The line between sane and insane, sick and healthy, right and wrong thoughts... these are completely arbitrary. There can be no ultimate arbiter who decides who's normal and who's not - it's not right that anybody should sit in judgement.

Am I arguing that we should fling open the doors to our asylums and let the mental patients roam free? It's more complicated than that. A survey of the general public revealed that the vast majority of people wouldn't want to live next door to, work with or have their children play with a schizophrenic. It seems that those paranoid delusions are not so paranoid after all - no smoke without fire. Having had my case reviewed at mental health tribunal to decide whether to give me back my freedom or not, it appalled me how six people could sit and have a discussion about me as if I wasn't even present in the room. To button my lip and remain silent through proceedings; to maintain my polite and courteous façade - this was virtually impossible when my liberty was at stake.

Another thing that's deeply upsetting is the way that the patient is often mobbed. Ward rounds consist of sitting with a whole room full of people - usually a couple of psychiatrists and a couple of nurses - who sit stroking their chins while the patient explains the same thing for the millionth time: please stop ganging up on me and let me go. Of course, there are mental heath problems present, but the set-up is antagonising. Should we just let anorexics stop eating and die? Should we just let the psychotic do what the voices tell them to do? This isn't what I'm arguing for. I'm just pointing out that even the most sane amongst us would be driven mad by a jeering crowd, licensed to torment and keep their victims in captivity.

If you imagine that you might get to spend 10 minutes with the psychiatrist who has the power to set you free, once every week or every fortnight, all the decisions are more important than I can possibly express in words. If you're on a medication which is causing you intolerable side effects, in a psych ward setting which is causing you intolerable distress, you're going to have to wait a couple of weeks before you can have another go at trying to communicate your needs to the doctor... which you'll have to do through the foggy haze of powerful antipsychotic medication. "This man is making no sense" they'll say, because you've been drugged into a dribbling mess. What further proof could be necessary to show that you're an imbecile who could never survive outside the protective walls of an institution?

Experiments were conducted by investigative journalists, who deliberately got themselves committed to institutions, only to find they couldn't get out again - the system grabbed them. The harder you fight the system, the more you're giving the system the 'proof' that you really are mad. It's maddeningly self-perpetuating.

Very few of us have the ability to bring our racing pulse back under control, to lower our respiration rate, to relax our muscles. Very few of us possess the ability to react to incredible stress, by calming ourselves and being patient. The most antagonisingly provocative situation will elicit the most predictable response: people don't like having their freedom taken away, told what to do and being judged by strangers who pry into every aspect of their private life.

To have captive creatures to toy with as we please must make those men and women who wield godlike powers feel very full of themselves. "It's for your own good" is the well-worn defence for the indefensible. The very nature of the relationship is toxic to mental health. Mental health treatment cannot be imposed by those who know best, because they don't know best - psychiatry is such a young branch of medicine. Nobody really has a clue what they're doing. Long-term outcomes are abysmal and the mental health epidemic continues to grow apace. Clearly, evidence-based medicine is not being practiced.

Of course I don't think that psychiatrists and mental health nurses and all the other people who offer medical and complementary treatments for ailments of the mind, are bad people. Of course they're not bad people. I don't believe there's a Big Pharma conspiracy. The truth is though, people are sicker than ever before and the treatments aren't working. My objection is with those who talk authoritatively as if there are useful diagnoses and accompanying medications and therapies which are making a profound impact... it's just not the case at all. What's happening is abysmal, and nobody is admitting they've got it wrong - a lot of people aren't sick, they just hate capitalism and modern society.

Good science means controlling the variables. I've aggressively cut out all psychoactive substances. Tomorrow I shall tell my psychiatrist that I'm debt-laden and forced to work a job that conflicts with my values and needs. My malaise is a function of the conflict in my heart, knowing that banking is a morally bankrupt profession, loan-sharking and taking advantage of the most vulnerable. My prescription? The end of capitalism and the return to a society where we're intimately connected to our local communities... do you think they'll stock that in the chemist?

Getting my happiness and contentment back in the current economic climate looks to be an impossible task. However, to medicate myself because I'm having a sane reaction to an insane world is not a good course of action.

Of course, my psychiatrist doesn't have the ability to cure me of my intolerable situation. I've got to work. I've got to travel to where the jobs are. I've got to pay my bills and service my debts. But, I don't need medical solutions to a non-medical problem.

Why even go to see my psychiatrist, when I don't think they can help me? Well, it's obvious isn't it? If we keep sending people away with pills, then we keep proceeding with our delusion that they're working and things are going to improve one day. How many times a year do you suppose a psychiatrist meets somebody who's foresworn ALL psychoactive substances, including caffeine and nicotine, and is a functional high-achieving member of society, to all outward appearances? To say that a medical problem - suicidal depression and debilitating anxiety - doesn't have a medical solution is heresy, but somebody has to stand up to those who dogmatically decree that they have the solutions, when they demonstrably do not.

Being unmedicated is really horrible and I feel terrible, but I'm being a bit of a martyr because I've got a point to prove. One day I will escape from the burden of debt, the soul-destruction of bullshit jobs and the need to commute long distances, preventing me from forming social bonds and having a work:life balance. One day I'll get a girlfriend and a cat and a home of my own and all the other things that humans need to feel complete, and then we can re-examine the situation and ask if I need medication. Until such time as the major problems in my life still exist, then medication looks like a dangerous option, because medication is allowing our society to develop into a grotesquely unhealthy form. Just because medication allows you to do awful things, it doen't mean you should do awful things. If it feels wrong, it probably is wrong.

A certain proportion of society will always struggle to abide by its rules, its laws and its social contract. A certain proportion of society will be criminals and parasites - anti-social. However, when the vast majority of us are struggling and unhappy, then we've made a wrong turn somewhere; we've made a mistake and we need to retrace our steps.

I refuse to be labelled and drugged.

Tags: #mentalhealth #medication

This is a story about immigration...

My journey home this evening took me from the western side of the Square Mile, along London Wall and past Moorgate, past Liverpool Street and into the East End. Suit-clad city workers scurried with their briefcases and brollies, desperate to return home to their families after a long day at the office. Overcoats were all navy blue, black and grey, in conservative styles designed not to attract attention; sensible haircuts, no piercings or visible tattoos.

The crappy vegetable market that used to be virtually derelict now houses every designer brand and label that you could possibly imagine, from Barbour jackets to pairs of jeans which cost in excess of £200 a pair. Money is no object in the very place where a friend of mine used to sell knock-off copies of Calvin Klein underwear, three pairs for a fiver.

The council flats - social housing - have all been sold off as part of Thatcher's right-to-buy scheme, and all that money has flown off to the Spanish Costas, where the weather is better and the cost of living has remained lower.

The East End boozer that I used to love because it was cheap and virtually empty except for a few local alcoholics, is now brimming with hipsters and charges more than £6 for a pint of beer. Instead of looking closed and disused the pub has had an expensive makeover and its customers are spilling onto the streets - standing room only.

The pie and liquor shop, which sells jellied eels, is now a tourist attraction and there are people queuing out of the door, because it represents the very epitome of East London, despite the fact that East London is now epitomised by overpaid hipsters who do a bit of web development in trendy offices that used to be warehouses used by the cloth trade.

Everything that the the slum-dwellers and council tenants wished to escape has now become fashionable and extremely expensive. To live in an overcrowded city that's noisy and full of crime and pollution, seems like utter insanity. Why do people pay a premium to live in Central London?

A hundred languages are spoken in London, which is double the number spoken in the next most multicultural city: New York. Within a ten minute walk of where I'm staying, I can eat food from at least 30 different countries. Away from the homogeny of the City of London, traditional dress indicates that there are ghettos where people are living very much as they would have done in the countries where their families originated - entire communities have been lifted and shifted to the centre of the UK's capital.

The Crossrail engineering project - the new Elizabeth line - will be jam-packed with commuters as soon as it opens. London cannot keep pace with the demands of its residents and workers. Infrastructure is creaking at the seams. Tube stations regularly have to be closed because of overcrowding. The roads are virtually at gridlock. The congestion charge and T-charge are doing nothing to change anybody's habits. Deliveroo and Uber vehicles compete with black cabs and red double-decker buses, and more lorries than ever must deliver a relentless amount of ready meals and pre-prepared sandwiches for busy office workers who are too tired and stressed out of their minds to be able to cook for themselves.

In a desperate struggle for space, gone is the spare bedroom. Gone is the place of your own. Gone is your own kitchen and bathroom. Airbnb makes every inch of spare space pay its way. Hostels and hotels are no longer viable business models. Everybody has to pay big bucks for barely enough space to sleep - we're all living on top of each other; piled high.

The official statistics say that London's daytime population is ten or even twelve million. The truth is that nobody really knows. Every runaway goes to London. Every asylum seeker; every economic migrant. All roads lead to London, and London is where everybody ends up - the gravity is inescapable.

I was working on a project which needed to work out how many people the company employed. The company who employed me thought they had about 700,000 people working for them, but the truth is that nobody really knew. You'd think such a thing would be easy, but it wasn't. We had to use biometric data - fingerprints and facial recognition - just to stand a chance. Turns out, there are always more people on the payroll than you thought; more hands in the till.

I work 0.3 miles from the Bank of England. You can never work more than half a mile from the Bank of England in the Square Mile, because it's pretty much in the middle. It's the feeding trough. All of us little piggies come to the feeding trough, because that's where they make the money, and we get to gorge ourselves on it until we are fat.

I keep coming back the City of London because capitalism keeps clinging onto power, and that means I need money. Where do you get money? The Bank of England and the City of London, of course - go and fill your pockets at the source of all the wealth in the country. The streets are paved with gold.

One thing I notice when I keep leaving and coming back, is that there are always more and more people. There are huge skyscrapers springing up everywhere. I try to walk from one place to another via the same route I would have taken prior to the year 2000 and I find my way is barred. The shitty old office I worked in on Bevis Marks got replaced by a tower block that was supposed to accommodate 8,000 people, but has 12,000 working in it. There's an insatiable appetite for financial services workers. I remember going home after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and I'm pretty sure I had a seat on the tube. Things were civilised. There weren't crowds of people. What I witnessed tonight - and every night - is far more harrowing in terms of sheer numbers of people competing with each other to get home; to get away from this place.

When those two planes struck those two towers, we were convinced there were more planes headed for London. We were convinced that capitalism had had its day and that the subsequent stock market collapse had marked a changed mood - our appetite for the unrestrained free market had reached its limit. It seemed like the insanity of house price inflation and the asset bubble was going to burst. It didn't.

Now, we're living in a strange type of dystopia. German bombs are not falling on London, but there's a kind of resigned expectation that at some point terrorists are going to attack us. We go about our daily business with posters that constantly remind us to stay vigilant in the face of inevitable violence that will be perpetrated against the capital and its people. We are no longer living in Victorian Britain, but the slums are just as bad. Air pollution and overcrowding are terrible, and high stress jobs with long working hours has been proven to be a toxic health combo as bad as smoking cigarettes.

For some, there will be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. London still holds the possibility of fame and fortune. Dreamers from all over the world beat a path to London, to attempt to make a name for themselves and line their pockets with money. If you can cope with the sensory overload, the invasion of your personal space, the danger and the stress, then you can get a real buzz out of pounding these mean streets. Fortune favours the bold.

I had to get a tube train this evening, but the first one that arrived was too crowded for me to board. People behind me were pressed into my back and I was teetering on the edge of the platform. I asked if I could move back away from the edge, and one of the men who were shoving at my back looked at me like I'd asked if I could take a shit in his mouth. We gave each other an impassive non-aggressive stare, of course. Grudgingly, people allowed me to take half a step back from the brink of certain death. Reluctantly, I was given a few inches to spare between myself and the speeding trains and electrified rails.

This is the world we live in. If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.

Tags: #london #career #banking #capitalism