Nick Grant

This is a story about income...

Three strikes and you're out, is standard practice, in the workplace. I believe, for regular salaried employees, they are allowed a certain number of verbal warnings, written warnings, and then they can be fired, without fear of legal repercussions. Obviously the process of getting rid of a bad employee is fraught with difficulties, if you want to avoid employment tribunals, unfair constructive dismissal lawsuits and other such comeback, but generally speaking, if somebody is frequently reprimanded for unacceptable conduct in the workplace, they will find themselves booted fired from their job, eventually.

There are acts of gross misconduct, gross negligence, sexual misconduct, workplace bullying, discrimination on the grounds of a protected characteristic, conviction for a crime, and other extreme circumstances which are grounds for immediate dismissal, but those are not the topic of this essay.

Most people are grateful to have a job. Most people are grateful for their salary. Most people need their salary to pay their mortgage, bills and to buy food, not to mention school uniforms for their spawn, petrol to put in the car to drive their progeny to school in a massive gas-guzzling 4x4, and regular delivery of cotton wool in which to wrap their precious darlings in... and other associated costs of being a fully-paid-up card-carrying member of the "I'm a mindless animal, no different from a slug or a wasp" club.

Yes, for most people, the worry about losing their job is second only to their worry about their child being harmed or killed.

That's normal. That's been the same for so long, that we have started to believe that it's natural and perhaps even a law of the universe which cannot be defied, like the speed of light.

I have some shocking news for you: we don't need jobs, mortgages, money, exams, certificates, qualifications. If, as you all have demonstrated en masse, your only intention is procreation, then your car hire-purchase of an expensive shiny new 4x4, which you lovingly wash every Sunday, looks ludicrously absurd. "But I need that car to drive the kids to school, and to get to work" you protest. No. You do not need to take your kids to school. You do not need to go to work. "But if my kids don't go to school they won't do exams and get qualifications so they can get a job". Correct... you're just repeating what I just said: you do not need to take your kids to school. "But how will they get jobs?". They don't need jobs. "I need a job. I will lose my job if I don't go to work. I need to go to work to get money, to pay my mortgage". No. None of this is necessary.

You have been indoctrinated into a weird cult, where a person gets a job as a baker, so that they can get paid a salary, and use the money to purchase a slice of one of the loaves of bread that they baked.

Are you fucking insane?

"But I don't know how to build a house! I don't know how to harvest wheat!" you wail.

Well, guess what, if you weren't so fucking busy with your mortgage-car-loan-drive-kids-to-school-for-pointless-exams-going-to-pointless-job laughable existence, you'd have plenty of time to learn how to build a house, although you already have a house so that seems pretty pointless. You'll be able to learn how to harvest wheat... less than 1% of the population is involved in agricuture: 1 person can feed 1,000, so the labour is not going to be difficult or back-breaking, escpecially with agricultural mechanisation.

But.

You cannot comprehend any other way of life than your current absurd one..

You have been indoctrinated into the weird cult, so successfully, that you can't imagine any other way of life, other than the miserable merry-go-round, which condemns your children to abysmal living standards; depression, suicide, poverty. Your refusal to open your eyes and see that we are heading in the wrong direction is condeming your children and grandchildren to a dystopian nightmare; a horrendously horrible life of suffering, pain and discomfort.

The point of my essay is this: I don't need your fucking job, OK?

I want to help people. I want to do useful stuff. I want to make a valuable contribution. I want to work hard, for the betterment of human society. I really really really really want to have the opportunity to use my skills and experience, to make the world a better place.

I'm bored and unchallenged and under-utilised and, frankly, I can't fucking stand it when I see idiotic shit happening, and I'm not allowed to go and help out; to go and fix things. All I want to do is build brilliant useful stuff and I fucking hate it, when because of organisational political bullshit, I'm not allowed to go and put my skills to use, where they would be most usefully employed.

Okay, I'm an arrogant arsehole, but I'm the arrogant arsehole who's made massive contributions to absolutely massive flagship projects for global organisations on many occasions. I'm not yelling "listen to me; do what I tell you to do, immediately"... I'm yelling "what the fuck are you doing, not using my extremely expensive and valuable talents, which I am desperate to give to whoever needs them the most". I'm yelling "I am extremely competent and capable and productive... what the fuck are you doing, wasting my valuable time, having me sitting around bored all the fucking time?".

I don't need your fucking job. I don't need your fucking money. I have a plan: if my contract is terminated, I'll just kill myself, because I am absolutely fucking sick of corporate organisational bullshit; I am absolutely fucking sick of the rat race, where the rats are 'just about managing' and everything is a colossal clusterfuck cock-up, and the fucking 'talent' are kept in the dusty trophy cabinet, untouched.

Yeah it's big-headed. WHY THE FUCK WOULDN'T IT BE? LOOK AT THE FUCKING EVIDENCE.

On the flip side, I'm sorry that I take out my frustration on people, sometimes. I'm sorry that I 'lose the plot' and go on big rants, in an environment which is supposed to be purely professional, but there's FUCK ALL professional about massive incompetence. There's FUCK ALL professional about massive FAILURE. I didn't go into a profession to be a FUCKING FAILURE, OK? I want to work on projects which are massive SUCCESSES, and the way I make that happen, is that I work REALLY FUCKING HARD on whatever is on fire.

So, I've taken out my frustration on various unfortunate parts of the organisation, which have felt the sharp end of my tongue, and that will probably end up with my contract being terminated early. FINE. FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING MORONS. You don't need my help to fuck everything up, but you DO need my help to make things a success... so please understand that I'm REALLY REALLY SORRY that my frustrations have boiled over and I've been raging and ranting. PLEASE understand that I'm really sorry, and I'm doing everything in my power to fix that.

Also.

However, also.

Please understand, that I am BEGGING YOU for the opportunity to help make things a success. I'm not applying for a role, with a committee to decide on whether I'm the right man for the job, in the hope of having my job description changed, and some pointless fucking announcement from a waste-of-space middle manager. What I'm basically saying is: STUFF IS ON FIRE... LET ME PUT THOSE FIRES OUT. What I'm basically sayings is: YOU'VE ALMOST RUN OUT OF TIME... LET ME CATCH YOU UP.

It doesn't seem like an unreasonable request, to be begging to save your fucking project from being an utter shitshow.

And yes, I know "utter shitshow" is not tactful and diplomatic language, but maybe ALLOW ME TO STOP THE SHITSHOW and then I'll tone down my language.

On a personal level, everyone I work with is really nice and the project is really cool. But, seriously, I'M HERE TO FUCKING HELP.

I know that going mental at everyone could be [wrongly] dismissed as 'unhelpful' but somebody has to be Cassandra here. Also, I'm bringing you SOLUTIONS not PROBLEMS.

It's not personal. I'm not attacking the individuals. The problem is endemic in all large organisations. It's me who's the weirdo; the misfit. It's easier to get rid of me, and carry on with the shitshow, than to accept my help.

For my side of the bargain, I'll stop going apeshit when I'm no longer bored shitless, forced to watch an enormous about of stuff being horrendously botched, but not allowed to get involved and sort things out. When I'm busy fixing stuff, I'm happy, content, and I have no time or inclination to explode with frustration and annoyance, at the shitshow all around me, because I'm working as hard as I can to turn things around.

Just, please, for the love of god, let me do what I'm good at.

On a personal note, I've found out that people have taken things I've written very personally. It's not personal. I know everyone is working hard. I know everyone is stressed. All I can say is, that I'm very sorry; I'm full of remorse that upset was caused. But, please let me help you. I can't excuse the fact I upset you, but I can assure you that if you let me help you then my tendency towards screaming "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS UTTER HORSE-SHIT?" is somewhat lessened... although such outbursts are never directed at any individuals.

This probably won't make for great reading, but what does it matter? The choices are simple: either I'm able to occupy myself productively, sorting out problems, or I'm booted out of the door, and my plans to commit suicide arrive a little sooner than expected. I'VE GOT NOTHING TO LOSE. I WAS GOING TO KILL MYSELF ANYWAY.

Tags: #suicide #work #career

This is a story about social isolation...

In this age of social media, it sometimes feels like we've got more friends than ever, given that it's easier to meet new people online, and to maintain some degree of friendship over any distance, remotely.

However.

There are a set of tests, which I hope you would agree with, which establish your true friends, from the people who you were once 'kinda' friends with, but aren't friends with anymore:

• Does your friend visit you, in person?
• Do you speak to your friend, on the phone or via video chat?
• Are those visits and/or chats regular?
• Would your friend visit you if you were in hospital?
• Would your friend let you sleep on their couch, or in their spare room?
• Would your friend help you move house?
• Would your friend feed your pet, in an emergency?
• Would your friend lend you £1,000... even if they had to borrow it?
• Would your friend testify to your good character, in a court of law?
• If you went missing, for 4 or 5 days, would your friend notice?
• If you phoned up your friend, in a desperate situation, would they go out of their way to help?
• Would your friend rat you out?
• Could your friend's opinion of you be changed, almost instantly, by one-side [another person's side] of a story?

Turns out that it's a longer list than I thought it would be, but I think the questions are all important ones, in order to find out who your true friends are.

Of course, we might say that for most of this, it'd be the job of family to provide support and unconditional love, which meets the conditions of many of those things on the list. I've got one thing to say to that: fuck you, you cunt. We don't all have wealthy, kind, caring families around us. For some of us, our friends are our family. For some of us, there's nobody to fall back on; nobody looking after us.

This is not an attempt to guilt-trip any friends. This is not a veiled criticism. It's just a fact, that if you don't have a friend (or family member) who ticks every single one of those boxes, then your life is precarious; you live on the edge of life and death.

I'm going to go through the list, and think about whether I have that minimum viable social support network, or not.

I do have friends who have visited me in person this year. I do speak to two friends regularly on the phone or video chat. I do have a friend who visited me in hospital, most recently. Past experience tells me that my friends would gladly see me sleeping rough, but that might be different today... I definitely had one offer, kinda, to stay with a friend, his girlfriend and their very young baby, in a tiny bedsit, which is definitely something worthy of consideration. I'm not sure I'd ask for help moving house, but none would be forthcoming. None of my friends would feed my pet. I could borrow £1,000 from a friend. I would hope that at least one friend, of good social standing, would be prepared to testify to my good character in court. I could easily go missing for 4 or 5 days, or more, and my absence not be noticed. I would struggle to persuade a friend to help me, in a desperate situation. Yes, I have friends who would rat me out... but I think one or two would not. A few of my closest friends would want to hear my side of the story, before making their final judgement.

In summary, I think it's fair to say that I live a precarious life and death existence, without hyperbole.

How many friends do I have, who are true friends? 3, 4... 5 at the most? Maybe that is more than most people, but the litmus test, for me, is the number of friends who made the trip to hospital when my chance of survival was so low: just one friend, each time. There were more friends who came to see me, when I was hospitalised the time before, thanks to a wonderful ex-girlfriend who helped make that happen. Also, I should say that I did tell my sister and another friend not to bother making an exceptionally long journey, during my most recent hospitalisation, when it was clear that I was going to recover.

We might, in a particularly mean and cynical way, say that I have been hospitalised a lot during the past 6 or 7 years. It hasn't been "a lot" and I've got one thing to say on the matter: fuck you, you cunt.

It takes two to tango, so I must ask myself: have I been a very good friend? It's true that I could bolster my superficial friendships, but that seems like wasted effort. When it came to the biggest test of friendship I've ever faced, I dropped everything for that friend: I made them my number one priority; I did everything humanly possible for them. I can say, hand on heart, that I pass all the tests that I have listed: I might not have almost any true friends, but the ones I have... they can count on me during the most difficult life events.

To those who say I might be pleasantly surprised, if I found myself in hot water: fuck you; you're wrong. I've been homeless, slept rough, penniless, locked up, hospitalised, left for dead and completely fucked over by situations I've had to deal with all on my own, so I know who my true friends are, and I know how precious few they are.

If you think I'm ungrateful for the lazy "chin up" social media messages I get from time to time, I probably am. "Chin up" doesn't put a roof over my head. "Chin up" doesn't make the difference between life and death. The sentiments are worthless; worse than worthless: they are valuable to you in making yourself feel better about not doing anything, but of no value to me.

However, it must be admitted that my situation has been made worse by needing to move away from my ex-wife, and my parents incessant hard work in lobbying against me; spreading lies and disinformation; maliciously attacking my character and exhaustively portraying me - falsely - as of bad character; evil.

My parents incessantly changing the school I was in - 8 different schools - and moving around, disrupting every childhood friendship, was the coffin nail in any chance of me forming lifelong bonds. Yes, I am still in contact with old school-friends via social media, but my constantly disrupted childhood provided no opportunity to cement friendships which last substantially into adulthood, although I was immensely grateful when a handful of old childhood friends contacted me in recent years, unexpectedly.

I've written far more than the daily word count limit I have set for myself, but that is in no small part, because I am so socially isolated. The misery of my childhood haunts me more and more, like a post-traumatic flashback. The sins of the father - in my case, an unemployed lazy druggie, who selfishly didn't care about the damage to my childhood schooling and friendships - are visited on the son, namely me, of course. I don't write this in the sense of saying "I blame everybody else for my problems" but as a factual explanation of why, in due course, I will end my life prematurely.

The friends who are keeping me afloat: Oxford, Worcester, Croydon, Prague, Fareham, and maybe an honourable mention of Newport and Pa Tong, maybe a bit of a mention of Portishead... Bournemouth & Poole, kinda. Cardiff and Bridgend maybe, but it's complicated. How many is that? 4 or 5 actively. Another couple occasionally. Another few much less frequently, but old enough friends that I think they'd pick up the phone if I was in the shit. Is that enough? Evidently not, but I'm grateful for what I've got. In fact, if you see where you live on the list, you should know that if you've been in contact recently, I'm incredibly grateful, and you're the difference between life and death... no exaggeration.

In conclusion: that's it. That's all there is. It sounds like it's more than it actually is, during an average month. A few phone-calls to Oxford. One or two to Worcester... that's it for regular social contact. My guardian angel is there, but a long way away; we hardly speak. My friends in other countries.... visits are hard. I spend as much, if not more, time speaking to friends who I've never met in person, than I do to old friends... that's an alarming situation.

Anyway, it is what it is: I'll work, get my money, then kill myself. That's that. I know now: my social needs will never be met, and I'm trapped in an unbearable situation. All I can do is hope that my enormous effort to document who I was, and the impression I've left on most of those who've met me, has been on the whole more good than bad, and that my true friends will defend me from people like my parents, who maliciously want to paint me as an evil character; a demon.

Tags: #friends

This is a story about audience...

There was a time when I had so few readers, I could make an educated guess as to who each of them was. I have a loyal reader who lives in Milan. I have a loyal reader who lives in Worcester. I have a lot of loyal readers in various locations in Canada, Australia, New Zealand. For larger cities, like London, it was a lot harder, but for smaller cities like my home city of Cardiff, I could still figure out roughly who was who, amongst my regular loyal readers.

Over the years - five and a half years to be precise - I have had visitors who were former or current work colleagues. That shouldn't be a surprise, I suppose, given that I have this public document, which intimately and candidly records my stream of consciousness, warts and all.

I say "warts and all" but we obviously behave differently in private than we do in public.

When I had only a few readers, they were people who I had regular conversations with; there was a personal connection between what I was writing, and them: I considered how my writing would be received by them. I thought to myself "I wonder what they will think when they read this?".

Then, a strange thing happened.

Little by little, the number of people who were reading my stuff started growing, quite substantially. Within a fairly short period of time, it was almost impossible for me to keep track of my regular readers, in amongst all the strangers, who were reading my stuff for the very first time; people who I'd never met or had a conversation with.

Because so many people were reading, a lot of them decided to email me, or otherwise contact me directly via Twitter or Facebook. As you can see from the graph above, my writing was being read by a substantial number of people, and I was being contacted many times during the day.

Then, another strange thing happened.

I decided to cull a lot of spammy/fake comments. Google didn't like that very much, so they harshly penalised me: my website dropped from the first page of Google, way down in the search results. The number of people reading every day dropped back to almost the same level it was before the unusual spike; almost to the point where I could pick out people who I know - regular readers who are friends - from in amongst the sea of strangers.

But, I never really re-adjusted: I no longer think, automatically, about who might be reading what I write.

I often think "it doesn't matter what I write, because I am going to kill myself quite soon". However, I do have some friends and other people, who I don't want to upset or offend. I'm not so sociopathic, that I have no empathy for other people's feelings. I am genuinely remorseful, when I learn that I have hurt somebody.

I wrote yesterday about a friend - a work colleague - who's one of the few work colleagues who's contacted me to tell me that they're a reader. That friend is probably the only person in the world of whom I regularly think to myself "what would they think, if they read this?". In fact, that friend has posed that question to me: what would our colleagues think, if they read this? I tend to assume that they do not read this.

Generally speaking, I tend to assume that nobody reads this, in the very small circle of people who I interact with in "normal civilised society". That is to say, I assume that my neighbours don't read this, nor does my doctor, nor does my accountant, nor does my landlord, nor anybody else who has some kind of interest in me, financially or professionally. That extends, naturally, to work colleagues: I would assume that they would connect on LinkedIn, send me a friend request on Facebook or ask to connect on Instagram, or some other popular social media site, if they wanted to be "virtual" friends. In fact, in a professional context, I assume that nobody wants to be my real friend, except the friend who contacted me to say that they read what I write, here, on this website.

Which is the reasonable thing to assume? That nobody reads this - except those few who I know about, who read occasionally - because I'm not that interesting or likeable; also why would anybody I meet think that I would have written and published 1.4 million words on a website, which they could easily find with Google? Or, is it more reasonable to assume that people are curious, and given that I work with a lot of people, a handful of them might have been bored enough one day to put my name into a search engine.

Also, of course, my profile picture does have a cunning disguise... so how would anybody know for certain that they'd found the Nick Grant they were looking for?

In conclusion, I suppose what I've written takes on a very different complexion if it's being read by work colleagues. There have been plenty of times when I've been gripped by the delusions of grandeur which accompany bipolar manic episodes, and I have expressed my irritability, frustrations, and low opinion of some of what I've witnessed during my working hours; also I have loudly broadcast my arrogance, aloofness, smugness, and given the general impression that I have single-handedly delivered all the work involved in a very big budget project, in spite of the lesser mortals who've tried to thwart me.

As stated, I'm not sure who's reading this, but on the assumption that every single one of my colleagues is reading: I'm really sorry for being a dick. I'm not always right. My productive contribution is negligible. The upset I have caused has been inexcusable. I have vastly over-estimated the value of what I have delivered. I'm the guy who ruins people's working day, and makes the working environment unpleasant; unbearable. I'm really sorry.

I know that I don't offer nothing and I know that I don't create only problems, but it seems like the balance is wrong. My brain tells me that what I do is important, although I am acutely aware that I am very far from being indispensible (which is quite deliberate, I assure you: I hate key-person dependencies) my brain tells me that I am useful to have around, and that when required, I can do stuff which is really helpful. However, my brain often converts that into: "I am Jesus Christ re-incarnated; there is no greater living human being than I; I am the son of god" based on very little evidence, and it's only counter-balanced by the continuous thought "existence is nothing but unbearable suffering; existence is futile". In the middle, my brain then tells me "in order to give life some meaning in this godless universe, you should build some really fucking nice software which will impress people".

The net result of all of the above, is that, it turns out, I'm a real arsehole to people, sometimes. Sorry about that. I don't actually have an excuse. There's probably a simple solution, which would stop me being an arsehole. Most people's solution is probably just to decide "I'm not going to be an arsehole"... it's that simple.

I would just ramble more if I kept writing, but the final thought is this: I'm really sorry. I really do want people to enjoy my company. I really do want to make people's day better. I do think about it, when I've been a dick. I do feel guilty. I am sorry.

Tags: #work #career #writing #socialmedia

This is a story about the public domain...

"Are you going to [write] about it [and publish it for the general public to see]?" a friend and trusted confidante asked me, today. My answer was: "I doubt it".

It would be really annoying if you didn't know what the heck I was going on about, so I shall immediately fill you in.

Because I have been working for a very large organisation for, what seems like, a very long time, my mental illness is starting to become harder to conceal. Or, perhaps, it's my horrible personality, which is finally making itself visible, having concealed it for as long as possible. Either way, the mask is slipping. I am saying, doing and writing things which are less-than-ideal.

Theoretically, almost everything I write during my working day, is available to be read by you. If you were determined to read the vast amounts of stuff I've written, not already available on this website, then you could theoretically obtain most of the remainder to read.

I don't often tend to forget that almost everything I write is either published to the public internet, where absolutely anybody can read it with extreme ease, or published elsewhere, freely available for members of the public to read, or to request permission to read.

Don't bother to ask me the exact rules, but I write and publish thousands of things every year, during my working day, which are fully public, but not on this website, however, they can be found and read, with little difficulty. There's some other stuff too, which is theoretically available for the public to read... but that process is much harder. Then, there's this website, which is probably the easiest to find, containing the most comprehensive collection of the entire contents of my brain, transferred into text, and published in such a way as to permit easy reading.

I have no control over my mood, but I am aware of my mood disorder. I can attempt to compensate for my mental illness. However, my mood fluctuations - from suicidal depression to manic highs - do colour my writing. When I am suicidal, predictably, most of my writing will be affected by the extremely severe depression. When I am manically high, most of my writing will be affected by my racing thoughts and delusions of grandeur.

Then, we must also consider my state of mind, independent of my mental illness. I have, for example, worked for 16 consecutive months without a holiday. I have been working hard. Too hard. I mean, I really put in a great deal of effort. I'm not just cruising along. I'm busting my balls, every day.

Not wanting to start a pity party, but I've also been doing a very extreme diet, in order to reach a healthy weight. Oh, and I'm single at the moment, and I don't have any friends living nearby. Oh and I'm estranged from my whole family, except for my sister who I only speak to once every couple of years, on average. So... all in all, not a good recipe for a happy human, even without mental illness in the picture.

Did I mention I stopped drinking back in September? Being teetotal is supposed to be a healthy choice, but how are we supposed to unwind after a long stressful day at work? For sure I lost a load of weight - 10kg (22 pounds) - but not being able to have a glass of wine after work is fucking awful.

Anyway, sorry for the self-pity.

Against this backdrop of lockdown, no friends, no family, no girlfriend, working incredibly hard, no holidays, and of course my mental illness, it should not come as any surprise that my behaviour can get pretty erratic and weird at times.

The incident mentioned at the start of this essay, was related to me being harshly critical of something. What I said wasn't untrue, nor was it mean or malicious: it was purely factual. However, I used some pretty powerful and colourful language, which would have left the reader in no doubt that I was less than impressed by some of the madness I'm forced to witness on a daily basis, with little or no opportunity to influence any outcome in a positive direction.

You might say I was ranting, and the manner of my ranting was unprofessional. I have a reply to that: sorry.

Tags: #work #depression #suicide #mania #bipolar #writing

This is a story about the finish line...

My idea of 'winning' is very different from most other people's I think. Well, actually, on reflection, we are agreed on what would constitute 'winning' but most other people have decided to lower their standards, and call something else 'winning'.

Let me give you a breakdown:

Having a house is something which everybody wants. I want to have a house. Other people want to have a mortgage: the bank will own the house, and allow the person who pays the mortgage to live there, but it's not the same as having a house.

Retirement is something which everybody wants. I want to retire. Other people want to collect a pension: the pension will be woefully inadequate, so the people who are collecting their pitiful pensions will have a new job, which is trying to make their meagre funds stretch to pay for their needs, which is not the same as retiring.

Financial independence is something which everybody wants. I want to be financially independent. Other people want credit cards which aren't maxed out, and a small pot of savings - enough for a holiday or a minor improvement to part of the bank's house - which is not the same as financial independence.

Freedom is something which everybody wants. I want to be free. Other people want to be told when and where they should be, for the majority of their time, and otherwise controlled by the limits of their meagre finances.

All I want is everything.

That's all.

Of course, we can all agree that owning a house - outright with no mortgage - not having a salaried job, having enough money in the bank to last you for the rest of your natural life (at a high living standard) and otherwise being free from any commitments or other coercion, would be the dictionary definition of 'winning' right?

So, why then do I sound so ludicrous when I say "that is what I want"? Why does it sound so implausible? Why does it sound so impossible; such an unattainable fantasy?

I'm getting close.

I'm getting really close.

But.

My version of 'winning' is a shit version of 'winning'. I will buy a shit house. I will live in a shit part of the world. I will not be able to live for very long, at a reasonable standard of living, before I run out of money. My freedom will cost me the ultimate price: premature death.

Is that so bad, premature death? Many people who pay off their mortgage and retire, do not live for very long. Are they 'winners'? Obviously not.

To win the game, you have to have spent more years of freedom, financially independent, retired and living in a house you own, than anybody else. The winner is the person who spends the most years in that situation. There are no prizes for paying off your mortgage, retiring, and having a huge pot of savings, when you are 65 years old, and you die 16 years later, having spent most of that time with no freedom at all because you are old and sick and dying.

In terms of quality-adjusted life years, if I spend just 8 years with good health, right now, I will have achieved more than 16 years with arthritis, dementia, cataracts, deafness, incontinence, heart disease, lung disease, diabetes... not to mention the vastly diminished energy levels, fragility of my body, and far greater length of time for any injury to heal.

Why wait?

I don't need to wait until I'm pensionable age to take advantage of my health. In fact, to wait would be incredibly foolish, because it's inevitable that my health will deteriorate, and there's an ever-increasing chance of death. How stupid it would be, to die before retirement, or soon after.

Sadly, there's a finite limit to the length of my early retirement, which dictates that my life must be cut short, artificially, in order to yield the high-quality years of freedom which I quite rightfully demand. There's a price to be paid, and I will pay the ultimate price on a pre-chosen day, in the not-too-distant future. However, don't be sad... everyone dies you stupid cunt.

Tags: #suicide #retirement

This is a story about muscle memory...

Anybody who says that muscles have memory is an idiot. Let's just get that out of the way, straight away. Muscles are controlled by the nervous system, but they are not part of the nervous system. It's true that some of our reflexes can happen without direct control from our brain, but the reflexive action is due to motor neurons not muscles. Of course, it is the muscles which contract, pulling on the tendons, which ultimately creates the movement, but the muscles themselves do not have any 'memory'... they are not part of the nervous system, as I already explained.

This essay is about the strange sensation of 'running on autopilot', which is to say, the performing of a complex sequence of actions, without conscious thought process; without 'thinking' or 'controlling' what's happening, in a conscious way which makes us think that what we are doing is due to premeditated, pre-planned and voluntary action.

If I was, for example, playing a game of tennis, when my opponent served the ball to me, I'd like to think that I analyse the flight path of the ball, predict where it is going to land, calculate where I need to stand, decide to swing my racket at the appropriate moment, and guide my racket head precisely to intersect with the path of the ball, such that I strike it not too hard and not too soft, so that it clears the net and remains in the court.

Nope.

I mean, sure, a total beginner might try to do that, but everything happens way too fast. In fact, once you reach professional tennis - which I never will... I'm pretty bad tennis player - then the ball is travelling so fast that there is not enough time for the images coming from your eyes, to reach the part of the brain which would do the 'conscious thinking' and 'decision making' and then get the instructions to the motor cortex, to send the signals to your arm to move the racket, in order to return the serve. There. Is. Not. Enough. Time.

So, what's happening then?

Well, the more tennis serves you return, the more 'hard wired' the reflexes become. A smaller number of cues provide a greater, and more importantly earlier, response than a person who's never picked up a tennis racquet before. In fact, the ability of the human brain to respond to the subtle cues can become so fine-tuned, that a professional tennis player will lunge left or right at more or less the same time as the opponent's racquet strikes the ball... which surely means it's impossible for the receiving player to be reacting... doesn't it? Yes.

Yes... what you think very often is you exercising your free will - making choices and deciding to do stuff - is totally an illusion. If somebody throws a ball at your head, you'll probably catch it before your 'conscious decision-making' brain has had a chance to catch up. You'll find yourself holding the ball in the hand you caught it in, but you'll still be wondering where it came from... and you definitely won't remember making the decision to catch it, because there wasn't enough time to follow the longer thought process: "I see a ball travelling towards me, I think it's going to hit me, I should catch it, okay I'm going to move my hand so it's in the right position to catch it, okay it's in my hand now, I should close my fingers to catch the ball"... nope... doesn't work like that.

So, that's the simple sports example out of the way. What about more complicated stuff?

Do you drive a car? Do you drive 'manual' (also known as 'stick shift' in North America)? If you think about the process of driving a car, there's a lot of multitasking. In the UK, where manual transmission is the norm, we are controlling the clutch, gearstick, accelerator, brake, steering wheel, indicators, horn, and sometimes lights at night and/or windscreen wipers in rain or snow. In addition, we are often fiddling with the temperature, de-misting controls and in-car entertainment. Finally, we are usually having a conversation with our passengers, while also looking at the vehicles around us in 360 degrees, using our mirrors, glancing at our children buckled up in the back seat, eating, drinking and maybe making phone-calls and/or operating the GPS. Do you think all of that happens with a lot of conscious thought? Nope. It's mostly the opposite: you're on autopilot.

Do you ever get somewhere, where you regularly go, and you can't remember a single thing about the journey? Autopilot. I don't mean that you own an expensive self-driving car. I mean autopilot in the colloquial sense, meaning that your brain just magically did all the thousands of thoughts and actions for you, without you having to think: you had plenty of time to think about other stuff even though you were hurtling down the road many times faster than you'd have been if you were riding a horse or running.

Where does autopilot end? What is the limit of autopilot?

My personal opinion is that it's virtually unlimited. Chess grandmasters can win games without having to think at all: they can play entirely in autopilot mode, and beat almost any opponent.

We love to think of ourselves as thinking creatures - homo sapiens, the so-called 'wise' man - but the bulk of everything we do, day in, day out, is just a circus trick which we have learned by repetition. We do very little thinking at all. Even the most incredibly complicated looking activities, like playing chess, have been proven to be nothing more than pattern recognition and autopilot responses, which have been learned over the course of thousands and thousands of games; indistinguishable from a chimp that's learned to press a button to get a piece of fruit as a reward.

Tags: #psychology

This is a story about dieting...

All humans, and indeed all animals, enjoy drinking, having sex and/or masturbating, drugs and/or other intoxicants, and eating. I know that you are all leaping onto your keyboards to tell me that you don't drink alcohol and you don't like sex, but I'm sorry to say you're wrong, in regards to what I just said. Your thirst is quenched by drinking water, which releases endorphins, just the same as you also get a brain chemical reward when you achieve orgasm, or some other form of sexual gratification. I don't give a shit what you think in your moronic brain: millions of years of evolution are not wrong... the very core of your being is designed to ensure that you stay hydrated, fed, and at some point make an attempt to procreate. Sorry that you thought you were special and different. You are not.

"But I was born incapable of enjoying drugs" you might wail. Yes, yes, I know you think that you somehow won the lottery while being hit by a meteorite and struck by lightening, and you very much think of yourself as a special unique snowflake, but your self-appointed "asexual" status, or whatever the hell it is, does not alter the fact that your brain is so exceptionally complicated, that it does not differ from that of your parents, who ate, drank and had sex, sufficiently to produce anything so pronounced as the absence of any of the enjoyments I listed.

"But I was born without a tongue". Yes. Sure you were.

"But I was born with depression so severe that I can experience nothing at all except for pain and suffering". Yes. Sure you were.

Okay, so, enough of your bullshit.

You like eating, so that's why you keep doing it. The 'liking' part is something which can be philosophically debated ad nauseam, but we have established that you eat, because otherwise you would not have reached the point where you can read stuff on the internet and argue with complete strangers about your weird self-invented identity.

Okay, moving on.

Some people have eating disorders.

Let's repeat that, because it's the point of this whole essay.

Some people have eating disorders.

Eating is nice and enjoyable, but some of us eat "too much" which shouldn't really be considered a problem, but it definitely causes health complications, eventually. Eating "too much" can be considered an eating disorder.

We tend to just call people who eat "too much" things like "fat" or "overweight" or "obese"... but whatever we call them, these are usually pejorative terms. We look upon people who eat "too much" as greedy, lazy, lacking self-discipline, lacking willpower, and generally morally inferior, lesser human beings; deserving targets of abuse and castigation; not worthy of our respect.

Basically, don't eat "too much" or else people will treat you like shit.

Got it?

Then weirdly, there are people who don't eat very much, who are totally awesome people. I mean, like, just because they eat a bit less than other people, we celebrate them: we parade them around as if they're special and different; we photograph and film them; we shower them with money. We idolise a whole bunch of people who don't eat very much. We have built multi-billion-dollar international businesses, who do nothing other than to worship a bunch of people who don't eat very much.

Basically, eat less than you'd like to eat, and people will treat you much better than if you eat a normal amount.

Got it?

Obviously, it's quite difficult to get the balance between not eating very much, and not eating enough just right. It's very hard to judge whether you're eating the right amount, when the aim is to not eat very much. If the aim is to not eat very much, then why not eat nothing? Obviously, you can't eat nothing - although many people will try - because eventually you will die of starvation, but because the human body is very tough, it's very hard to know what "enough" is, when there's so much pressure to not eat very much, and so much reward for not eating very much.

Once you've made the decision to not eat very much, where does it end?

In the past couple of months, I've eaten several hundred calories fewer than my basal metabolic rate. Also, I have had many long periods where my calorie consumption has been zero. The result has been predictable: approximately 10kg (22 pounds) of weight loss in the space of no more than two months. Of course, this is ludicrously unhealthy, but I want to be thin because being thin is considered attractive.

To achieve the extreme weight loss, I have had to forgo a lot of eating. One of my favourite things to do, in the whole world, is to eat. Not eating is extremely awful; distressing; unpleasant. It is an extreme sacrifice, to stop eating, or to eat significantly less than I want and need to. However, the reward for being thin, is to be attractive and so I have done it.

The problem comes in - as an eating disorder - when I look in the mirror at my body, which is a healthy weight, but I see a fat person. Given that my aim was to be thin... if I don't see a thin person when I look in the mirror, and I've undergone such extreme dieting in order to become thin, that I will continue to eat far fewer calories than my body requires, just to pump blood around and keep me warm.

I'm cold. I'm cold all the time. It's awful, dieting.

Yesterday I ate 847 calories. Today I plan on eating zero calories. Tomorrow I plan on eating approximately 700 calories. That is extreme. However, this is necessary to be thin.

If somebody was to accuse me of having an eating disorder, I would disagree, because I will simply stop this extreme diet and start eating a more normal amount of calories, once I am I am thin. However, the question is: when will I be satisfied that I am thin? I have a very easy answer to that: when the National Health Service website admits that I should stop losing weight. I'm already "healthy" according to my BMI, and indeed I have a slim waist of 32 inches, which is excellent for a 183 centimetre tall (6 foot) 41 year old man... everyone should just fuck off and leave me alone but oh no the fucking NHS website couldn't just leave it alone, could they? Even though I've lost 10kg in two months, they are still saying I should lose more. Okay then, fine. I will. Fuck you.

Tags: #diet #weightloss

This is a story about being unpleasant...

We like to think that niceness, and conversely, nastiness, are innate inherent personality traits, which are fixed immutably at birth. We like to think that the world divides neatly into the nice and the nasty. We might, for example, lazily assume that all criminals are nasty, and that all nurses are nice... to take two very simple examples of commonplace simplified thinking.

While we might all agree that the world would be better if we all aspired to be as nice as possible, and that the world would be better if we all vowed to never be nasty.

Sorry. Nope. Won't work.

Less than one month from now, every gym in the western world will be crammed full of fat people, who aspire to be thin, and who have vowed to lose weight; who aspire to eat less and who have vowed to get fit. Almost all of those people will fail. They will fail, not because they are bad people but because the circumstances around them, exert such a great force pushing them towards being fat and unfit, and away from being thin and fit, that their limited willpower will not last very long. The short-lived nature of their willpower is not a character flaw, but something which is integral to all of us, psychologically.

Imagine that I am very fat. Imagine also that I am unhappy about being very fat. Then, create a single hypothetical day of the year, where everyone in the western world all decides, en masse, to join a gym and start getting thin. Most of the reasons for becoming thin always existed: to be more attractive, to be healthier, to live a longer life, to be able to be more fit and active; able to exert more energy doing fun stuff, and not just shifting blubber from one place to another. So, what's different about New Year's Day? Nothing. Nothing except that millions of other idiots are all having exactly the same idea, at the same time, so there is an immense social movement, carrying a fat person on a wave of delusional euphoria: "this year I'm going to lose weight!" they all declare, as their New Year's resolution.

Why almost all of them fail, is not due to personality flaws, weakness, laziness or even because they are nasty people. They did intend to lose the weight, but if it was easy then they wouldn't have waited so long to do it, would they? If it was easy, then there wouldn't be smug thin people, rubbing everybody's faces in the fact that they're so thin, would there? Being thin would be nothing to be proud of, and to parade around, if it was easy.

We might then, re-evaluate the way we think about fat people. Fat people are nice, because they are just minding their own business, doing what comes naturally to them: eating. We cann't ever say that eating is a nasty act, because we all have to eat, otherwise we die. There is no malice in eating.

Equally, we should re-evaluate the way we think about thin people. Thin people are nasty, because they are deliberately doing unpleasant things, like dieting and exercising, which are not at all natural, in order to feel superior to everybody else. Thin people are maliciously motivated to parade their thin bodies around, figuratively screaming "look at me you fat fucks... I'm so much better than you are, you bunch of lazy porky cunts". That's pretty nasty.

Looking around, we can find other examples of niceness in unlikely places. Crack and heroin addicts who only steal from rich people and/or from large corporations, like retail chains, in victimless crimes like shoplifting. Ethically, there is no difference between shoplifting from a multinational corporation, or buying their products: neither one harms or benefits anybody. In fact, if anything, the presence of shoplifters creates many jobs, for security guards, police and the manufacturers of anti-theft devices. We can think of crack and heroin addicts who commit acquisitive crime, so long as it's just shoplifting, as an essential part of a healthy economy; job creators. What about the crack and heroin addicts who have sex with ugly men? How would those ugly men get sex otherwise?

As you can see: so called 'nasty' people can actually turn out to be very 'nice', and vice-versa. Anybody who's ever had to deal with somebody who actively thinks of themselves as a saint, will know that they're invariably an insufferable cunt... like a doctor who likes to think of themselves as "saving lives" when actually they work as a GP and all they do is make the process of accessing medication into a slow and painfully bureaucratic process, adding zero value and costing everybody a lot of time and money, plus meanwhile preaching holier-than-thou bullshit about how slightly overweight people should lose some weight, unsolicited, to all of their patients, who have no other choice but to listen to the nasty person give their lecture, lest they be refused a handful of pills they could've just bought from a pharmacist, cutting the nasty full-of-themselves so-called doctor out of the loop altogether.

I was going to write, also, about how nice or nasty you are is dictated by how rich you are, and how much pressure and stress you're under... but that will have to wait for another time. Meanwhile, fuck off.

Tags: #medication #mentalhealth #philosophy #diet #exercise

This is a story about borrowing...

Let us imagine, for a moment, that you decide - hypothetically - to operate your life in the same way that a corporation operates. Let's examine all the tricks you could use if you were a miniature corporation, instead of a human.

Firstly, you can take our life insurance, just like an ordinary person can. In the corporate world it isn't called life insurance, but it's the same thing. Just like life insurance, it gets paid in the event of death. In the corporate world, that 'death' can be considered debt default; bankruptcy: when a company can no longer pay back its debts - in default - it's bankrupt, or in other words 'dead'. Likewise an individual will be hounded by debt collectors until their death.

Regular insurance doesn't allow you to insure the same risk more than once, otherwise we'd all just buy a million insurance policies for our mobile phone, and then flush it down the toilet or otherwise deliberately smash it to pieces, then we could claim a million times, and get a million cheques from the insurance companies: instant millionaire!

You would assume that it would be illegal to insure the risk of a company defaulting on its debts more than once, but no such law exists. So, the first thing you should do as a miniature corporation is start borrowing money. Then, you should buy a million insurance policies. Then, all you have to do is stop paying back the debt, and when the company is declared in default of its debt obligations, and therefore bankrupt, you can claim your millions from those insurance policies.

That's just one example.

"Where will I get the money for all those insurance policies?" you might ask. Well, as a corporation, that's really easy: you can borrow it.

The bigger you are as a corporation, the more you can borrow, but even a miniature corporation is governed by the same rules. You only need to borrow £10,000 if the insurance policies cost £100 each. Then, when you stop paying your debt, you will be able to claim £10,000 insurance money 1,000 times.

That's how credit default swaps work.

Want another example?

Let us imagine that you want to make your publicly traded company into one of the most valuable companies in the FTSE-100 - the top hundred most valuable companies traded on the London Stock Exchange - then the process is very simple. Firstly, you find a company on the London Stock Exchange which is virtually worthless, but not bankrupt. Then, you borrow money to buy that company, which will be sold to you very cheaply, because its valuation is so worthless. Next, you borrow even more money, which you use to artificially inflate your turnover: you can use a second company which does something like unscrewing the nuts off bolts, as your main commercial trading partner. The company which has screwed the nuts off the bolts can then purchase a service from your public company, to screw the nuts back onto the bolts. Obviously, the cost of each process charged to each other is the same. Then, to make things more efficient, no nuts or bolts are actually shipped between either company, but the two companies continue to do the transactions electronically: one for 'unscrewing digital nuts off digital bolts' and the other for 'screwing digital nuts onto digital bolts'. This process can continue, thousands of times a day, costing hundreds of millions of pounds per day to each company, but each company is receiving an equal amount of payment for its services.

Now that we have a publicly trading company, which is doing billions of pounds of turnover every year, it can then ask investors for money, to fund its expansion plans. Because the billions of dollars of turnover are very impressive, investors will flock to the opportunity: clearly a company with such high turnover must be very valuable.

The injection of capital into the public company allows it to acquire other public companies, and in so doing, its valuation increases. The process need only repeat, until the company is valuable enough (has a high enough market capitalisation) to enter the FTSE-250 (the top 250 most valuable companies traded on the London Stock Exchange).

At the point that the public company is listed on the FTSE-250, pension funds are mandated to purchase a substantial stake in it. The mandatory purchase naturally inflates the valuation of the company. Using that windfall, more acquisitions can be made, in order to purchase other FTSE-250 companies. Eventually, the company's valuation is enough to rank it in the top one hundred most valuable companies traded on the London Stock Exchange, and pension funds will have to buy even more of it's stock. It's not optional that the pension funds will buy vast amounts of the company... they are duty bound to buy shares in the company, simply because it is in the FTSE-100.

Then, once you have become a FTSE-100 traded company, you will be able to borrow insanely huge amounts of money - tens of billions of pounds - in order to use for the important business of "digital nut and bolt screwing/unscrewing" and for the acquisition of other companies.

Finally, throughout all of this, you will have been able to pay yourself, as the CEO and founder of a FTSE-100 company, many millions of pounds in salary, and many hundreds of millions in valuable shares, plus give yourself a hefty golden parachute and enormous salary, before you leave.

If you thought that your money problems were caused by your own inability to do simple arithmetic: subtracting your household expenses from your wage income, then you were mistaken: you were simply not thinking and acting like a corporation.

Tags: #capitalism

This is a story about retirement...

It's unusual that nobody sets out to be impoverished in old age - quite the opposite - but most people will end up poor during the twilight years of their life. It is unusual that so much money is pumped into pension funds, but so few enjoy a wealthy retirement.

I suppose, for people who work but don't earn much, there's an ever-decreasing opportunity to build up any kind of pension pot. Since the demise of both final-salary pensions, and social housing, the difficulty of balancing the immediate needs of food, housing, clothing and other essentials, far outweighs the impending old-age poverty. Although the home-ownership fetish appears to lead to some security, in fact the cost of council tax, energy bills and food, is still substantial enough to erode anybody's meagre pension income, even without the cost of a mortgage. Old-age poverty is inevitable.

Given that we are all aiming for the same thing, in theory, it's remarkable that most of us fail to achieve it.

I suppose some will say that they love their work, and they're happy to accept that they're underpaid, because they are happy with their career. I suppose some will say that friends and family are their wealth, and haven't paid much attention to the trivial financial nonsense. In fact, they all care about what happens to them in old age, it's just that they assume - wrongly - that things will work out OK. Things will not work out OK.

Pensions are, unfortunately, a Ponzi scheme. All public companies function on the basis that very large pension funds will automatically have to buy their shares, once they reach a certain market capitalisation (i.e. valuation). Many private companies, angel investors, venture capitalists, private equity fund managers, entrepreneurs, investment banks, and whole swathes of other ancillary leeches, function on the assumption that there is a virtually unlimited supply of new suckers, prepared to pump a substantial portion of their wages, into the Ponzi scheme, allowing others to siphon it all off. There are more people withdrawing obscene amounts of unearned money, than there are honest hard-workers injecting new money into the system, and as such, failure is inevitable.

I find it very unusual that many people feel wedded to a particular corporation, which evidently pays them very little versus the market value of their labour, which can be worked out by the profit generated for the company. The argument is often that it's a "safe" job, that redundancy money provides "financial security" and that they're somehow locked into a pension scheme, which is expected to provide a "generous" retirement.

No.

Everybody wants to retire well-off, but unfortunately, demographics and the refusal by the generation who most recently retired, and are in the process of retiring, has brought the whole Ponzi scheme crashing down.

Not everyone can retire on a final salary pension. In fact, already, far too many have been allowed to retire on a final salary pension. The huge burden placed upon the few at the bottom, by the massive number of grotesque fat greedy pigs at the top, creates an inverted pyramid which must, inevitably, topple over.

Yes, it's all well and good having a lot of industrial action to demand the impossible. Useless do-nothing people in do-nothing jobs went on strike, threatening to do nothing and harm nothing... then when they finally pissed off and made some space for others to get promoted and start earning a decent wage, there are now too few of the decent salary earners to pay for the disgustingly high final-salary pensions which were unearned by the lazy fucks who expect to spend a far greater proportion of their natural lives than any generation in human history, riding on the backs of the overworked and underpaid working class.

Yes. My granny and granddad spent approximately 15 to 20% of their lifetime in retirement, which was pretty good going. Now that has doubled. To expect to spend 35 to 45% of your life, with good health, living by picking the pocket of your sons, daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, is criminal.

The generation who just retired and is in the process of retiring, will die rich, up to a point. Inflation eroded their debts and gifted them vast property wealth, without having to do a single day of labour. They will, of course, have to relinquish a small amount of that wealth when they eventually need to go into a nursing home, but because of good diet and medicine, they will enjoy the health of a 40 or 50 year old from their parents' generation... for many decades.

Meanwhile, the generation who are working now, today, will have no opportunity to retire rich, unless they are in the top 2 or 3% of earners; born into a wealthy family. For 97% of the country, nothing awaits in old age except for cold and hunger.

It is highly unusual that, despite all the furious energy expended, scurrying around busy as hell, so few people have managed to comprehend the fact that their effort is futile: they're going to die poor, and their children are already poor; their grandchildren are just utterly fucked. Take a look around: there's nothing for them... no jobs, and no comfortable retirement at the end of it. It's all fucked.

I'm afraid neither compound interest, financial planning, nor hard work is going to make the blindest bit of difference: the numbers are too stacked against you; Ponzi schemes always fail eventually.

Tags: #retirement