This is a story about edutainment...

I set myself the objective of writing 1 million words in 3 years on this website. To date, I've written over 950,000 words. Of course, some of it is complete garbage. I've written during periods of extreme sleep deprivation, paranoia, stimulant psychosis, mania, hypomania. I've written from psych wards. I've written while losing my home, losing jobs, losing my mind. I've kept writing through it all, and my task is nearly done.

I wrote a whole novel that I'm quite proud of, and 42,000 words of another novel which I'm not so proud of, but I learned a lot. My first novel came relatively easily; I wrote about what I know. The first year that I was blogging seemed to go relatively easily, but the second and third years have been... eventful.

I've lost friends because of my blog, but I've also gained new friends all over the world. My words have been used against me by ex-employers and ex-girlfriends, but more fool them: I think it's the most cowardly and pathetic thing in the world to hit somebody when they're vulnerable; kick a man when he's down.

I've made myself incredibly vulnerable. My whole psyche is on display to the entire world; public property. In the last week alone I've had readers in over 50 countries, speaking nearly 40 different languages as their mother tongue.

I'm not so arrogant, deluded and hubristic to believe that I have any influence, of course, but nobody can deny that I exist... out there in cyberspace. Very few people have gathered their thoughts so exhaustively and presented them at such length.

The internet is littered with abandoned blogs. Twitter is awash with billions - if not trillions - of throwaway garbage 140-character tweets. Even now with 280 characters, what can people really say that's profound or interesting, with such a constraint? Creativity does not love constraints: when was the last time you read a book which could be tweeted? The various competing messaging platforms - SMS, iMessage, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter DM, Instagram DM - all store huge archives of chat between their users, but it's all throwaway garbage; transient tosh.

Of course what I'm writing is not profound or perhaps even interesting. Of course what I'm doing is not original; it's not a novel idea. Of course I'm not special or different in any way. Of course I'll never achieve anything except my arbitrary target of writing 1 million words in 3 years. What was the point?

I could sit around and be a consumer. I could sit around and consume content. I could read other people's books and blogs and never write another thing. I could watch films and TV and never create a single thing in my whole life. I don't have to write. There are plenty of people who write already. Why does the world need another writer? What have I got to say which is going to add anything of value to the literature?

Writing and creating art became an urgent need which could not be ignored any longer. Writing is a healthier addiction than slouching on the couch, having soap operas and celebrity reality TV shows projected into my living room for all my waking hours. Writing has become a habit, and I've become habituated into the ritual of writing down my stream of consciousness and making it public. Writing my innermost thoughts and feelings publicly has become part of me, because I always existed but I didn't have anywhere to exist... I was trapped in my own mind and I needed to escape that prison and go live in a place that was less isolated. I live in cyberspace. I live through my writing and those who it connects with. Anybody can connect. I'm publicly accessible. I'm common property.

I've interrupted a weekend spent binging on Netflix and Amazon streaming videos. I've deliberately paused the endless stream of nonstop entertainment to write. Why would I do that? Why would I deny myself the pleasure of sitting and doing nothing - being entertained - and spend my precious time writing this? Most people find writing to be a real chore. Most people would struggle to write a thousand words, let alone 950,000. Even your average university-educated person will consider their 10,000 word undergraduate dissertation, 40,000 word masters dissertation or 100,000 word thesis to be a lifetime achievement. If you want to level the accusation at me that it's easy to write complete crap, I remind you that in amongst the 950,000 words I've written are the best part of 2 completed novels, which had to have coherent plots and credible characters, and be written well enough to deserve to be read... although I admit, my unfinished second novel is pretty crappy.

It's hard to create something. It's easy to pick things apart. It's easy to be a consumer. It's hard to finish a project. It's a lot harder than you think to write a whole novel. It's ridiculously hard to commit to a 3-year 1-million-word writing project and see it through to the end.

There's something kinda tragic about broadcasting when nobody's listening. Why do people keep public video diaries when they've got no audience? Why do people keep blogging when nobody reads or comments on their blog? Why do people keep tweeting when they've got no followers?

The answer to the riddle of why people speak to an empty room is something that you might never know, because you're not prepared to publicly ridicule yourself to find out. You think you already know the answer: that it's stupid and pointless. However, how does anybody learn how to be a good writer in the first place? How does anybody get followers and readers? How does anybody go from nothing to something; somebody?

Nothing happens if you just sit around watching TV. You're not going to win the lottery if you don't even play the game. All that's gonna happen is that you'll get fat and old and wonder what you did with your life, if you don't ever create anything. That's fine; that's what most people do: they just get fat, old and then they die, and nobody knows a damn thing about them except for their nearest and dearest. They take their secrets to the grave.

This might be seen as a vanity project; egotistical, but you've got to remember that at the funeral of people who've committed suicide, everyone always says "if only we knew" and "what could we have done differently?" and they're ultimately left with more questions than answers. The only antidote to that I can see is to begin to change the way we live: instead of lives of quiet desperation, we can now express ourselves fully. We have all these amazing communication tools which we can use to connect with one another. There should be no monopoly on who's allowed to communicate; broadcast; publish.

Yes, there's a snobbery around self-publishing, but it's the quickest and easiest way to get yourself out there; to be heard.

I've been racing against time to make myself heard; to get all of this down on the page so it can be read by anybody who's interested. It's been a race against time to communicate enough of myself, that I feel like I'm not going to be one of those suicides where people are left wondering about anything: it's all written down.

I'm not saying I'm actively suicidal at the moment, but I know how quickly my circumstances can change; how rapidly my mood can blacken.

It feels like a good use of my time to write every day, even if nobody is reading.

It feels good to write, when I would otherwise just be binging on TV shows during my leisure time.

It feels good to create, not just consume.

Tags: #writing #art #suicide

This is a story about early retirement...

I was pretty pleased with my life's achievements by the time I hit the age of 30. I'd earned a lot of money and been able to enjoy a lavish lifestyle, and I had plenty of material possessions as status symbols to attest to my accomplishments. My income vastly exceeded my expenditure and I'd amassed enough savings and assets to be able to support myself without a job for many years, without having to tighten my belt or live frugally.

I decided to quit the rat race and be my own boss. I retrained as an electrician and set myself up in business as a one-man operation: just me and my van... and my customers. Turns out that you always have a boss, whether you're a salaried employee or the founder and CEO of your own company. There's always somebody who you're dependent on for your money, like investors and customers who have to be kept happy. Perhaps only trust fund brats are truly free from the tyranny of having to kowtow to anybody, but even they have to kiss the ass of the trustees if they want to get their hands on more cash than their already more-than-ample unearned lifelong income.

My subsequent attempt to use my software smarts to earn money while I slept didn't turn out much better than my attempt to become a traditional tradesman. Realising that customers were harder to extract money from than I'd anticipated, and that I was going to end up giving away a substantial amount of equity and control to investors, I burned out and became very depressed about life.

I tend to win more than I lose when software's involved and my most recent attempt at earning money in my sleep was quite successful, when I bought Bitcoin miners which I kept in my summer house. I also ploughed every pound and penny that I could beg, borrow or steal and I bought Bitcoins, which then appreciated in value a hundredfold or more. Sadly, I needed to liquidate my assets to settle an acrimonious divorce, hence why I'm not [yet] a multimillionaire... well, and also to be honest I didn't think the value of Bitcoin was going to go much beyond $5,000 but that's another story.

To be fully retired and spend my days wandering around National Trust stately homes - or whatever it is that retired folk do - I think would be quite torturous and tedious. I was dragged around enough stately homes as a child, with my pushy parents mistakenly believing that educational leisure experiences would be somehow beneficial to me and my future.

Software is the gift that keeps on giving and I've worked an average of 3 months per year, during the last 4 or 5 years. That's pretty close to semi-retired. The remaining 9 months of each year have been spent sleeping rough, living in hostel dorms, in and out of hospital, locked up on psych wards or otherwise generally living a life which most people would not consider to contain much rest and relaxation.

I'm pretty exhausted to be honest.

I'm 39 years old and I'm knackered.

During the last 9 years I've done all the things which my parents told me not to. I've followed my dreams and I've ended up in a few nightmares too, but I've finally been able to experience life. I was a very well-behaved boy and young man: I was the well-mannered sensible child who did all the right things and was achieving all the things that grannies and aunties like to hear about when your parents phone or write to brag. There's a lot of snobbery in my family and I felt duty-bound to comply with very boring, rigid and old-fashioned ideas of success. I'd spent my life up to the age of 30 living somebody else's idea of how I should live my life. Then, I rebelled.

I really rebelled.

It took me a while, but I caught up. At the age of 32 I had been a straight-laced boring conformist who'd never stepped out of line and had never experienced life, in all its its horror as well as its beauty. By the time I reached my 35th birthday I was pretty much ready to start gently pressing the brake pedal. Now I'm only a year away from turning 40 I've got both feet on the brakes and I've pulled the handbrake too.

I don't think you can really say you've lived until you've been arrested, thrown in the back of a paddy waggon, locked in a police cell, sectioned, locked up on a psych ward, been hospitalised, been in critical care / intensive care, been on a high dependency ward, had organ failure, had dialysis, had a horrific injury requiring general anaesthetic and major surgery, become homeless, slept rough, lived in a hostel dorm, run out of money, been physically addicted to drugs and all the other things which came about when I decided to abandon all caution and just do whatever the f**k I wanted for a few years.

I really made up for lost time, but I don't regret any of it. If I have any regrets, it's only that I listened to my parents and I behaved myself and I was sensible. I wish I followed my dreams earlier. I wish I did what I wanted sooner, rather than attempting to please my parents and gain their approval, which turned out to be impossible anyway.

To continue my life in the way I had been living it until a year ago would be quite disgraceful. There's no dignity in being 40+ years old and doing the kind of crazy s**t that I've been doing during a lot of my thirties... in fact I think it's a real shame to see people who haven't been able to stop the madness when they've reached an age where they should supposedly know better.

In light of the fact that I only have a year until my 40th birthday, I am now semi-retired. I have almost fully retired from my life of crime, drugs and insanity. Now, my life consists of a cushy government job which requires very little thought or effort and gives me a lot of disposable income and leisure time. Life is a lot less exhausting without the police cells and the hospital beds.

Over the coming months I'm going to complete my 1-million word writing project, pay off all my debts, replenish my savings and write a new chapter in my life: the comfortable semi-retired existence of a highly paid consultant doing government work; the return of some of the lavishness of the lifestyle I used to enjoy when I was a much younger man.

I am a little sad to say goodbye to the version of me who could say and do whatever he wanted, but the consequences almost killed me on numerous occasions and my luck was going to run out sooner rather than later.

39 isn't the usual age where people start a laid-back life of semi-retirement, but I think it's appropriate in my case to dial back the insanity from 11 to a much more reasonable 3 or 4.

I hope the previous 12 months I'm writing about this time next year are much more becoming of a gentleman celebrating his 40th birthday. I'm pleased that I've got a year to get things sorted in my life, so I don't feel like a total failure.

Happy birthday to me. 39 today.

Tags: #career

This is a story about axe grinding...

I tend to assume that nobody is going to rush to my aid if I'm in distress. I assume that nobody's going to stick up for me. I assume that I'm all alone; isolated. I assume that I'm the only person who's going to fight for justice. I assume that I'm going to have to defend myself. I assume that my enemies will close ranks and use their considerable advantages to pommel me into the ground; to destroy me. I assume that I have little hope of protecting myself: I'm an easy target.

When I opened myself up and made myself vulnerable in the past, it felt like people eagerly exploited the chinks in my armour. Where I had been honest, my disclosures were used against me. Things which had happened to me a long time ago were dredged up as ammunition to attack me with. My self-confidence and self-esteem were attacked and my happiness and contentment were replaced with insecurities which I thought I'd vanquished. The pride that I felt in my achievements was robbed from me and I was made to feel like a failure; worthless.

I tried to re-invent myself: to prove myself capable of leaving all the misery of my old life behind, re-asserting my value as a person. However, I was always afraid that my past might catch up with me: I was always looking over my shoulder and my insecurities remained.

At my lowest ebb I started to have a psychotic episode where I was hearing voices. The voices told me that all my friends, family, former work colleagues and other important people in my life, knew everything bad about me. "They know" said the voices.

At first, I was devastated by the idea that people who I liked and respected would know everything about me which I was ashamed of. This was my very worst fear: that my most shameful experiences were common knowledge.

Then, I shouted back at the voices: "do your worst, you cowardly bullies!" I yelled.

I refused to be blackmailed, threatened and coerced by those who sought to shame and embarrass me. I refused to hide in shame. I refused to give in to the bullies. I refused to let anybody have that power over me: to share my private secrets and be able to shame me.

A few months later, I started to write this blog.

At first, I felt like I was writing my own obituary. I felt like there wasn't a single person who could be trusted to speak about my achievements, and that it would be unfair if my tormenters were given an opportunity to tarnish my reputation because I was dead and not able to defend myself. I wrote about the things that showed me in the best possible light. I wrote about my proudest moments. I wrote about the positive things I wanted people to know about me.

Then, as I contemplated suicide, I realised that such an account would feel fake. It's natural that we tend to remember the good things about people after they're dead, and we don't talk about the bad stuff. It seems disrespectful to trash-talk somebody who's dead, but seeing as I was writing my own obituary, I started to think that I should write about everything: both good and bad.

As I admitted my faults, mistakes, misdemeanours, bad things I'd done, character flaws and numerous other things which painted me in a very unflattering light, I felt quite empowered by the process. Little by little I was taking away the power from the bullies; from those people who had betrayed my confidence and used my secrets against me. Little by little I was destroying the people who had robbed me of my self-esteem and self-confidence.

I used to be afraid about revealing unflattering things about myself, and I would feel regret and self-doubt about whether I'd made the right decision, for days after I made some new public revelation. I wondered whether I was doing the right thing, or whether I was making a foolish mistake that couldn't be reversed.

Then, it became a habit and an obsession to document every bad thing about myself - any secrets; anything which might bring me shame - and write everything down very publicly with unflinching candid honesty. I lost the fear and I lost the filter... I felt happy unburdening myself and there weren't any negative consequences.

My fear of the past catching up with me was replaced by a newfound pride in my identity. I became proud of my achievements again, and I even started to feel proud of things which I had previously kept secret. Telling the world about the adversity which I'd faced made me see that there was something to be proud of, even during my darkest moments. Yes, I was putting myself at huge risk of prejudice, but the more I wrote the more I knew that I was protecting myself from anybody who wanted to label me.

Yes, if you want to call me a homeless alcoholic junkie bankrupt with mental health problems, go ahead, be my guest. If you think you can shame me to the point where I'll allow myself to be marginalised and excluded from society, you simply haven't bothered to do the reading.

My reaction to anybody who patronises and insults me; who sells me short and can't see my full potential; who thinks the worst of me... my reaction to people who treat me like that is pretty strong and forceful. I'm fiercely protective over the pride, self-esteem and self-confidence which have taken such a substantial amount of effort to rebuild. I'm never going to let anybody bully and abuse me again.

I can react in a way that seems disproportionate. I can act in ways that seem very vindictive. I can become quite obsessed about my perceived mistreatment. In actual fact, the way I act is completely to be expected given how long people have been shitting on me and trying to destroy me, and how hard it has been to escape the bullying and abuse of those people and rebuild my life.

When I've gone on the offensive, because I've felt threatened, I've definitely acted in way which could be considered an over-reaction; I've gone too far. I've swiftly and brutally dumped people out of my life at the first hint of trouble, which may have been unnecessary and was done with a level of aggression which I'm not proud of, but it's a defensive reaction. Life's too short for me to get mixed up with any more bullies and abusers: if I decide you're doing me harm, it's goodbye and good riddance and it won't be pretty.

There's a question mark about whether I should hit back or not. I'm certainly asking myself whether it was the right thing to do, to make the bullies and abusers pay for what they did to me. I'd like to be the bigger person, and to just move on and forget the past; move forward positively. I think it's an unfortunate feature of my illness, that when I'm unwell I can get pretty vicious and weaponise my blog to hurt the people who've hurt me. I don't think I should do that.

I'm not claiming to be a saint... that's the whole point about my writing: I'm writing about my flaws and mistakes as much as I'm writing about anything. I'm trying to figure out how to get myself into a comfortable situation where I'm happy and confident enough to let any mean, unkind words just bounce harmlessly off me; rise above all the shit.

However, be warned: if you pick on the bullied kid thinking they're a soft target, one of these days you're going to get an explosive reaction; you're going to unleash hell.

Tags: #bullying

This is a story about the right to be forgotten...

If you're transgender, you might want all records expunged which could link you to the gender you had previously identified as. Similarly, if you're recovering from an illness or being otherwise rehabilitated, you don't really want the whole world to know you were sick. We have specific laws which stop people from revealing a person's old name or other identity details, after they have changed gender. We have specific laws which allow criminals to be fully rehabilitated after their convictions are 'spent' - nobody is allowed to know that they were in prison after a certain number of years have elapsed since they "served their time". Our medical histories are private and confidential, and to reveal details of somebody's medical records would be a criminal act.

We work very hard to ensure that people's entire future isn't jeopardised and prejudiced by things that happened in the past. We have laws that specifically forbid discrimination and other laws which prevent questions being asked; e.g. requests for information which would be an invasion of privacy and would likely be used against a person in a discriminatory manner.

Things get a bit harder when we start to talk about things that we ourselves have somehow made public. If you decided to put your full name, date of birth, place of birth, where you work and what you ate for breakfast onto Facebook or Twitter, should you suffer the consequences for your naïvety when sharing such things on the internet?

Sometimes the internet doesn't forget.

Google has quietly dropped access to its caches - you used to be able to see copies of a webpage that Google had stored, so you could see things that had been deleted or changed - you can't do that anymore.

In theory, if you put something up on the internet which you later regretted, removing it should eventually mean that it's digitally deleted and therefore it's as if it never existed - it's not like a newspaper or a book, where ink and paper were combined to create a permanent physical record. If some of the 1s and 0s of binary data get changed on the internet, it's virtually impossible to prove that any data has been deleted or amended at all. I could forge a copy of any webpage I wanted, saying whatever I wanted it to say - how is it possible to prove that a copy of a webpage is a bona fide snapshot of what it looked like at a certain point in time? It's impossible.

There are parts of the internet that have been copied so many times onto so many different computers that the archives will probably never be lost. "Blockchain" is a buzzword that gets thrown around a lot at the moment, which is just another word for a load of data which is held on loads of computers, all connected together on the internet. This is what we understand to be an "immutable" record of how a piece of data looked at a certain point in time, because there's consensus amongst multiple sources, such that it's highly likely that a person did write something on a certain date, back in the early days of the internet, preserved in the archives... or that a certain transaction took place, preserved in the blockchain. However, the internet is now far too large for there to be any kind of archive of everything, let alone multiple copies which could prove conclusively what a webpage looked like on a certain date.

Thus it's almost but not quite possible to airbrush history on the internet. The internet is somewhat amnesic.

I've tried to avoid deleting anything from my website or editing stuff that I've published, but occasionally I think that discretion is the better part of valour, and I modify or delete things. Often times I regret deleting and modifying things... there always seems to be a consequence for removing information which could hold people accountable... better to hold your ground and simply take a position of truth and honesty, I think.

We have laws which protect people who are honest and truthful. Journalism would not be able to survive the libel lawsuits if we didn't enshrine the right to speak truthfully into law. In the UK we don't have absolute freedom of speech like in the United States, but we do have the right to speak and write provided we speak truthfully and our opinions are the fair and reasonable ones that any person would be likely to share, given the same set of facts.

My strange crusade of the past few years has been to write with candid unflinching honesty, everything about myself, both good and bad. Sometimes however, I've had to write about things that are upsetting me, which has involved writing about other people and sometimes about organisations. It's difficult to know where to draw a line. If I've learned anything in the last few years, it's that 99% of people have completely different feelings about risk and privacy from me. I'm sacrificing my privacy and taking a huge risk, which most people don't want to do, so I need to be careful I don't accidentally co-opt anybody into my personal crusade. It should be noted that I take extreme care not to identify anybody or share anything private which could be linked to any individual.

Thankfully, most people don't give a shit about anybody other than themselves, so I've been able to write pretty much whatever the hell I want and nobody gives a damn.

Tags: #writing #privacy #socialmedia

This is a story about boredom...

As if living alone in a city where I only have 2 friends [who are completely unconnected with my work] wasn't boring enough, I at least had to stumble to the local corner shop to buy the various unhealthy snacks and bottles of wine, which were the main constituents of my diet for the last month. Now, I'm in a very bland hotel room and I imagine that boredom is going to drive me to drink... not that I take much persuasion.

Aspects of normal domestic life, such as cooking, cleaning, doing the washing up, taking the bins out, laundry, watering the plants and other things that would occupy a little of my time midweek, are now going to have to be done at the weekend. Perhaps you're envious of me, having my 3 meals a day cooked for me, and having my bedroom and bathroom cleaned and tidied by somebody else every day. I'd have my shirts ironed by somebody else too, but at £3.90 each it seems a little profligate.

As I write, the air conditioning unit squeals and whirrs to my left, while the traffic noise of the nearby motorway is clearly audible to my right. Whenever you change your sleeping arrangements, it always takes a while to get used to the new noises, bed, pillows, bedding: an unsettling change from the familiarity of home, no matter how much of a seasoned traveller you are.

I'm in the land of the industrial estate; the science park; the new enterprise development area - basically loads of offices and warehouses. I'm in the stomping ground of the sales rep, with the car park full of shiny new company cars and the hotel rooms full of men and women who travel all over the country for a living. There are no shops round here. There is no local life - I decided to book a hotel that was as close as possible to the office, until I've gotten to know the city a little bit better.

There's a pub next door to the hotel, which is presumably where I'm going to eat tonight. There's also a bar in the hotel. It's all a little too tempting to camp out with a book while tipping pint after pint of beer into my greedy face.

Back in the hotel room there's a TV and of course I can watch Netflix etc. I guess it's a comfortable enough existence, but it's going to get pretty boring and monotonous. Also, it's not like I'm going to be socialising and making local friends: everybody here is transient like me; just passing through.

I'm killing time even writing this. Of course I want to go to the pub and look at the menu; choose my food. Of course, I don't really need an excuse to start getting drunk... it'll occupy the time.

I do have a friend in the city who I've known for a long time, but he's always busy doing fit and active things: at the climbing wall or the canoeing centre. His life is filled with purpose, energy and enthusiasm, where all mine seemed to just seep away over the past few years. I used to be obsessed with extreme sports and I was a total adrenalin junkie, but now I seem to be just a sad, lonely, functional alcoholic.

It feels horribly wasteful to spend the best part of the next year simply treading water; concentrating on earning money and otherwise parking my life; being drunk all the time to minimise the amount of time I'm fully conscious. If life had a fast-forward button, I'd gladly press it down and hold it for at least 6 months; I'm wishing my life away.

There's an idiom that springs to mind:

The sun is over the yardarm

I'm trying to figure out what's a respectable time for me to abandon this bland hotel room and go to the pub and get drunk, armed with the excuse that I need to have my evening meal.

The boredom of my life seems to have asserted itself in my writing. I'm ashamed at how boring this blog post is, but I'm going to publish it anyway. I promise I'll write something more interesting tomorrow.

Tags: #career #boredom

This is a story about failure...

How many times have I bounced back from a situation that looked dire? It was getting so repetitive - the cycle of boom & bust - that I decided to start documenting things, properly; I decided to commit to attempting to write every day for a year. If I could write every day for a year, that meant I had the discipline to be a writer; I could at least achieve something.

I didn't set out to write for 3 years when I started. I didn't set out to write a million words. I didn't set out to build a Twitter following, get likes on my Facebook page and crawl up the Google search rankings. I didn't know why I was really writing, except that it was a kind of heartbeat: if I was writing, then it meant I was alive.

I haven't achieved my arbitrary goals yet, but I've had some major setbacks. The biggest setbacks have been self-inflicted, I expect.

The gaps where I haven't written tell their own story. When there have been periods when I haven't been writing every day, it's fair to assume that my life was being decimated, usually at my own hands.

It's not a simple case of self-sabotage, when things don't go well in my life and there are problems which appear - to those who don't look too carefully - to be problems of my own making.

I've lashed out. I've written things which, in a different state of mind, I'd have never written. I've written huge amounts which, with retrospect, is quite regrettable. However, I've always tried not to edit and censor. If I'm feeling a certain way at a certain time, I've continued to write in the same style and with the same unflinching honesty, and I've revealed hidden parts of my character - my personality - that have not been very flattering. Perhaps my character and personality are not always the same. Depending on how tired, hungry, scared, lonely and myriad other things I'm feeling will obviously affect my behaviour, and so my writing will contain periods where those strong feelings are expressing themselves through my writing. I'm an open book, and some of the pages - maybe even whole chapters - are not very nice at all.

We all know that families, far from being nonjudgemental places full of unconditional love, can be a battleground where long-held grudges, anger at perceived injustices, shame, regret, secrets, lies and a toxic mix of everything else that goes on behind closed doors, gets thrashed out in quite a violent way, even if the violence is not physical. You know that the way your mother can just look at you in a certain way and you know what she's thinking: she's judging you, and she's disapproving and you know that you're not the only one who's getting the message loud and clear. Malicious information circulates around the family. You can be the golden child or the black sheep. Your image is not yours to own, and nobody can decimate you like your own family.

Relationships - all relationships - have an element of conflict; adversarial negotiation. Each party is trying to best serve their own interests. Whether it's you trying to get a pay rise out of the boss, or whether it's you trying to seduce a lover, there's conflict as much as there's co-operation.

I've lost all my school-friends so often, because of being moved schools 8 times, that it's carried over into adult life and I've struggled to maintain any friends from city to city, from job to job... there's never any continuity. I'm always starting all over again, from nothing.

But, it's not nothing; I'm not starting from nothing. The internet has allowed me to keep a presence in the lives of those who want to stay in touch. The internet's 'social gathering place' has moved around. Websites have closed. Some groups of us migrated from one place to another. I've retained a little continuity.

Having this website - my own ego-domain if you want to be aggressively insulting about it - does at least mean I live somewhere consistent no matter where the wind has blown me. Consistency is important. That's why it upsets me when I get inconsistent. When I skip days. When there are gaps in my writing. If I'm not writing regularly, people think I'm flakey and unreliable: this ceases to be the best place to find out if I'm alive and well or not.

The reasons for losing whole chunks of my blog and whole blocks of followers are complex, but it really upsets me; it hurts me. The reasons why people drift away are more obvious: when I start lashing out and showing an unpleasant side to my character, or when I become inconsistent, it's only natural that people would be turned off by that; be unwilling to use their precious spare time to keep up with a pretty repetitive and grim story, which is extremely self-absorbed and self-pitying. I can only blame myself and cringe with embarrassment at what I've put people through; those who've stuck with me for any length of time.

When everything else in my life is shifting sands I take comfort in knowing that I've travelled a long way on this writing journey. It's been a useful exercise in terms of staying in contact with people who care, and making new friends. It's been a useful exercise in proving to myself that I can do something which takes time, patience, commitment and dedication to achieve.

When I've tried to use what I've built maliciously, it's always backfired spectacularly. In theory, I have leverage; influence. In practice, I'm simply exposed and vulnerable, and if I'm saying and doing bad things, I'm more exposed than you can possibly imagine; I'm more scrutinised; I'm subject to the wisdom of the crowd, which is kinda dangerous for somebody who's so isolated - I very rarely get to sanity-check what I'm thinking with another soul, before it pours out onto the pages of this website.

Perhaps my perceived setbacks are my comeuppance for the times I've lashed out, which have been far too frequent, especially of late. Every blow I seek to strike seems to glance off my target and land back upon me a hundredfold. Why should I expect anything else, when my whole soul - my whole psyche - is laid bare for all to see? Why wouldn't those who've already done me harm use this repository of my every weakness against me? I've loaded the gun and handed it to my enemies, haven't I? I've provided the weapons; the ammunition.

I don't feel too sorry for myself. I feel like I've brought misfortune on myself, insofar as the setbacks I perceive with where I've wanted to take this writing project.

It still hurts though, to know that I've lost pieces of something that's so valuable to me, even if it only exists "virtually". If you want to hurt me, this is definitely the place to do it.

The challenge for me now is to try to turn things around. Can I redeem myself? Can I make sense of any of this and give it any meaning, beyond an angry bitter rant? Can I leave any kind of legacy other than the ravings of a lunatic?

Tags: #writing #socialmedia

This is a story about not going anywhere...

The question of free will - whether we have it or not - is one that often troubles me. The problem with assuming that we have absolute freedom of choice at all times, is that it does not take reality into consideration. Often times when we see people who have been affected by a natural disaster - or even a man-made one - we might naïvely ask "why don't they just move?". It must seem fairly obvious that a low-lying country like Bangladesh is regularly going to suffer terrible flooding, and in the long run it's going to be underwater due to rising sea levels. Surely people - with their free will - should just do the rational thing and move somewhere better than Bangladesh?

To now talk about not being able to get out of bed because I felt depressed, when I've just been talking about some of the world's poorest people, whose whole country is under threat of being wiped out, is rather vomit-inducing, so I'm going to need to find a segue which doesn't imply that I consider my first-world-problems to be comparable.

Why this obsession with comparison anyway? Why should we compare ourselves to a starving African child but shouldn't we compare ourselves with a professional footballer? Who gets to choose who it's right to compare ourselves to, and who it's wrong to compare ourselves to? Who decides that?

I often think about that one person - the only man or woman on the whole planet - who can genuinely claim in all honesty that their life is worse than anybody else's. It's obvious that one single individual exists at any one time, who by all objective and subjective measures, everyone would agree is the only person in the world who can feel sorry for themselves, because they're the most wretched and unfortunate; they're suffering the most. Nobody can say to that one person "things could be worse" because they really couldn't be. For that one person, none of the oft-quoted platitudes are applicable.

Again, am I inducing vomit, talking about the world's most unfortunate human being - the one who's suffering the most - in the same piece of writing where at some point, presumably, I'm going to segue into talking about myself, which implies that I'm comparing my own suffering with that of the world's current #1 sufferer, who obviously must be suffering unimaginably, given the very great suffering that the bulk of humanity endures.

Let's return to the troubling question of free will. Given free will - absolute freedom of choice at all times - why choose to have children in war-torn and disaster affected countries that live in dire poverty? Why choose to carry on living, when your life is full of misery and suffering? Are these not two sides of the same coin? Who wants to watch their children suffer and die? Are we not certain indeed, that all life eventually leads to pain, suffering and death quite naturally anyway? Who wants to grow old and infirm? Who wants to be sick and senile? This isn't one of my antinatalistic rants, this is a genuine puzzle to me: in a world of free will, who would knowingly inflict this moral suffering onto their offspring, and indeed continue to suffer themselves, when it seems far more logical to just kill yourself - quickly and painlessly - at the first opportunity.

Given absolute freedom of choice, why did you choose your mediocre life, with all its suffering and stress? Why didn't you choose to be the world's most attractive quintillionaire and king/queen of the universe? It seems rather stupid of you to have used your free will to make all the choices that have led you to the point where you're just waiting for you and all the children you've created, to die in suffering and pain.

The fact that my Tuesday didn't happen seems quite irrelevant in the face of the question: "why don't I just kill myself?".

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about a worrying disappearance...

My flat's a bit of a nightmare really. The landlord slides the garage door up and down all day long, and seems to be endlessly sawing up bits of wood, then he stomps up and down the stairs, slamming the door - all of this is within a few feet of me in my lounge. At the back of the house, the bedroom is basically a viewing gallery for perverts - the blinds are about as much use as opera glasses.

I don't want to disturb anybody, but I don't want to be disturbed either - catch 22.

Ventilating the front of the apartment is OK, but to keep the temperature down the best thing to do is keep the curtains closed at the moment. Ventilating the back is impossible, save for setting up a load of seats for prime viewing position into the only one of 2 rooms which most people want privacy in: bedroom & bathroom.

The heat is a real problem, but so is the as-yet undealt with problem of getting some air circulating.

At the moment I'm sleeping on the sofa and spending the days on the sofa with the curtains drawn, which somehow feels like I'm doing something I shouldn't be. It also seems to announce to the world that I'm at home, but perhaps sleeping during the day... I feel I should 'act normal'.

It's driven me a bit crazy to be honest, feeling like I can't be in my bedroom during the day (or at night with privacy) and like I can't have the lounge curtains drawn during the day, or sleep on the sofa at night... it's all behaviour that would raise eyebrows; provoke speculation.

The gap in my writing has been valid cause for concern. I feel so hyper-sensitised to all the noises around me, and I've been struggling not to attach my own negative interpretation of what I hear: "oh it's terrible" I hear somebody say, and "what are we going to do?" and I presume it's something to do with me. If I hear a stamp on the floor from the neighbour above, I presume my attempts to be as quiet as mouse have failed, and I'm annoying them.

The bathroom, with its lack of windows, and equidistance from ever-present landlord and neighbour who I can hear above, has become my place of refuge. It has a door with a lock - nobody can just barge in unannounced. Also, unlimited cold water.

One thing that's very difficult to do though is to sleep on the cold floor tiles of a bathroom, in the pitch black, with only a towel as both blanket and something to lie on. It's disorienting - a sink appears out of nowhere; you reach for the door handle, but realise you're 90 degrees out of alignment; the shape of the floor space doesn't seem well thought out for a person lying on those cold tiles for many hours.

There are 3 legitimate entrances into my apartment, and I sometimes just want to feel like I know what's coming a little bit in advance. Last night, somebody was walking on my windowsills for f'cks sake, which is unnerving, but not as unnerving as having 3 doors that your ever-present landlord might decide to walk through at some unpredictable moment.

Anyway, I had something to eat, and I've not been too bad with the dehydration thing, having now found that the best thing to do is take a cooling shower. I do need to air out the revolting sweatiness though.

How I get back to any semblance of normality seems an impossible task at the moment, but I suppose with time and patience I'll get things sorted. I'd cleared half my TODO list, but now it's bigger than when I started, and I worry about the logistics of the things I can't do myself. Even the logistics of the things I can do myself are complex, given that my whole life is on public display, barring the bathroom.

I'm sorry for severing all contact, but I can't wrap my head around what next and when. There's home life to sort, I need to be rested and ready for my next opportunity and then there's the exhaustion of dealing with all the phone-calls and emails; interviews; requests for documents, forms to be filled in, new office, new team... blah blah blah. I don't even know whether to go for something reasonably close to home, but there's no way I want to be commuting 1hr+ every day. No point thinking about it while things have rather been in crisis at home, and there's enough to be done sorting myself and my apartment.

It'll be just my luck... after all the days and days of waiting for the worst to happen, the sky will fall in and my world will implode just as I've started to take care of myself a bit more. I've stopped letting my days be dominated by either trying to hold my breath and tiptoe around, or move to whichever part of my home feels most secure; least surprises; least peeping Toms. It'll be just my luck that now I'm no longer living with the anticipation of the most awfully intrusive home invasion, today or tomorrow - before I've had time to sort things - the dreaded event(s) will happen.

What a waste of a summer. What a waste of an opportunity to keep moving forwards without losing too much momentum. That's the fragility I've been talking about for so long; that's the bomb going off, after I've been talking about it ticking for a long time. Did I precipitate all this? Is it all my own fault? Try to remember that rebuilding an entire life from the ground up is hard, and without the usual safety nets of local social network and family - let alone simple familiarity with the area - meant that removing a couple of key building blocks brought the whole Jenga tower crashing down, although - in theory - there exist superhuman people who can endlessly move house, move area, make new friends, get new jobs, get a partner, get a hobby, stay fit & healthy and turn up and work their full-time job, week after week, month after month... relentless.

This isn't much of a holiday; in fact quite the opposite, but there we go... I'm still present, at least bodily. I'm not sure I want to live if the next bit of shitty luck - the thing I've been dreading - rips out another one or two of those Jenga blocks.

Wish me luck, that I have an unmolested couple of days and I can start to get on top of things; that the sky doesn't cave in now of all the bloody times it could've done it.

Interestingly, when that sharp knife's been at my throat  - at least 3 or 4 times - ready to be plunged into my jugular vein and carotid arteries the moment my sanctuary was breached, things went quiet and I thought clearly... the madness and the terror ended, and the immediate threat of a life-destroying event disappeared. I took a cooling shower, put on some clean clothes and started to look after myself. It's as though things have to get to that point: if you're not prepared to die, you're gonna have unimaginably awful events happen. It's the Schrödinger paradox, except I'm the cat - in all the universes where the the worst happened, I killed myself.

I'm not optimistic or positive. In fact, I'm anticipating that things are going to be very very very hard for what will feel like an eternity, but for those who've been worrying about me committing suicide, it's perhaps been well over 24 hours since that blade was lined up in position, and I don't feel suicidal now that I'm not quite as trapped and cornered as I was... famous last words. In short: I'm safe at the moment.

I wish I was writing regularly. I wish my writing quality hadn't gone to s**t because of mania, sleep deprivation and general malnourishment. I wish... I wish... I wish. But, there was an inevitability: cut enough of those slender threads and I'll fall further than most would; further than you'd expect, because you take for granted the social fabric you're woven into... it's almost tempting to abandon the attempt to return to wealthy middle-class life, because at least when I was homeless I was part of a community. How ironic, to immediately want to go back to those homeless days when a couple of bits of my 'respectable life' were lost.

I'll try and write again, and write less. Little and often.

Anyway, still here.

Tags: #homeless #apartment #landlord #paranoia #privacy #mania #suicide

This is a story about bullies and abusers...

I only have a couple of months left to go and I'll have hopefully achieved my ambition of writing a million words in 3 years - the world's longest suicide note - and the most comprehensive, candid and unflinching glimpse inside the mind of a dead man walking.

"We didn't know" and "he seemed fine" and "what could we have done differently?" are the kinds of things that haunt the people after somebody has committed suicide.

Well, there are no excuses here - I've made my very best attempt to write on a daily basis, all the things - most of which are very practical - which have driven me to attempt suicide. Eventually, I will die at my own hands.

To imagine that there's a doctor, psychiatrist or other charlatan out there who's got the f**king cure, means you're more delusional and insane than I am. Take a good look around you - things are getting worse not better; more and more people are feeling depressed; suicide has gotten so bad that it's the number one thing that's gonna kill a man like me, yet there are no pills that work, psychological treatments which are available to anybody but the extremely wealthy or indeed any offer of safe sanctuary for those of us who can't guarantee our own safety... we're a danger to ourselves. Check the data - we are suffering an epidemic of mental health problems. Every piece of objective data you can gather says the same thing: so-called 'medicine' is not making people better, and things are getting worse and worse.

Writing this blog is my therapy. It's the rock I'm clinging onto, shipwrecked in a storm as the rain lashes down and giant waves threaten to drown me. This blog gives me pride in what I've achieved, despite the adversity I've faced. More than anything else, this blog is MY PRECIOUS ARTWORK which is 90% complete, but it's fragile... don't fuck with it.

I was attacked by proxy. A horrible person got a muscly bully to invade my home and force me - with threats and intimidation - to delete quite a lot of blog posts. That coward is using their macho friends, colleagues - whoever - to coerce me to submit to their will. You can beat the living shit out of me if you like, vandalise my car, smash up my stuff, but don't f**k with my motherf**king art. If you're hiding behind your muscly bullies, thinking you can fuck my art up and you're safe because you're protected by your macho 'protectors' then you've underestimated how much it's hurting me... beyond a certain point you'll have hurt me so much that I don't care if your thugs kill me; the treats and intimidation won't matter any more. You're such a coward and you're so horrible for trying to f**k up the one thing that's most precious to me, via your proxies.

Hands off my art. It means so much to me that I'm prepared to suffer whatever the consequences are for standing up to the bullies and those who threaten me; invade my home; intimdate and force me - literally standing over me making threats - to destroy my art.

I'm not sure how many thousands of words were lost when my home was invaded and I was threatened, intimidated and forced by a macho proxy to delete parts of my artwork, but even a single word is too many. I was forced to delete a picture of a sausage, for f**k's sake. Having that level of control over somebody's 3-year project, while thinking you're safely protected and your macho proxies are doing your dirty work... that's despicable. Words don't come easily. 1 million words don't come easily. 3 years on a single project is not easy. If you f**k with it you're hurting me more than you can possibly imagine.

If you think there's a vindictive vengefulness bubbling under the surface here, think about how you'd feel if somebody took a knife to one of your children and left a scar across their face - that's how I feel about this artwork being f**ked with. Every time I look at this blog, I'm reminded that there's a scar... when a thug forced their way into my home and threatened and intimidated me, and wrecked my artwork.

I'm a desperate man with nothing to lose. All I've got is my art - my 3-year project - so the hurt you cause me if you f**k with it is incalculable.

Tags: #relationships #art #writing

This is a story about putting down roots...

It looks like the smartest short-term decision for me right now is to go back to London. Third time lucky, maybe.

London was amazing the first time, so I guess third time lucky is not really accurate.

London was pretty amazing when I went back, but my damn acrimonious divorce and evil ex-wife conspired to disrupt and destroy my chances of re-establishing myself back in the capital. I'd reconnected with lots of old friends, incorporated a company and had started doing business. The last thing I needed was the distraction of the divorce, so I went and sold my house to a cash buyer - I had the sale organised within a few hours, and should have completed with cash in the bank in about 6 weeks.... except my evil ex-wife sabotaged the whole thing and put it back on the market with the worst estate agent she could find, and accepted an offer - for the same amount as I'd already agreed with the cash buyer - from some clueless idiots who were part of some horrible chain.

Said same evil ex-wife then tried to screw me over with the division of the house sale proceeds, which was a more than fair and reasonable 50:50 split. The contracts had been exchanged and the deposit had been paid. I was quite happy to have us both get sued if she wanted to drag things on any longer... she'd already delayed everything by 3 or 4 months. My final signature was needed for completion and if I didn't give it, we'd have breached our contract. So, I didn't give it until I had it in writing that she'd take her 50% and let me get the hell on with my life. She's an idiot, because I'd have gladly paid more if she'd just let me get on with rebuilding my life in London.

So, that changed the complexion of my second jaunt back to the capital completely. Gone was the momentum of my new business. Gone was my new girlfriend. Gone was a holiday I'd been planning on treating myself to. Gone was every bit of optimism and energy, wasted on worrying about cashflow and legal wranglings with one of the most thoroughly unpleasant individuals I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with.

I never quite caught up. You need a lot of money behind you if you're going to get ahead in London. If you haven't got the working capital - the comfortable financial cushion - you'll never be able to handle the challenges of the city AND fret about money.

Out of pride and stubbornness, I tried and failed and tried and failed again. I kept almost but not quite reaching the point where I was financially comfortable, only for the stress and effort of it all to finally scupper me, plus some bad luck too. I lost a contract simply because I refused to kiss the arse of one guy who thought he was indispensable. They terminated my contract, and then the guy who did it got the sack for getting rid of me. Another time, I was just too exhausted from living in a hostel while working on one of the most demanding projects - and indeed important projects - I've ever worked on in my life. I got myself out of the hostel and into my own apartment, but the stress and exhaustion of it made me very unwell. I tried to get myself sacked while I was on holiday in San Francisco, so I could stay for longer, but they didn't take the bait - I got sacked as soon as I walked back into the office, which I knew I would.

I took a shitty contract in a shitty part of Greater London. That was awful, but I did it out of necessity.

Finally, I got a great contract, great team, great project, great company... then my kidneys failed and I was on emergency dialysis on a high dependency ward for weeks. DVT in my leg. Nerve damage. Unbelievable pain.

That was me done for. Broke. Game over. I was lucky to escape bankruptcy.

Now, I've had a little taste of small town provincial life, and it's OK. I liked it when I could drive to work and walk to my girlfriend's house. I liked it when my income was 20 times as much as my rent, and I was living like a king... or at least I'd have been able to if the gravy train had continued to run on it's scheduled timetable.

There's no opportunities here. It's a small place. I was lucky to have a few months when I had it all, but I always knew that when it came to an end, there wouldn't be anything else here for me that's comparable.

No girlfriend. No job.

Gone off the place a bit.

I had a look at what London has to offer and I'll be increasing my already obscene income by 50% if I go back there. Make hay while the sun shines. Get rich quick, or die trying. The number of jobs I'd be a perfect match for was quite staggering... so reassuring to know that I've got the right skills that still command such high remuneration.

There's nothing round here. At least, nothing for somebody who's trying to get ahead. I'm sick of being behind. I'm sick of playing catch-up.

If I go back to London and keep this Welsh seaside town as my primary residence, I can live on expenses - my rent, meals, travel... all that will be reducing my tax bill as well as giving me a lovely lifestyle. No more shitty AirBnBs and pot noodles. I can have my own little central London apartment and eat takeaway every night. I can take black cabs everywhere and even reclaim the expenses of having my suits dry cleaned, shirts laundered and shoes shone. What the hell am I doing, having to cook, clean and do laundry, in this sleepy seaside town where I don't know anybody except for my ex-girlfriend and some of her friends, who all hate me.

I can go on Tinder and there will be gazillions of drop-dead gorgeous highly educated well travelled professional career women, who are pretty up-front about what they want. Tinder in this Welsh seaside town has 15 identical looking Snapchat filter photos of women who look like they've put make up on with a trowel and can't string a sentence together, and then that's it - you've swiped them all left, and there's no more to swipe.

I shouldn't do the place down, because it makes sense if you've got your wife & kids sorted and mortgage paid off, plus a big fat wedge of cash in the bank, but it makes no sense at all for me to be here, single and still struggling to get back to a position of financial security.

So, at some point I'm going to push the button and the calls will come flooding in and the contract negotiations will start, and before I know it I'll be on the train back to London, except I'm not slumming it this time.

When I sign on the dotted line for my third attempt at making things work in London, I'll be going to live in a serviced apartment, and I'll be living there for the duration of the contract. I've got my little seaside retreat - my second home - where I can leave most of my stuff, but I'll also have a permanent base in the capital, where I can leave my suits and shirts and smart shoes and everything else I need midweek.

If I hesitate, I'll just burn through all the cash I've managed to tuck away during the last 6 months of nonstop hard work. If I hesitate, I'll lose all the ground I've gained. If I hesitate, I'll lose momentum. If I hesitate, self-doubt will creep in and I'll dither and dawdle.

I might be sick of moving, but as long as I'm able to keep on sending my invoices every month, and every month my net worth moves rapidly from the negative to the positive, there's a tiny glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. I might be sick of proving myself over and over and over again, and having the stress of yet more reference checks, security vetting, credit checks and criminal records checks, but in London if one contract doesn't work out, there are literally hundreds of others. If one relationship doesn't work out, the London is literally jam-packed with mind-blowingly beautiful intelligent women who have dedicated themselves to their careers, and are making themselves known to be single via the Tinder app.

I have friends in London. I know my way around. There's a drinking/socialising culture, instead of the "going home to the wife and kids" culture of the provinces. What am I doing here in this place where I suddenly feel so out of place?

In the blink of an eye, I'll be available again - back on the market.

In 2 or 3 weeks, I'll be meeting my new team and learning about my new project; my next opportunity.

It's actually quite exciting. It's a fresh start in a place I already know and love. It's another opportunity to stick two fingers up at my ex-wife for ruining my chance to have a clean break and rebuild my life back in London. It's another roll of the dice - maybe I'll be lucky this time and I'll prove I can make it work. I've certainly tipped the odds massively in my favour.

I'm sick at the moment, of course. My mania must be plain as day to anybody who has any dealings with me. My colleagues kindly and patiently indulge my endless stream of ideas and words, delivered so fast they can't keep up, but it's good timing: things are late and everybody's stressed. To the uneducated eye, it just looks like I care a lot about the end of the project, as opposed to being in a fully-blown manic episode in the middle of an office full of mild-mannered civil servants, who normally move at glacial speed, as is the way of the public sector.

I'm sick, but I haven't pissed anybody off or burnt any bridges yet. I'm sick, but I do remember to shut up and try to act normal once in a while. I'm sick, but I obviously made enough of a good impression that I'm being given the benefit of the doubt.

I'm sick and I'm sick of moving, but move I must. I must move and I must maintain momentum.

Tags: #london #career #divorce #relationships #sex #money #debt #wales #bipolar