Nick Grant

This is a story about the worst of all worlds...

"I'm sorry but this bonus won't be the megabucks you were expecting from your first job in the City of London" my boss said to me. I was 22 years old and I was glad to have a secure job with an old fashioned investment bank - we'd just been through the dot com crash and 9/11. When I was a younger man I erred on the side of caution. I had decided to quit doing IT consultancy and take a permanent job when I was 21 years old, because I could see the storm clouds brewing on the horizon. I sold out.

The first couple of years of my full-time career were extremely frustrating. The speed that things got done at British Aerospace and the Ministry of Defence was painfully slow. I was already a very competent computer programmer before I started on a graduate training program as a junior programmer, so I'd already mastered the art of software development. There was very little to learn and my colleagues were intent on asserting their authority even if they were lacking any god-given talents - they were mostly insecure know-nothing fuckwits; bitter old men who spent most of their time energy trying to foil and thwart me because I was young.

I then spent a year working for a startup before I went into IT consultancy, doing software development as a contractor. Those were exciting times where I learned a lot. However, I was still bored and quite unchallenged a lot of the time.

The problem is that all software is essentially identical to a programmer. It doesn't matter if you're writing a computer game or torpedo guidance software for nuclear submarines... it's all the same damn code. In fact, the best code a programmer is ever going to write is a computer game, because games programmers have to take advantage of the power of a computer to its maximum: sound, graphics and high-performance code which provides an audiovisual entertainment spectacle - a lot harder than anything else that a computer programmer can do.

I'm a polyglot.

That is to say I code in zillions of computer programming languages.

But.

They're all the fucking same.

All computer code compiles down to machine code ultimately, so whatever programming language you choose is just personal preference. There's no point getting hung up about which particular language you have a fetish for, because they're all the same under the hood. It all ends up as the same CPU instructions, at the end of the day.

So.

I decided to quit the rat race. I decided that I needed to get away from the profession which I'd already mastered long before I started my first full-time job.

But the money.

So. Much. Money.

I was earning £470/day when I was 20 years old. I was working in Canary Wharf for Lloyds TSB. The money was transforming my whole identity and life prospects; my opportunities. I had won a golden ticket which admitted me to a socioeconomic group reserved for kids who went to private school and were otherwise bankrolled by their rich families. I'd smashed through the glass ceiling and broken into a world which I shouldn't have been permitted to enter.

Soon, skiing holidays and yachts. Soon, posh restaurants, taxis, fine wines and other accoutrements of the monied set, meant that I was wearing golden handcuffs. How could I give up this lifestyle?

I hated capitalism; banking.

I can't believe how much I hated both enterprise software development AND the financial services industry. I buried my head in books about economic theory and the way the global financial markets operate, and the deeper I dug the more horrified I became by the whole charade. I couldn't believe that the film It's a Good Life portrayed a bank as a benign entity -- lending out a grandmother's life savings so that a sweet little young couple with a baby could afford to buy a house -- when nothing could be further from the truth. Everything I saw was bullshit built on top of bullshit. Plus, I was bored. By then I was a senior analyst/programmer, but I hardly did any analysis or programming - we were just fat lazy capitalist bankers.

Still I carried on, because the money was so good.

I became involved with JPMorgan and the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and we processed over a quadrillion dollars worth of credit default swaps a year. 1% of a quadrillion is 10 trillion. So, if an investment bank loses a million dollars, that's only 0.0000001%, which is what we call a rounding error. The numbers boggle the mind.

I live my life by the numbers, despite the fact that it's not much of a life at all.

I earn something like 2.14 pence per second, which means that watching the pennies is a laughable idea. I'd literally lose money if I stopped to pick up a penny.

It's miserable.

It doesn't feel good.

It's inhuman.

At least I'm no longer propping up and assisting some of the main players in the great global con which is capitalism and investment banking, but I'm not very far from ground zero. I'm still pretty close to the feeding trough.

I have no idea what I'm doing, why, who it benefits, how I'd explain what I do to anybody, how I'd justify my existence on judgement day or how I'm able to look myself in the eye and feel good about myself. I don't feel good about myself. I feel like a sellout.

While others live authentic and fulfilling lives where they follow their dreams and pursue their academic fetishes or otherwise find work which is compatible with their identity and personality, I've been a mercenary for as long as I can remember. During my whole upbringing I was taught to value money ahead of everything else and to prioritise my earnings instead of my enjoyment of life, or any consideration of moral and ethical questions. My parents always put drugs and money as their number one prioriries - fuck children, friends, family and other things like that, so I suppose I've followed in their footsteps.

The net result is this unfulfilling and frankly awful life, where I have no identity or set of beliefs which define me. I just do a job for whoever is going to pay me the most, but I don't know why. All I know is that I learned to do this thing - computer programming - when I was a child and now it's both the source of an obscene income, but also seems to be at the root of all evil - banking and capitalism could not survive without data, computers, software and the polyglot mercenaries like me who help them to ride roughshod over humanity.

I keep telling myself: I only need to earn X amount and then I can quit the rat race and go and do something good; something meaningful; something rewarding. That day never comes.

Tags: #banking #capitalism #career

This is a story about being thwarted...

If I was prone to paranoia, I could swear that I've had more than my fair share of bad luck while trying to get back on my feet. Things should have panned out for me several times, but I've so far been thwarted by some asshats.

In September 2014 I was beginning to sort myself out after my divorce. I took a quick holiday before starting a new job. I was making good progress with the new project, but a couple of asshats took offence to me getting ahead and conspired to screw me over. Mercifully I took 'em down with me, although it was a hollow victory.

In September 2015 I'd had an eventful summer but I'd achieved a lot and proven myself to be a valuable member of the team on the project I was working on. It was a friend who rather unreasonably expected me to help him get a job and get out of the dive he was living in, which pushed me beyond my limits and made me unwell. There was also excessive pressure on me at work, but I could have coped if I'd have had a more settled personal life, such as having a secure place to live and some financial assistance.

In September 2016 I was starting to believe that I was finally going to get back on my feet, but the project I was working on was cancelled unexpectedly. With hindisight I suppose it was obvious that the project was going to get cancelled and that it was a dead-end job. It's my own fault for taking my eye off the ball. It's my own fault that I didn't immediately attempt to get another job, but I'd been so bored and miserable, and I felt like I'd been de-skilled by all the time off work I'd had. I hadn't learned anything, gained any new experience or developed at all on the project, so my self-confidence was at rock-bottom.

In September 2017 I was sacked because I was in a coma on life support and the asshat I was working with thought that unconscious people are able to make telephone calls to phone in sick. He still owes me a lot of money. Obviously I had a lot of different problems that year, but successfully delivering software projects was not one of them - never has been and never will be.

I've been working for 10 consecutive months without a holiday and I've delivered two software projects successfully into production. I got sick in May, but I was given the benefit of the doubt because I'd proven myself to be a valuable member of the team, like I always do. I was sick in January/February time and barely limping along, but because I'd already completed my project in record time nobody much cared. That's the way I work - I'm blazing fast when I'm well, but I get sick too. You don't get to have me only on my good days - you've gotta take the rough with the smooth - although I don't charge my clients for the days I'm not productive.

Even with all the gaps in-between projects and time off sick, I've still delivered a hell of a lot of software in the last 4 years and I've impressed a lot of clients and colleagues. I've achieved a huge amount, despite not being very well. What I've managed to do in the workplace is all the more remarkable when we consider that it's set against a backdrop of homelessness, near-bankruptcy, drug addiction, mental health problems, hospitalisations, being sectioned and kept on locked psych wards, suicide attempts, moving all over the country, being estranged from family, social isolation and a whole host of other things which are toxic to a person's chances of succeeding in life.

I don't want to pat myself on the back too much, but I deserve a break. It's time I made a breakthrough. It's time I'm allowed to make a breakthrough.

Every time I get close to making a breakthrough, something goes wrong which is beyond my control.

It's making me paranoid.

If I can get to the end of the month, I'll have hopefully proven my worth sufficiently with my colleagues on my current project, such that I'll be able to relax and take a holiday in October. It would be incredibly cruel and unlucky if something went wrong, such that I'm not able to go away on holiday and relax, knowing I've got a job to come back to. That's what happened to me earlier this year, when I'd booked a holiday in June but then my project ended and I found myself looking for work again.

It's good that I've been able to work for 3 different organisations on 3 different projects this year, without any asshats screwing things up, yet. Not having huge gaps between projects has been crucial to my recovery. Also, it's important to note that this year I haven't - yet - been screwed over by anybody and I've been recognised for my talents and experience which I have to offer. It's nice to feel confident in my own abilities and to feel like I have proven myself to be reliable and dependable, beyond any doubt.

Obviously, I'm very exposed - my colleagues have seen the semicolon tattoo behind my ear and must have wondered if and when I'm going to get sick, but hopefully they've now started to see that I'm very capable and productive; hopefully they're enjoying working with me and they value me as a team member. However, if I need to take any time off work sick, it will obviously raise doubts again about whether my mental illness makes me a useless loser who should never be allowed into civilised mainstream society or permitted the dignity of getting back on my feet.

I'm probably pushing things too hard for too long. I should probably have a holiday sooner rather than later, before I have a breakdown; before I burn out. However, I also want to get to the end of the month, because it's a significant milestone and it puts enough cash in the bank to leave me safe from any unexpected bumps in the road. I'm so desperate to get back to a position of security as quickly as possible, having been on this agonisingly drawn-out journey with so many dashed hopes.

Everything is set up very well for me to be able to continue working and improving my life, but I'm paranoid that something's going to go wrong and screw everything up.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the consequences of a work colleague discovering my blog. I wonder if I might be the architect of my own destruction by writing this. There's nothing here that's unprofessional though. I'm not naming my client or divulging confidential details about the project I'm working on. I'm not guilty of misconduct of any kind.

As you can see from the screenshot above, I've been trained to be paranoid. I've been trained to keep my mouth shut and pretend like I don't have any problems. Despite the walls of the office being plastered with posters which proclaim "it's OK to talk about mental health problems" they really don't mean ME. I'm expected to be faultless. If and when my faults are ever revealed, it will be the end of me. The tiniest blemish is career-ending for those of us who work in the corporate world, where we must maintain a fake professional façade of perfection at all times.

If I'm feeling optimistic I like to think that my valuable contributions would outweigh the stigma and shock of realising that my colleagues have been working with a homeless, junkie, alcoholic, bankrupt with mental health problems all along - I should never have been allowed to get past the gatekeepers and rub shoulders with those who inhabit the fit-in-or-fuck-off corporate world.

When I'm feeling paranoid I feel like I'm only tolerated because I'm reasonably good at pretending to be a regular guy - any hint of who I really am and what I've really been through, and I'll be swiftly ejected onto the street to suffer destitution and homelessness.

It's so frustrating right now, because I've almost but not quite got enough money to complete my transformation from homeless, junkie, alcoholic, bankrupt with mental health problems, back to somebody who's indistinguishable from any other corporate drone. I'm so desperate to prove that it can be done - to get back on my feet from a terrible situation. It'll crush me if I'm thwarted.

Keep your fingers crossed for me. The next few weeks are crucial.

Tags: #career #computing #divorce #homeless #mentalhealth #bipolar #depression #alcohol #addiction

This is a story about a life or death situation...

I have no memory of this day, one year ago, because I was unconscious in a coma on life support in the ITU critical care ward of a hospital. My prognosis was not good. I was having a lot of seizures. My kidneys had failed. I was in a bad way.

I've written extensively about the very many aspects surrounding my suicide attempt, so I shan't repeat myself. For anybody who hasn't read about it, the various bits and pieces are here:

• Surviving Suicide talks about what it was like to regain consciousness in intensive care after days in a coma.
• Suicide Attempt: One-Year Anniversary talks about my reflections on the final moments which tipped me over the edge, and how I came to be saved by my Twitter followers raising the alarm to the emergency services.
• The Closest I've Come to Suicide was written only hours before my actual suicide attempt, and gives a chilling insight into my fragile state of mind and shows that my life was balanced on a knife-edge

There's a lot more I've written under the #suicide hashtag, which collects together all my blog posts on the topic in reverse-chronological order. All in all I've written more than a million words on this blog, with a very great deal of it talking about the things which were driving my depression and suicidal thoughts, and detailing some of my plans, which included a trip to the Golden Gate Bridge.

In the 3 years that I've been writing every day about the challenges I've faced, which very nearly claimed my life, I've been on a secure psych ward twice, I've tried multiple antidepressants and mood stabilisers, seen many psychiatrists and received care in the community with crisis teams and home treatment teams. I'm very well appraised of the full gamut of mental health services which are available in the UK. I know exactly how people slip through the net and wind up dead through suicide.

One of the reasons I started writing was that I was inspired by a campaign called RUOK? which made me start thinking about technology solutions to allow us to easily check up on friends we're worried about. I developed a quick website and Twitter bot which would allow anybody to anonymously ping somebody who was at risk of suicide, and raise the alarm if they'd gone silent - like a heartbeat check. Through developing this idea, I decided that I myself needed some kind of heartbeat-like thing to alert concerned friends if I was in trouble. If I stop writing regularly, I have a huge amount of people who'd notice and talk to each other to check on my welfare. It was through my Twitter followers that the emergency services were brought to my door just in time to save my life, one year ago.

The irony of dying on #WorldSuicidePreventionDay was not lost on me. That I was saved is quite miraculous, but a testament to the ability of social media supporters to make a real and tangible positive difference in the lives of people suffering with depression and struggling with suicidal thoughts.

Only a couple of weeks ago I was feeling very low and I sent out a tweet which said I hated my life, and the response was so incredibly awesome and supportive that it completely changed my mood. I had been feeling very isolated, lonely and uncared for; unloved. The unexpected flood of messages I received at that low ebb was exactly what I needed.

It's important to note that I didn't phone any crisis services or friends when I attempted suicide. It's crucial to understand that many of those who successfully commit suicide aren't crying for help or otherwise seeking attention. I had every intention of dying, not being saved by anybody or talked out of it. This is why it's so important that we look out for each other, especially living in a day and age when we're highly connected online but increasingly isolated and lonely in our local communities.

If we're looking to prevent suicides, it's worth encouraging those who are struggling with suicidal thoughts to connect via social media, where hopefully there will be caring and supportive people to spot a suicide attempt and alert the emergency services, or otherwise intervene. One of my Twitter followers responded within seconds, sending me his telephone number and the telephone number of the Samaritans, but I thought it was too late as I'd already swallowed what should have been a fatal overdose. That rapid response saved my life.

We might become resigned to the idea that somebody intent on killing themselves is going to find a way, but I'm living proof that even a very well-planned pre-meditated suicide attempt, executed relatively flawlessly, can still be a salvageable situation if the alarm is raised quickly enough. When we're attuned to the suffering of people we care about, we can sometimes catch suicide attempts in the nick of time, and save lives - that's what happened to me, thanks to concerned followers around the world.

There is hope that we can prevent suicides.

Tags: #suicide #worldsuicidepreventionday

This is a story about hopelessness...

2017 was an annus horriblis like no other that I've experienced. I can't imagine as many issues conspiring to swamp me ever again. Despite being extremely mentally unwell, my rational analysis was correct: there was no hope of me escaping my dreadful circumstances.

There are many inescapable traps in life. Addictive drugs and medications, debts, social isolation, abandonment, stigma and suchlike exert such a powerful gravitational pull that no person - dumped by society - would ever be able to escape their fate without a miracle.

I don't believe in miracles.

That I had become hooked on prescription painkillers, sleeping pills and tranquillisers, due to nerve damage, kidney failure, lengthy hospitalisation and job loss, was something I had no hope of dealing with on my own, especially when then compounded by financial distress and having to leave my home city for the first job I could find, which didn't pay enough to deal with my financial woes. I wasn't even managing to tread water - I was drowning.

I'd had some help from crisis teams and home treatment teams - care in the community - but all they could do was bring me medication. My problems were more to do with hopelessness in the face of insurmountable odds. I was haemorrhaging cash and in danger of being evicted; losing everything. I was too sick to work. However, the home treatment team at least managed to force me to hand over some of my stockpile of prescription opiates, which I was planning to use for an overdose - that one small thing probably saved my life.

To expect me to put all my possessions into storage, move to a city I'd never foot in before, live in an apartment I'd never seen inside and work a demanding job, was too much pressure to place on a sick person in crisis. To expect me to deal with all my problems on my own and with inadequate support, was signing my death warrant. I was set up to fail.

I managed to withstand a few setbacks, such as a new relationship not working out. However, a second breakup - and the loss of the social group which came with it - was the straw that broke the camel's back. I knew I wouldn't have the energy to pick myself up and try again. I was too lonely and isolated. I was too vulnerable. I was to stressed and exhausted. I knew deep down that the numbers just didn't add up: I wasn't earning enough and I was working too hard. There was no escape. Suicide was the only option.

Of course, suicide was one of two options. I could have become homeless. I could have allowed myself to be abandoned by society and marginalised; demonised. I could have allowed myself to be ejected from the mainstream, never to be allowed to return because the stench of poverty would have seeped into my clothes and coated my skin. I could have accepted the labels which people were quick to slap on me: loser; unemployable; waste-of-space; unreliable; shady; untrustworthy. I could have lived out the rest of my days in a shop doorway, sleeping on a piece of cardboard in a dirty sleeping bag, begging.

I'm a realist. I'm pragmatic. I knew that I'd had my chances but they hadn't worked out, and I was highly unlikely to get any more. Time to die.

I got a pint glass from the kitchen and a box of white wine. I emptied out hundreds of strong opiate painkillers into a makeshift tumbler and tipped the capsules and tablets into my mouth, washing them down with alcohol. There was no hesitation; no regret; no self-doubt.

I set a countdown timer on my phone. I knew that the medications would hit my bloodstream in roughly 40 minutes time and I would soon begin to have seizures and lose consciousness. I presumed that the blood-plasma concentration levels of the medications would peak after 60 to 90 minutes and no amount of activated charcoal or gastric lavage would be sufficient to save my life. I thought that provided the alarm wasn't raised during that brief window, I would definitely die. I'd calculated the lethal dosages and I'd amplified the effects by combining with alcohol.

When the timer went off I was feeling very dizzy and disoriented, but I was able to find my phone and send 3 tweets. An old schoolfriend saw one of my tweets and replied. I replied back:

"I'm sorry Ben. I was looking forward for seeing you in November"

Those were my last words.

We lead lives of quiet desperation and we've been scattered to the four corners of the earth. I have school-friends from Oxford and Dorset, but I've spent most of my working life in London. What was I doing in Manchester? There were no friends or family anywhere for hundreds of miles. I'm cared for by people all over the world, but what can anybody do when we're only connected through cyberspace?

I thought nobody who cared about me knew where I lived.

Online friends raised the alarm. Emergency services got to me and took me to hospital in enough time to save me. I regained consciousness in intensive care on life support. It's quite miraculous that I'm alive today, writing this - the prognosis was not good at all.

The things which pushed me to suicide had eminently practical solutions: housing, employment, finances, social, intimate. There was no reason I had to die, except for the way that our society has become an "every man for himself" barbaric struggle. Our communities have collapsed and we live lives of isolated quiet desperation, where we don't feel like we have the time, the money, the energy, the space, the resources or other very practical things, in order to help the needy.

In the absence of a stable and secure life in the so-called "real world" I've maintained relationships which aren't disrupted by moving around geographically. I maintain relationships which follow-the-sun: I talk to people in all different timezones at different times of the day. My online presence has allowed me to keep a toe-hold in the world of the living, thanks to others' willingness to be part of an online community too.

My "real world" life is not much different today than how it was a year ago, but my situation is much improved. The suicide attempt brought the help I needed - albeit seemingly too late - and I've been able to break free from addictive prescription medications, stabilise my mental health and get myself into a financial situation where there's light at the end of the tunnel. I'm able to work, sleep, eat and generally function with independence - a life which is mostly tolerable. My lack of "real world" social life and romantic relationship is made more bearable by the vast amount of care and support I receive from my many friends who I'm in regular contact with online.

Things are far from perfect, but they're vastly improved versus a year ago, and at least I feel like I've got a fighting chance. I at least have the dignity of being able to work my way through recovery and get back on my feet.

To those who took an interest during that fateful night of September 9, 2017 - thank you.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about quality of life...

Two years ago, on this day, I was writing about how depressed I was. I was researching into how depressed people rated their quality of life - I found out that it was 70% lower than happy healthy normal people. At the time I was trapped in a job which I hated. I had serious doubts about my skills and experience, so I'd taken some work which I knew I could do with my eyes closed, but I was bored out of my mind.

I hypothesised that my quality of life wasn't going to improve until I retired, because I couldn't stand my job but I couldn't imagine being able to get another one that was any better. My job was the reason why I was so depressed, anxious, bored, demotivated and miserable, and the only alternative was to be a penniless writer, which would bring its own problems... not least how to save up enough money to be able to afford to retire.

This got me thinking about retirement.

I presume that the first few years of retirement are excellent, because old age and age-related health problems haven't started to have a major impact on quality of life. Modern medicine, safer working conditions, good diet, better air quality and a multitude of other things have improved massively for the baby-boomer generation, and those retirees will live much longer than their parents. For my generation and people younger than me, we've worked longer hours, commuted further, had far more financial insecurity, job insecurity and housing insecurity, and we have no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow - the retirement age keeps getting older and older and the prospect of an impoverished old age seems increasingly likely. Retirement looks like it's not something worth even daring to dream about.

I started thinking about how good retirement would be anyway - sour grapes perhaps - what with the inevitable demise of my health. It seems unlikely that I'm going to live beyond 85 years old, being a man.

With partial deafness, partial blindness, mild incontinence, diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, liver disease, kidney problems, back problems, joint problems and a whole host of other things I might expect to affect me in old age, exacerbated by decades of miserable office work, it seems unlikely that I'd be lucky enough to enjoy even 50% of the quality of life in my eighties as I enjoy in my sixties.

These are very conservative estimates of course. I could drop dead at age 70.

With all those things considered, I then started to do the calculations to work out whether it was worth shackling myself to a miserable job or not. I started to calculate if it was worth being miserable and depressed today, in the hope of a better life if and when I retire. My conclusion was simple: NO.

As you can see from the graphic above, I can increase my quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) by a maximum of 30 points if I live for today, or a maximum of 30 points if I live for retirement. Obviously if I was to die at age 80, I'll only have benefitted by 24 points. If I was to die at 75, I'll only have benefitted by 17 points. If I was to die at 70, I'll only benefit by 9 points.

So, I might as well plan on the pessimistic assumption that I'll die early. In fact, I can at least guarantee when I'll die, because I always have the option of committing suicide. In fact, it seems sensible to plan for the day I commit suicide instead of the day I die, because old age, sickness and infirmity seems like an undesirable fate. Why would I be miserable today, so I can spend more years as a geriatric, waiting to die?

I'm hoping to get myself into a strong position by the time I'm 40 so that I can exploit the fact that I haven't rutted and spawned offspring like a mindless beast, and I'm therefore free from any responsibility for brats I brought into existence. Soon, I won't need to shackle myself to miserable boring bullshit office jobs which I hate, because I'll have recovered my financial security and stability, such that I'm free to do what I want without a guilty conscience - I won't owe anything to anybody, and I won't be running away from any responsibilities.

By the spring next year, I should be feeling quite wealthy again, and much more free to be able to dare to dream. Perhaps I'll travel. Perhaps I'll write. Perhaps I'll create art. I can pretty much do whatever I want, once I've finally dealt with all the consequences of divorce which caused my life to collapse. It's hard on a man, losing everything - it nearly cost me my life.

It's been so hard getting to where I am today, and I can't believe there are still so many months before I get back to a truly safe and secure position. I can't believe it's taken so long and it's been so difficult. Perhaps that's why so many men commit suicide. Perhaps that's why rip-off merchants have run off with so much of my money. It's hard to do things right. I've always tried to do things the right way.

I'm now at the point where I've worked too hard for too long to see the chance of breaking free get away from me. I really think I'll just kill myself right now if there are any major setbacks, because I've been trying so hard to overcome a heap of problems and I've got nothing left to give. I deserve a break. I deserve things to pan out for me.

It'll soon be my turn to start enjoying life and the fruits of my labour; the payoff for my struggle through adversity; the rewards for my ingenuity and sheer determination to fix problems. I've overcome terrible obstacles and put up with so much suffering and I've done the miserable work that nobody else would do, because it's awful. Now I deserve to be like those spoiled brats who've been allowed to do whatever the fuck they want - follow their dreams - because they have doting indulgent parents. Maybe I'll be a student. Maybe I'll have a gap year. Maybe I'll take a dead-end job with no career prospects, because it's rewarding. Whatever. I can do whatever I want... soon.

It's been a slog. I can't take much more slog.

Tags: #career #depression #suicide #parents #childhood

This is a story about the money multiplier...

Let us imagine for a moment that I manage to obtain a banking license and start a brand new bank, but I don't have any money. In this hypothetical example you want to buy a house valued at £100,000 - for the sake of easy maths - and you have a £10,000 deposit. Further, let us imagine that there are lots of people who would be glad to take out personal loans, overdrafts, credit cards and other kinds of borrowing, and pay high rates of interest. Let us set the central bank lending rate at 0.5%, the mortgage rate at 5% and the unsecured lending rate at 20%. With me so far?

What I seek to prove to you is how capitalism is rigged so that those who control the money in the economy - the bankers and other capitalists - can make as much money as they want and not work at all, while the rest of us pay double. We pay with everything we earn and we pay again because we pay with our time and labour, which all ends up in the pockets of the capitalists.

Here's how it works.

You go to your bank with your £10,000 deposit. You give the bank your hard-earned cash.

Then, here comes the magic trick.

Your £10,000 is a liability on the bank's balance sheet. That is to say, if you were to deposit £10,000 the bank would be liable to pay you back as and when you demanded to have your money. However, the banks can do a little trick to turn a liability into an asset: It's called the money multiplier.

Banks only need to keep about 5% - or less - of the money that's deposited with them. So the bank can lend out £9,500 of your £10,000.

Then what happens?

Well, that £9,500 comes back into the bank in the form of a deposit. Let's say that our bank is paying a very generous 0.25% interest on their deposits. So, the bank has a £10,000 liability on one side of its balance sheet and a £9,500 asset - in the form of a loan - on the other side of its balance sheet, plus £500 in its reserve account. The loan brings in interest of 20% and the deposit attracts interest at 0.25%. The net monthly income for the bank is therefore £158.33 and the net monthly cost of interest payments is £19.79, yielding a very healthy £138.54 of profit every month for doing nothing.

So that's almost £140 profit every single month - £1,662 per annum - for doing absolutely nothing! But the best part is that it doesn't end there.

Because the bank now has a deposit of £9,500 it can now lend 95% of that. The bank can lend £9,025, making sure it keeps 5% in its reserves. The bank then has assets of £18,525, liabilities of £19,500 and reserves of £975. Somehow £18,525 has appeared out of nowhere.

The two loans yield £3,705 a year, while the deposits only attract interest of £463, giving a net annual profit of £3,242.

Three thousand quid a year for doing nothing!!

Yes.

That's right.

But it doesn't end there.

The bank keeps on lending money that it doesn't have.

A loan of £8,574, a loan of £8,145, a loan of £7,737, a loan of £7,351, a loan of £6,983... and so on.

Eventually, the bank has made loans of nearly £190,000 from an initial deposit of only £10,000. The bank also has deposits of almost £200,000, but these attract very little interest. The annual interest payable on the loans is £38,000 and the interest payable on the deposits is only £5,000, so the bank has an annual profit of £33,000 for doing nothing.

Now what?

Well that person still wants to buy that house so the bank is going to need some money. Where's it going to get the money? Well, no problem - it will borrow it from the central bank.

The central bank will want some collateral as security against the loan, but that's no problem because the bank has assets of almost £190,000 worth of loans bringing in £38,000 of anuual income, so it's clearly a creditworthy institution. The central bank is happy to lend the bank £90,000 at interest of 0.5%. The bank can then use that money to buy the house, which it adds to its balance sheet as an asset.

Now the bank owns a loan book of £190,000 worth of loans, cash reserves of almost £10,000 and a house valued at £100,000. It's very important to note that the person who wanted to buy the house does not own the house - it's the bank's property!

The bank now signs a mortgage contract with the house buyer for 25 years at 5% annual interest for a loan of £90,000. This loan will yield £4,500 per annum in interest payments for the bank, but it only costs the bank £450 a year in interest which it has to pay to the central bank, netting it a profit of £4,050 per annum, in addition to the £33,000 of other profit it makes from its loan book.

Now the bank is making a total annual profit of £37,050 and they are doing nothing.

Nothing.

Meanwhile, the person who bought the house needs to earn at least £6,312 a year to pay their mortgage. The person who bought the house no longer has the £10,000 they saved up. The person who bought the house has not only handed over their savings and committed themselves to having to pay a large amount of money every month... now they have to go and get a job from the capitalists or else they're going to be homeless! Remember, the bank owns the house, not the person who pays the mortgage - the witless idiot is now enslaved by capitalism.

Also, there are more than 100 people who took out loans, credit cards, overdrafts, store cards and other forms of unsecured personal debt, who now have to work hard to pay off the loans at 20% interest. People have become indebted by an additional £190,000 because one person wanted to buy a house, but they didn't realise they were going to get conned along with the rest of working-class society.

The magic trick that gets used by the banks is called fractional-reserve banking, which it allows a very small group of capitalists who have a banking license to economically enslave the whole of society in debt-based indentured servitude.

When loans are necessary to purchase basic survival needs - such as shelter - then there's no other word for it except for slavery. Shelter is not a luxury. Shelter is not an optional nice-to-have.

Insecurity about our shelter drives us into the open arms of the exploitative capitalists, who benefit doubly, because they earn money from us in the form of interest on loans and mortgages, and they have us right where they want us as an insecure workforce who desperately need to keep our regular income lest we be evicted and have our homes repossessed. The workers own nothing and the capitalists own everything. The rentier class have all of the wealth and do none of the work. Capitalism is the greatest crime ever perpetrated on humanity.

I hope you've been able to follow along the basic maths, and you can see how rigged the game is. It's quite simple to explain this horrific scam.

Tags: #capitalism #banking

This is a story about secret identities and alter egos...

I'm Nick Grant and these are my glasses, which are my cunning and infallible disguise to protect my real identity. It would be a disaster if anybody found out my real name - Nick Grant - because this blog is pretty unflinchingly honest and contains a lot of very unflattering things about me. I'm pretty damn exposed, hence why I wear my disguise.

Today I'm celebrating 3 years of blogging. I've been writing every day for 3 whole years, with only a few gaps due to sickness and near-catastrophic events in my personal life, which have threatened to see me bankrupt, evicted, homeless, penniless and destitute. To have kept writing regularly throughout all the ups and downs of the past 3 years is a huge achievement.

To date, I've written and published 1,013,091 words in that 3-year period.

The last 36 months could be summarised thus:

• September 2015: working for HSBC, living in a hotel, dating a BBC journalist. Rent an apartment on the River Thames.
• October 2015: working for HSBC. Suicidally depressed. Hospitalised. Fly to San Francisco.
• November 2015: fly back to the UK and deliberately get sacked from HSBC. Dating a PA to one of the directors of a major investment bank. Meet my guardian angel.
• December 2015: protesting against bombing Syria. Sober for 100 consecutive days. Relapse back into abuse of legal stimulants and benzodiazepines.
• January 2016: self harm and drug abuse. Start drinking again. Destroy my bed.
• February 2016: abuse of sleeping pills and tranquillisers
• March 2016: poly-drug abuse, combining legal highs and medications
• April 2016: holiday to Southend with my guardian angel. Start dating again
• May 2016: working for undisclosed major multinational organisation, with 660,000 employees worldwide. Replace destroyed bed.
• June 2016: working. Suicidal. Bored.
• July 2016: holiday to Fuerteventura for my birthday with my guardian angel.
• August 2016: working. Suicidal. Bored.
• September 2016: project cancelled. Meet love of my life. Minor relapse. Lies. Antidepressants and tranquillisers.
• October 2016: in love. Mini-break to the New Forest. Weaning myself off tranquillisers.
• November 2016: in love. Drinking a lot. Writing my first novel.
• December 2016. in love. Christmas with her family. Eating and drinking a lot.
• January 2017: DVT and kidney failure. Hospital and dialysis. Working for Lloyds Banking Group. Neuropathic pain from nerve damage. Taking tramadol, codeine, dihydrocodeine and pregabalin for the pain. Abusing large amounts of Valium and Xanax. Lose contract
• February 2017: fully-blown supercrack relapse. Completely addicted to prescription opiates.
• March 2017: supercrack. Abusing sleeping pills and tranquillisers. Quitting prescription opiate painkillers. Drinking. Still in love.
• April 2017: supercrack. Still in love.
• May 2017: attempting to quit supercrack by staying at girlfriend's and taking dextroamphetamine. Not succeeding
• June 2017: drug and insomnia-induced mania, paranoia and general insanity. Break up with love of my life. Regret
• July 2017: run out of money. Get a job in Manchester. Put all my stuff into storage. Leave London. Fling with girl from work.
• August 2017: working for a startup in Manchester. Dating a different girl. Still physically addicted to painkillers, tranquillisers and sleeping pills.
• September 2017: breakup. Suicide attempt. Hospitalised. Sectioned. Locked up on psych ward.
• October 2017: move to Wales.
• November 2017: writing my second novel.
• December 2017: working for undisclosed bank in Warsaw and London.
• January 2018: working for same undisclosed bank in London. Dating a Welsh girl
• February 2018: bank. London. Girl.
• March 2018: working for undisclosed government organisation. Rent an apartment in Wales.
• April 2018: successfully quit all drugs and medications. Job, girlfriend and apartment all in Wales and very close.
• May 2018: relapse. Breakup.
• June 2018: government project finished. Mini-break to Faro, Portugal to see old friend.
• July 2018: working for another undisclosed government organisation. Living in a hotel.
• August 2018: government. Hotel. Single. Depressed.
• September 2018: still working for same government organisation. Dating again.

By my calculations, 27 out of 36 months have been relatively OK, but 9 months in the past 3 years I've been a complete and utter train-wreck. The damage that's been done in that quarter of the year where I've been struggling with addiction, has been enough to completely screw up my life the rest of the time, but not quite bad enough to lead to me becoming unemployable, bankrupt and homeless - I always find a way to bounce back.

Somehow I've managed to fit 5 serious girlfriends and 5 major IT projects into the madness of my day-to-day existence, as well as 3 hospitalisations for major medical emergencies, being sectioned, two psych wards, an arrest, two evictions, moving 5 times, 6 cities, 5 countries, 13 powerful prescription medications, 5 street drugs, 121 consecutive days sober, 56 consecutive days sober, 799 blog posts, 1 million words, 14 thousand Twitter followers and a couple of hundred thousand pounds... and all I've got to show for it is this poxy blog.

The story of Nick Grant and his ups and downs might be a bit repetitive, but I'm sure it's not boring. I would argue that it's pretty remarkable that I'm still alive and kicking, and able to string a sentence together. It's remarkable that I'm reasonably mentally stable and I'm working full time on quite an important project. It's remarkable that my colleagues don't suspect a thing. It's remarkable that I haven't made myself unemployable or otherwise ended up excluded from mainstream society. It's remarkable that I'm unmedicated and yet quite functional and productive.

Along the way, I managed to lose my original pair of glasses, but I had a new identical pair delivered today, which I'm wearing now. I had no idea when my replacement glasses would be delivered, because they were being hand made to order, so I find it deliciously wonderful that they were delivered on the day I'm celebrating the 3-year anniversary of starting this blog.

When I think back to my very first blog post 3 years ago - Platform 9.75 - it's amazing to reflect on the journey I've been on and marvel at how effectively my daily writing habit has functioned as a stabilising influence. I very much doubt I'd have been able to recover and continue my journey without the huge amount of help and support it's brought me. I feel really proud of what I've achieved, which gives me some all-important self-esteem in the times when I need it most. I'm sure I'd have killed myself long ago if it wasn't for the people who've engaged with me and what I write, and encouraged me to keep going. I feel loved and cared for even during some very dark and dismal days.

Obviously what I've written is not particularly palatable or compatible with dating and my professional life, but they'll never be able to find me - Nick Grant - because I've been so careful to disguise my identity and make sure that nobody could just Google me and find out all my closely guarded secrets. Nobody will ever be able to make the connection.

My next objective is to get through September 9th - the anniversary of my most serious suicide attempt - without incident. I plan on phoning a couple of the people who managed to get the emergency services to rescue me in the nick of time, to thank them for saving my life.

Tags: #writing #secrecy #privacy #nickgrant #socialmedia #blogging #career #addiction #bipolar #hospital #homeless #alcohol #drugs #sex #relationships #london #startup

This is a story about school dinners...

I went out for dinner and drinks with my colleagues. It was very good to socialise. I enjoyed what I ate, what I drank and the company.

It's late, I'm drunk and I have to get up early in the morning.

I'm not going to write much tonight.

Tags: #career #colleagues #food #social

This is a story about diminishing anxiety levels...

It's very hard to be objective about my circumstances. When I'm bored it feels like I've never been so bored in my whole entire life and I can't stand my job - I feel like I'm going to walk out of the office and never go back. When I'm anxious it feels like I've never had such dreadful problems to deal with and it's more than I can stand. When time is passing slowly it feels like it's taking an eternity to reach my goals, and it feels impossible that I'll be able to last the months and years required to get back on my feet.

Clearly, my perceptions are not 100% correct.

When I think back to January and February at the start of this year, I was a lot more bored. I started taking more and more days off sick. I was turning up very late for work and struggling a very great deal. When I think back to the summer of 2016 I was horrendously bored and I would spend a lot of my waking hours thinking about committing suicide.

When I think back to October and November last year, I was convinced I was going to go bankrupt. I was convinced that I wasn't able to work. The loose ends in my life were unbearably awful to deal with - even simple basic little things were driving my anxiety levels beyond what I could tolerate. When a friend helped me to get some work, I didn't think I'd be able to do it - I didn't feel capable or competent.

When I think back to March I was convinced I was going to fail security clearance. I was convinced I wouldn't pass credit checks and tenancy checks to be able to rent an apartment. I was overwhelmed by the stress of maxing out my credit and spending every penny I had to buy a car and rent a place to live. I didn't think that my cashflow would stretch quite far enough.

In reality, when I look back over the past 5 years there has been an iterative improvement since my divorce. Every year I've had problems with my finances and my mental health, and every year I've become far more leveraged, but every year I learn, adapt and approach things slightly differently. Every year, I come slightly closer to pulling out all my best tricks and linking everything together to reach escape velocity.

In 2013 I started a company. Every year since then I've followed the same pattern: I'm absolutely screwed from December to the spring, then I start getting my act together. My plan is always the same: earn a six-figure income doing consultancy and get back to a position of financial security. It's a simple plan.

I'm very worried that I'm going to fall into one of the very many pitfalls which have scuppered me in previous years. I'm hyper-sensitive to any warning signs which might indicate that I'm going to fall into the bad pattern which has kept me in this seemingly never-ending cycle. I try to consider everything that's ever gone wrong in the past and avoid repeating those mistakes.

The biggest positive differences which I'm aware of at the moment, are that I'm not paralysed by anxiety - thinking that everything's going to go wrong and unable to stay on top of things - and I'm not having a lot of suicidal thoughts. I'm very impatient, frustrated and quite bored a lot of the time, but I'm nowhere near as suicidal as I've been in recent years. Some years I haven't been very suicidal, but that's been because I've been manic - in 2014 and 2015 I was very busy and working very hard, so I wasn't at all bored, but I couldn't see that disaster was looming. Looking back at my manic behaviour, it wasn't at all compatible with office life and it seems obvious now that I was on borrowed time.

It concerns me that mania might return and I'll start acting strangely and being a pain in the ass again. It concerns me that depression and anxiety might lay me low and cause me to have to take time off work and to be late. However, that I'm able to consider these risks and force myself to get out of bed, or to hold my tongue when I'm about to shoot my mouth off, suggests that I'm in a bit more control for once. Those times I went manic in the office, we need to consider how much pressure I was under at work and in my personal life - I was virtually penniless and homeless.

I'm still a long way from financial security and I feel quite depressed about that, but I'm using very conservative accounting to estimate my cashflow. When I check my bank balances I'm always pleasantly surprised, not disappointed.

I do a lot of moaning but I'm slowly inching my way forward. The day when I'm debt free and have a comfortable cushion of savings again is getting closer. The day when I can quit my job and find something more challenging and rewarding is gradually approaching, but my days in the office are also gradually improving - some days I even imagine that I might actually choose to stay longer in the job because it's not so bad sometimes.

I need to be careful not to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire. Yes, it's good to keep moving and keep life exciting, interesting, novel and new, but it's also exhausting and unbelievably stressful. There's a lot to be said for the improvements I'm feeling in my mental health stability and my financial position, which have come about because I've decided to be disciplined and force myself to do things I don't like doing very much. My anxiety levels and suicidal thoughts are diminishing quite nicely.

This all sounds very positive, but there are huge challenges ahead. I need to cut down my drinking, eat less, exercise more, make more friends locally, start a relationship *AND* keep everything else I've been doing ticking over in its well-established routine.

I've reached the point where I feel like I'm good at my job again. I feel needed and wanted at work - people seek me out and ask my opinion. I feel like I add value. I feel secure.

My finances are in good enough shape, such that I'm no longer worried about money.

My routine isn't the best but it does the job. It's bearable.

I like my apartment.

Looking for love isn't great, especially when I'm feeling overweight and unfit. I feel like my skin is pale and pasty. I feel old. I feel unattractive. I haven't had a shag in 4 months and I'm feeling like my bedroom skills might have gone to rack and ruin.

I've done all the calculations and I need to work my ass off until at least spring time next year if I want to well and truly turn my life around. It won't be as horrible to get through the next 6 to 9 months as it was to get through some recent awfulness, so it sounds eminently achievable, but it doesn't feel like I'm living for much other than the slow and steady improvement to my overall financial position. Counting beans is nothing to get excited or motivated about, especially when coupled with the prospect of drinking less, eating less and exercising more - it sounds pretty miserable.

Miserable and boring it might be, but it's hard to argue with the facts. My life is considerably better today than it's been for a long time. I need to remind myself of the facts once in a while.

Tags: #career #debt

This is a story about working during the summer...

My drive to work this morning was dreadful, despite leaving at the crack of dawn. The roads are clogged again as the little darling children get taxied to school in gigantic 4x4s. There's a notable change in attitude of people now that the new term has started. My colleagues are much more in work mode than holiday mode. The mood is very different.

This summer has been the 4th consecutive year where I've had to work and not take any holiday.

To be honest, I'm really glad the school holidays are over.

I want to visit some friends in Prague, but I didn't want to travel during August, because the airports would have been rammed with holidaymakers. I want to visit friends in Ireland, but it makes more sense to wait until the madness of the school holidays is done and dusted. August is a dreadful month to travel anywhere and do anything, because everywhere's teeming with tourists.

I'm utterly exhausted, but at least I have a huge advantage compared with previous years. 2016 was relatively settled and I had been earning good money for several months. I had a very good chance of getting back on my feet in 2016, but the project I was working on was terminated unexpectedly early. In 2015 and 2017 I had the stress, exhaustion and financial pressures associated with moving house. In 2015 I had to pay thousands and thousands in rent, deposit and letting agent fees. In 2017 I had to put all my stuff into storage and move to Manchester. At least all I have to do this year is keep up my well-established routine.

Seemingly "little" things can have an enormously draining and exhausting effect, because they're very stressful. Travelling back and forth from Wales to London and staying in lots of different AirBnBs took a lot of time, planning, money and energy, at a time when I had very little spare cash. Not having my own place - an oasis of calm - to return to after a week working in the City meant that I was constantly uneasy and unsettled. The demands of being a guest in somebody's home shouldn't be underestimated, if you're similar to me in that you feel like you need to live small, neat, tidy and provide some 'value' to your hosts. It's very different being in your own home, versus being a guest in an AirBnB or sofa-surfing with friends, even if you have 'your own' room.

I've tried to engineer my life to give myself the greatest chance of success. I stay in the same hotel every week and I have an identical room. I eat in the same gastropub. I wear the same shirts on the same days. I pack the same things in my bag. There's a system and a routine which makes things less stressful and unsettling. I still don't sleep as well as I would in my own bed, because of the unpredictable noises of other guests, although I'm very glad that the hotel is of high enough quality that loud snorers - and there are so many - are not audible enough to make sleep impossible, through the sound-insulated walls. I've chosen a hotel which mostly accommodates business travellers like me, so I don't have the din of a family of 5 all cramped into one room, opening and closing the door and shouting in the corridor for hours every morning and evening.

I'm not one of your "children should be seen and not heard" miserable mean-spirited people, but I have little time and patience for the imposition of other people's lifestyle choices which negatively impact me. I don't mind kids in restaurants and bars. However, I've made a very conscious effort to carefully plan parenthood, so it's not fair that I should have my beauty sleep impacted as if I was simply one of the herd of rutting beasts, mindlessly spawning brats into the overcrowded world.

Most employed people think that the unemployed should get jobs, simply because they have to get up early and go to work, so they can't abide anybody who's not suffering the same miserable slog of the rat race. Perhaps it's like that with me and the holidays - I'm upset that I've had to work all summer without a holiday, so I somewhat begrudge people who've had lots of time off during July and August. Maybe I'm more bitter and resentful than I'm fully aware of.

I'm not going to dwell on my sense of being hard-done-by, because I'm starting to get myself into a position where I have enough financial security and employment security, as well as the freedom of being unencumbered by children, to be able to do pretty much whatever I want. I'm starting to regain my wealth, which means soon I'll be able to have some very luxurious holidays, I hope.

It helps having my colleagues in more of a work-mode. The attitude change is important. I need to be busy. I can't stand being bored.

It's very cool that I've made it to this point and my life is much more stable and secure than it's been in the past, and commensurately my mental health is much improved. Even in 2016 - which I think of as a good year - I was desperately suicidally depressed and struggling a lot more, I think.

I've definitely managed to get myself out of the danger zone yet again, which I'm very good at doing, but my luck usually runs out and I'm quickly plunged back into the red. At least I have critical pieces of the puzzle in place this year - car, apartment, job, cash - and I've got my routine well established. Provided I can keep turning the pedals then I should be able to cement my position. That I was able to withstand an almost disastrous May and June with little lasting ill effects, was a really good test and proof that my recovery is starting to be a little more resilient to life's slings and arrows.

I feel like I'm almost on a level playing field with my peers now - the fun and frolics of the summer are behind them and we all have months of miserable hard work stretching ahead of us. It feels better to be "in it together" rather than jealous of my colleagues jetting off on their holidays. In fact, I even have a slight advantage because I can take my holidays whenever I want - I'm not bound to the school holidays.

It might seem like schadenfreude but I don't care.

Tags: #holiday