This is a story about data science...

What the hell is big data anyway? Well, some companies - particularly well-known dot coms - have amassed huge data sets capturing the online behaviour of their millions of users: particularly the journeys those users took to discover products, discover and view media - and to see advertising of course - before eventually making purchases. If you like that, you'll love this.

Did you ever think that Google is kinda clairvoyant in being able to predict the question you're asking it before you even finished typing it - its suggested searches are almost always on the money. That's because Google has such a ridiculously huge dataset, while the range of dumb questions asked by idiots is quite narrow, such that Google 'knows' what you're asking it before you even finished typing "where do babie...?". Yes. So many other people asked that very same question before you.

With big datasets, there comes the temptation to believe that we can predict a person's future. If we see a high degree of correlation between rates of absenteeism at school and exam grades in our data, it might be tempting to assume that high absentee rates are a good predictor of poor exam grades. However, correlation is not causation, and it's entering dangerous territory to attempt to predit future outcomes, just because there are statistically significant findings in our historical data.

The financial services industry is particularly interested in your past behaviour as a debtor, as a predictor of your future likelihood of reliably making your loan repayments. Your credit score is - in essence - a number which tells loan sharks how much of a compliant and obedient slave you are.

You will spend the most healthy, energetic and productive years of your life, making student loan repayments, mortgage payments, car loan repayments, overdraft payments, credit card payments, store card payments, loan payments and other regular instalments, payable in return for the privilege of being alive. Try living your life without a mobile phone and some sort of internet connection for a few months, and you'll soon see that there's a high price to be paid for the oxygen you breathe.

The burden of debt is not trivial.

Debt is natural to us, whereas altruism is not. Every act of apparent altruism can be unmasked as a selfish act, when analysed using statistical methods across large datasets. Unfortunately, your momma's so-called unconditional love for children and your daddy's obsession with sex, are two sides of the same coin. Your poppa wanted to shoot his love snot and your dear mother wanted to receive it, with the genes of both individuals aiming for a pregnancy - neither asexual partner can claim that they were intent on giving the so-called "gift" of life. Your parents were simply obeying the will of their genes, in much the same way that any mould, slime, bacteria, worms, fleas etc. will multiply with impunity, given favourable environmental conditions. Sex is sold, not given freely.

We often think life conforms to some kind of natural order and mistakenly hold the belief that there is stability and equilibrium in the world, when in fact the very polar opposite is true: the world is an erratic and unpredictable place, with evidence of continuous events considered cataclysmically catastrophic for whole species, with or without human intervention. We are prone to succumb to the gullible belief in the divine right of kings, and law & order, such that the majority of us meekly comply with the oppression of the many by the few and our general exploitation. There is nothing natural at all about a handful of individuals tyrannising and enslaving so many.

The so-called miracle of the information age - often called the fourth industrial revolution - can perhaps be unmasked as nothing more than a fancy way to tell you what other products you might like to buy after making a purchase. It's unquestionably true that Amazon will make a very accurate prediction of something else you'd like to squander your dollars on, but to suggest that this advances the human condition in a positive direction is demonstrably ridiculous and downright wrong.

I can't really imagine a worse time to be alive.

While the threat of death from diahorrea or a bacterial infection - arising from the tiniest of skin punctures - has receded dramatically, we must be mindful that the single biggest cause of death amongst people like myself, is not road traffic accidents, drug overdoses, cancer, or any disease. Suicide. Suicide is the biggest killer of men like me. Suicide is preventable. What kind of advanced society are we living with, when the thing which kills most of its biggest economic contributors, is 100% preventable? Does that sound like an advanced society to you; a paradise?

Fundamentally, you've been reduced to a handful of numbers from the very moment you were ejected from your mother's womb, and your destiny was foretold.

Birth weight is the number one best predictor of your life outcome. Hands down. No argument.

Second, household income.

Right there, before you even got to suck on your mother's titty, are two things which have absolutely nothing to do with you or your life choices, or even your unique DNA. You could have the greatest genes given to a baby in the history of humanity, but because you were underweight and born into a poor family, you're destined to be used, abused, forgotten and discarded, as a minimum-wage McJob worker who can barely make your rent payments.

Statistically, we can predict whether you're going to get those all-important "A" grades, graduate university and enter a highly paid profession. Statistically, we can predict whether you're going to reliably repay a big mortgage, and hence be able to buy a big house to fill full of genetic clones of yourself. Before you've even sat down to take a single exam, big data has predicted that you're going to be a no-good washed-up good-for-nothing piece of worthless human trash.

Surely there's been a mistake.

Is it right that 98% of humanity will wake up each morning with a heavy heart, knowing that they are heavily in debt and they have been economically enslaved? Even those who did not directly incur the debt - by knowingly and willingly signing contracts - have incurred massive amounts of financial burden, because their governments borrowed against their predicted economic potential. We are sold into slavery before we're even born, because of our anticipated life-preservation instincts.

Economics, statistics and data science are indeed dismal sciences, which are corrupted by financial incentives to tease out the most efficient ways of exploiting humanity. We are ill-equipped to deal with the vast investment in the academic pursuit of knowledge, which equips the wealthiest elites with a suite of tools to push our buttons and make us dance to the beat of their drum.

If we are looking for a single cause of the epidemic of mental health problems which sweeps the globe, we should look no further than the vast quantities of data which have been gathered on us, and the treasure trove of insights which can be exploited by those who are so lacking in ethical contraint, that they're prepared to consign the majority of us to a living hell, in pursuit of material gain.

Yes, it's quite possible to use every bit of data available to predict the life outcome of an innocent child - a blank canvas - before they start school, and to consign them to the reject bin... but should we even look at that dangerous data? I say that the temptation to believe that we hold good predictors is too great, leading us to playing god, ruining countless lives.

Past performance is not a guide to the future.

Tags: #computing #debt

This is a story about nerve damage...

As you can see from the picture above, I had a very bad injury to my left leg. What you might not know is that the massive lesion to my leg healed perfectly. Some nerves were severed when a piece of mirror glass guillotined its way through my shin, but the nerves managed to regrow. The severed tendons and muscle was sewn back together and my leg had completely recovered.

Then I got DVT (deep-vein thrombosis).

The first I knew about the DVT was that my ankle looked a bit swollen and my foot went numb. It was the fact I hadn't needed to urinate for several days which prompted me to go to hospital. On the day I decided to go to hospital, my foot, ankle, leg and knee were swelling at an alarming rate. By the time I was examined in Accident & Emergency, my left leg was almost fully twice as large as the right leg.

My weight soared from around 80kg (176 pounds or 12½ stone) to 95kg (209 pounds or 15 stone) which is a heck of a lot of weight gain for 5 or 6 days. It took many many sessions of dialysis to get that fluid out of me, while the hospital anxiously waited for my kidneys to start working again.

Unfortunately, the blood clot/thrombosis and other complications caused nerve damage. Presumably the blood vessels which had been surgically repaired and the nerves which had managed to re-grow and re-attach themselves, were quite fragile versus normal physiology. My foot went numb.

To be more accurate, my foot was left numb after many months of excruciating pain.

I had a nerve condition study and an MRI scan, but there was still a lot of swelling and other damage, making it unclear whether a surgical intervention might ever return the feeling to my foot. My main concern at the time was pain management, because it was too painful to walk any great distance, and pain kept me awake at night very badly. I was taking the maximum dose of tramadol AND codeine, plus supplementing prescribed painkillers with dihyrocodiene and other opiate medications, which I bought on the black market. I was briefly a very heavily dependent opioid painkiller user.

Opiates have weird side-effects. I couldn't tell whether the nausea, itching, constipation, cramps, sweating, diarrhoea, and intense anxiousness about maintaining my supply of opiate painkilllers, was a result of their effects or the effect of withdrawal. All I knew was that I would have periods where I felt incredibly rubbish, and then periods where things were more bearable, despite dosing myself regularly throughout the day.

The thing which made the greatest difference - other than a loving, caring, attentive and wonderful girlfriend - was a topical ointment containing diclofenac, which is a NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflamatory drug). Because of the earlier complications with my kidneys, many medications were contraindicated. Perhaps I shouldn't have used the diclofenac gel, because it's not very kidney-friendly, but it was the only thing which gave me any reliable relief.

It's possible that most of my pain was related to opiate withdrawal and strange interactions between the tramadol, codeine and dhydrocodeine, which I should not have been combining, but I did so out of desperation for pain relief. It's possible that in my desperation for pain relief, I actually made things worse. Perhaps tramadol alone would have been more effective.

Eventually, I decided that I hated all the effects of the opiates, so I decided to go cold turkey. I had been heavily opiate dependent, for a period of several months, so I was expecting to experience pure hell quitting the opiates. Certainly a lot of noise has been made about the addictiveness of OxyContin, Vicodin and other painkillers which have been implicated in the opiod addiction epidemic sweeping the United States, declared a nationwide public health emergency by President Obama on October 26th 2017.

Back in July 2017, I tried to walk from my apartment to my local Chinese takeaway in flip flops - a distance of about 500 metres. I could not walk more than ten paces without the flip flop coming off my left foot, because it was so numb and my toes were somewhat 'clawed' such that I couldn't hold the flip flop on my foot or tell when it was slipping off.

For almost all of 2017 I was taking a neuropathic painkiller called pregabalin - marketed as Lyrica - which I found to be quite effective. However, it occurred to me that this painkiller might have been preventing the natural nerve re-growth which had successfully healed my severed nerves once before. After 9 months with no improvement to the numbness in my foot, I was becoming quite depressed about the prospect of never regaining any feeling in my foot, and consequently never being able to wear flip-flops again, without tying them onto my foot as pictured above.

I like wearing flip flops. They're an important part of my beach bum seaside-dwelling kitesurfer identity.

I decided to stop taking pregabalin.

If anybody tells you that pregabalin is not addictive, they're just plain wrong.

Pregabalin quite recently became a scheduled drug in the UK, making it illegal to possess without a prescription. Pregabalin affects the GABA system of the brain, just like alcohol, Valium, Xanax and GHB/GBL, which are all considered to have a high abuse potential, so naturally pregabalin is no different.

Of all the drugs I've quit and medications I've withdrawn from, pregabalin is one of the worst. Because of its tranquilising and sedating effects, the rebound when withdrawing creates a state of insomnia, anxiety and induces the general sensation that the world is about to end, which lasts for months.

I quit pregabalin under the supervision of doctors, tapering the dosage down gradually, but it was a pretty aggressive schedule, which was chosen by me. I wanted to quit pregabalin as quickly as possible, because I wanted to find out if it would help my nerves re-grow and allow me to wear flip flops again, or indeed be able to feel a kitesurf board underneath my feet.

Pleasingly, I can report that I put on a pair of newly-purchased flip flops tonight, and I was able to walk around without the left one falling off.

My left foot feels different from the right one, but I do have some sensation restored and I don't have the aches and pains which troubled me during a lot of 2017.

It might seem like a minor point, but it's actually something that has disproportionate imporance in my life: To be able to wear flip flops again is a big deal.

Life is better in flip flops.

Tags: #accident #injury #dvt #hospital #kitesurfing #beach #summer #sun #holiday

This is a story about the battle of the sexes...

"Secretly, you'd love to know what it's like, wouldn't you? What it feels like for a girl" is a quote from Ian McEwan's 1978 book The Cement Garden which was released as a film in 1993, then sampled in a Madonna song released in 2001.

Right.

"You think that being a girl is degrading" is another quote from the same work of fiction.

Wrong.

Half right. Half wrong.

Why should we ever expect to be more than 50% correct on a binary matter?

I'll never know what it's like to carry a baby for 9 months and eject it from my body, but I do know what it feels like to be penetrated with a penis and have somebody ejaculate inside me. I'll never experience what it's like to live with the heavy burden of knowing that I carry the reproductive capability of bringing new life into this world - post-fertilisation - from the tiniest quantity of love snot squirted into a bodily orifice, to several pounds of blood and mucous covered incontinent midget incapable of supporting the weight of its freakishly large head, tearing its way out of the same hole the love snot went into. If you're a girl, you'll never know what it's like to be a member of the expendable sex, who account for 99% of all combat deaths, 97% of all workplace deaths and who die four whole years earlier just because of the dangly bits in-between our legs.

"It's a hard life being a beautiful girl and having horny men throwing themselves at you" I hear you say. "Passively fending off all these explicit offers from people who want to sexually satisfy me - to give me pleasure - is a real chore" you churlishly complain.

Of course, because I'm cursed with the so-called gift of empathy, I can see that shaving legs and armpits, putting on make-up, wearing high heels and a bra and other expectations of societal conformity are quite demanding on wimmin. Furthermore, I can see that while both sexes are expected to make themselves look as artificially young as possible, such as men removing their facial hair, wimmin definitely get a rough deal during the period when no amount of make-up can plaster over the obvious effects of ageing. I'm privileged to be able to wear my greying hair and slight beer-gut as a badge of honour, conveying my status as a cash machine. I'm honoured to be able to provide the cold hard capital to support a lifestyle that a woman has become accustomed to.

"I buy my own diamonds and I buy my own rings" goes a Destiny's Child song. Yes. Very good. Slow sarcastic clap. I refer you to earlier stats about 99% combat deaths and 97% workplace deaths. Call me when you dig your own ditches too.

Why are we at war like this?

In the past year fully 50% of the female computer programmers I've worked with have been transexual.

I can see the appeal.

50% of the female computer programmers I've worked with have received indisputably preferential treatment.

I'd quite like to play dressing-up games every day and have horny potential mates fawning all over me, while I passively decide who gets to pleasure me and who doesn't. That sounds like quite a nice life, doesn't it?

Would I have my testicles and Adam's apple surgically removed, my vocal chords adjusted, my breasts augmented, my hormones meddled with, and still suffer the taunts and jeers of insecure man-children, threatened by the fact that they'd really like to put their penis inside me, but they're too afraid of what other people would think? I'd fucking love it.

I've been comfortable enough with my sexuality and identity to experiment with homosexuality - or bisexuality to be more accurate - and I found many parts of the experience to be liberating and a boon for my self-confidence. I can see that the accumulated unwanted advances of horny men could become bothersome over a lifetime, but isn't that rather taking your good fortune for granted? While the so-called patriarchy is accused of not being aware of its own privilege, the same accusation could easily be levelled at wimmin.

I appreciate that the specialisation of the sexes each bring their own unique challenges. I'm well aware that the hashtag MeToo movement has hit upon a raw nerve of the unpleasant consequences of a system of mate selection which simultaneously demands men to be bold, confident, forthright, daring and to make the first moves, while also expecting telepathic mind-reading abilities in order to preserve a woman's birthright to unlimited offers of sex without ever having to make her own wants explicitly and overtly known.

Thus we arrive at the InCels' anger over Chads and Staceys.

I'm not an InCel.

I can have sex whenever I want.

I have literally hundreds of millions of wimmin who will have sex with me.

For money.

Oh yes, there's that rather unspeakable truth, isn't there? There are fucking loads of prostitutes, escorts, sugar babies and other wimmin out there who will have sex for material gains. Female chimpanzees will trade sex for tokens which can be spent on desirable products.

When we talk disparagingly about the patriarchy what I think we're really talking about is paternalism. We all hate to be patronised, but anybody can be patronising... not just men. In fact, men hate to be patronised so much that 79% of suicides are men, who often feel like they've failed and cannot face the indignity of being down on their luck. That's right - more than 3 times as many men kill themselves than wimmin.

You still wanna be a man?

You can be.

On the internet, nobody knows that you're a dog.

Computer says no.

I live in a binary world.

Computer programming is an almost almost exclusively male profession. Investment banking is an almost exclusively male profession. For most of my career I've been a computer programmer for investment banks.

Do you think we sit around plotting ways to thwart wimmin? Do you think I'm part of some big conspiracy to stop wimmin getting the super highly paid investment bank programmer jobs?

I married an investment banking computer programmer. I know they're a rare commodity.

They know they're a rare commodity.

Can't we all just admit that we're getting some kind of kicks out of our own special place in the universe?

I've spent more than 21 years in a full-time career which has essentially been spent wrangling with a cold unthinking and unwaveringly rational calculating machine, which doesn't give a fuck about your emotions. If your work is bad and wrong, it's fucking dog shit and the machine is not going to be nice about it to save your feelings.

Computer says no.

It doesn't matter how much you bat your eyelids and do a pouty Instagram sex duck-lip face at the computer, it's not going to roll over and let you get away with jack shit. There's no twisting an emotionless calculating machine around your little finger. If your work is wrong it's wrong and that's tough shit. Fix it.

This is my worldview and it's uncertainly corrupted by wealth and privilege, but I've also had the benefit of spending more than two whole decades working full-time for a boss who nobody could ever in their right mind accuse of having a gender bias. My computer quite literally does not know whether a girl or a boy wrote the code it's running, so fuck you.

If you want to hide within the shades of grey and obfuscate your obvious incompetence with your emotional intelligence, gained through your genetic predisposition towards maturing earlier than your brothers, so they didn't try to fuck you, while meanwhile twisting your daddy round your little finger because you were the apple of his eye and a spitting image of the woman he spurted his love snot into, perpetuating the whole miserable cycle of life, then be my guest. I'm afraid to say that it is you who is upholding the status quo, not the conspiracy of the so-called patriarchy. I'm sorry to say that there's a price to be paid for the considerable benefits which you enjoy, wimmin.

Am I a rape apologist? Do I condone overt sexism and sexual discrimination, where it obviously exists.

No.

Tags: #sex

This is a story about when the alarm clock goes off...

I'm routinely late for work but I think I've figured out why. I was very tired when my alarm went off this morning, but I think I could've gotten out of bed and gone to work. I was tired but I felt OK. I needed more sleep but I'd have been alright if I immediately got out of bed.

Unfortunately I let the dread set in.

My thoughts and feelings changed from "I need more sleep" to "I'm going to be late" to "I don't want to go to work at all". From initially planning to get up, iron a shirt, iron a jumper, take a shower, get dressed and drive to work, I then started planning how best to tell my team that I wasn't going to make it to our morning meeting. As lunchtime approached I dreaded having to finally get up and the ridiculousness of "I'm going to be late" meaning not turning up until the afternoon.

I did not get up.

As the afternoon wore on I was dreading having to tell my team that I was actually going to be a no-show. I dreaded the loss of earnings. I dreaded the damaging impression that I'm unreliable. I dread the day that I'm finally unable to keep going any longer, and I stop turning up for work altogether. I dread the day that I hit the wall.

I did not tell my team that I was going to take the day off sick.

It might seem like I'm my own worst enemy. It might seem like I'm making things harder for myself. It might seem like there's a long string of decisions here, and I'm making bad choices, but it doesn't feel like it at all. The whole process is quite agonising.

A couple of times in the past fortnight I've woken up at around the time when my alarm goes off. I've gotten up, dressed, had breakfast, driven to work and arrived on time or even early. "This must be what life's like for a normal person" I've thought to myself. It's been blissful on those days. Life has felt sustainable and pleasant and I've even envisaged being able to keep working for the foreseeable future, on those good days.

Most days are not good days.

I've only found a few solutions for the dread.

Short-acting hypnotic-sedatives work very well in the short term. Xanax and zopiclone last just long enough to get a good night's sleep a bit more tranquillising effect in the morning, when the dread would normally set in. Without a sleep aid, the dread sets in the night before: "I'm never going to get enough sleep and I'll be exhausted in the morning" I think as I lie awake until the wee hours of the morning.

Alcohol works a little bit as a sleep initiator but the liver metabolises alcohol so efficiently that it's mostly eliminated from your bloodstream after 4 or 5 hours. Alcohol-induced sleep is not high quality and it's followed by dehydration and a full bladder, which I usually try to ignore because I'm warm and comfortable in bed. By the time the alarm goes off alcohol withdrawal and bad sleep combine to make the dread doubly bad.

Getting absolutely smashed drunk works surprisingly well as a mechanism for getting me to the office more-or-less on time. Waking up half-pissed from the night before does offer an intoxicated tranquillisation which allows me to overcome the dread.

Driving to work drunk and/or tranquillised and being in the office while reeking of alcohol and/or slurring due to tablets, is a pretty undesirable state of affairs. Public transport, heavy lunchtime and after-work drinking were the norm in the City, so my heavy alcohol dependency was not conspicuous until I was banished to the provinces.

Everything's catching up with me now.

The heavy boozing has led to sudden weight gain this year, which depresses me. Drinking heavily no longer seems like a sustainable strategy to get through the working weeks.

The solution is a total detox, exercise, sensible bedtime, healthy breakfast and good sleep hygiene; routine. The solution is to live the most boring life imaginable, dedicating myself purely to the pursuit of being able to get up in the morning. The solution is to completely change the way I live - the way I act - in order to fit in with early-bird culture.

In many ways I am still going through an extended benzodiazepine withdrawal, neuropathic painkiller withdrawal and sleeping tablet withdrawal. My alcohol use has prolonged and worsened the excruciating withdrawal from the physically addictive medications. My body and brain's instinctive reaction to drink more and eat more to compensate, has been a very poor coping mechanism and has instead lengthened and exacerbated the negative symptoms, instead of providing the mild relief I so desperately crave.

Having used Xanax a couple of times in the last fortnight, it was remarkable how my brain responded: "THIS is the stuff which I've been screaming for" it seemed to say, as I gained some long-overdue respite from round-the-clock anxiety and the dread.

Obviously it's not desirable to use pills or booze long-term. Obviously, it'd be good to suffer the short-term pain and get healthy, before things get any worse. I've done a substantial part of the hard work, in breaking my physical dependence to a multitude of addictive medications.

I desperately craved alcohol all weekend but remained sober because my friends who I was visiting are not big drinkers. I was really craving alcohol tonight, but I managed to resist, although I'm comfort-eating to compensate for the craving.

I hate the situation, where I'm not where I want to be with anything. I'm not teetotal. I'm not medication-free. I'm not doing the healthy stuff. I'm gaining weight not losing it.

To eat less, eat healthy, go to the gym, be teetotal, stop taking sleeping pills and stop taking the occasional tranquilliser, but yet maintain my miserable single hotel-dwelling living-out-of-a-suitcase life, seems completely ridiculous. However, using my misery as a justification for drinking as much as I want, whenever I want, is also ridiculous and has led to appearance change and health degradation, which I don't find acceptable.

Tonight I've comfort-eaten and not done any exercise. Tonight I will take one or maybe even two sleeping pills. However, I won't have any alcohol or tranquillisers. I'll try to go to sleep at a sensible time. I'll try to get up early, have a healthy breakfast and get to work on time. If I can do all that, it's still a reasonable achievement considering the circumstances.

I'm not reliable. I am struggling. Hopefully nobody will hold it against me though.

Tags: #career #depression #sleep #medication

This is a story about the easy option...

I took a sleeping pill last night. Sunday nights are hard and so are Monday mornings. Lots of people struggle but I've got a fairly legitimate set of reasons why I'm struggling: mountainous debts, soul-destroyingly boring and slow work, social isolation, mood disorder and having recently gone gold turkey on a zillion addictive drugs and medications. Normal people who've been through the ordeal I've been through - including the homelessness and the hospitalisations - are not working a full-time high-pressure demanding job. I find my job pretty easy, but it's still a lot of pressure and very demanding to turn up and appear like I've got my shit together as opposed to having just dragged myself off the streets and gotten clean.

Take a look at the people who are getting clean and recovering from a severe mental health crisis. Take a look at the people who are recovering from suicide attempts and addiction. Take a look at the people who are getting back on their feet.

Are they working full time jobs, miles away from home?

So I took a sleeping pill.

So. Fucking. What.

It's not the slippery slope. It's not the thin edge of the wedge. It's not the beginning of the end.

I will have a proper relapse at some point. I'm bound to. It's inevitable.

When I've finally got my debts paid off and I'm finally free, the relief is sure to be overwhelming. I've struggled so hard for so long to reach that milestone of repairing the damage of divorce and everything that went with it, that I think I'll be happy to sleep rough at least knowing that getting off the streets and working to earn money was the easy part which I've done a million times before. The hard part has been that it's been so unrewarding. I've worked so hard for so long and I've got nothing to show for it. Where's the payoff?

I took a sleeping pill and I slept well.

I woke up feeling refreshed.

It was easy to get up.

Dread = gone.

That was amazing to wake up and not be filled with dread about the day ahead. In fact that reduced feeling of dread lasted all day and I was reasonably happy at my desk, rather than bored out of my mind. Is that a co-incidence, or is it linked to the fact that my brain was getting something that it was missing?

I don't really want to go back to being dependent on all those pills, but I did go cold turkey very abruptly, and the re-adjustment has been brutal. So many little things make me stressed and anxious, which is not a choice to catastrophise, but a perfectly rational and logical thing for a person who's suddenly found themselves living life without copious quantities of nerve-soothing tranquillisers, sedatives and painkillers. Medication adjustments aren't something that can be done in days, weeks and months. It takes a very long time to adjust to harshness, and the world is a very harsh place.

It's so tempting to pop pills at the moment.

Pills don't have any calories. Good quality sleep is so valuable. Life without anxiety is so much better.

Why would I want to suffer?

I need to sleep well, wake up refreshed, not dread going to work, not be anxious and miserable at my desk and not feel hungry and wanting to comfort eat all the time. Of course I want pills.

The rebound insomnia and rebound anxiety were terrible, and it's still a problem, but without tea, coffee, energy drinks, cigarettes or some other vice to overcompensate with, I've snacked like crazy and put on weight. I'm stressed and anxious about my weight, which is a self-perpetuating vicious cycle.

The solution is to not have to get up at the crack of dawn every day and go to an office and be bored out of my mind. The solution is to not be in debt up to my eyeballs and unable to stop working as hard as I can. The solution is not to live with job insecurity, money insecurity, housing insecurity, social isolation and all the other problems which come about as a result of the pressure on me to simply chain myself to my desk.

Those options are not available to me.

Those solutions are denied to me.

Make hay while the sun shines.

I never know when I'm going to lose my job, lose my mind, suffer health problems or get fucked over by somebody. I never know when I'm going to get totally fucking screwed so I've got to work as hard as I can for as long as I can, because somebody always screws me in the end.

All I can do is take pills.

I take pills so I can keep going in the fucking miserable merry-go-round which is my life. I take pills to prop me up. I take pills to pep me up. I take pills instead of taking a holiday. I take pills instead of taking a break. I take pills because I can't afford to stop pedalling as fast as I can. I take pills to help me cope with this never-ending nightmare.

I take pills.

I hate taking pills.

I'd rather take a break.

But I can't.

Not yet.

The day never seems to come.

Always just out of reach.

Round and round.

On and on.

Forever and ever.

If I do come out the other side of this, I need to make sure I'm not too fat, not too addicted to things, not dead. It's pretty hard, balancing things. It's pretty hard judging things just right.

This is the last time I do this.

If this time doesn't work out, I'm through with life. I'm done. I've had enough. Either it works out for me this time or I'm checking out. I'm history. The end. See you later. Goodbye.

Tags: #medication #addiction #relapse #depression #suicide #bipolar #career #debt

This is a story about maintaining equilibrium...

I started the year £52,000 in debt, with no home and no car. I started the year addicted to painkillers and sleeping pills. I started the year in a very dire situation. The odds were stacked against me.

I managed to quit those addictive medications. I managed to avoid bankruptcy. I managed to rent a place to live. I managed to buy a car. I managed to earn and save enough money to repay half my debt.

That's right. I'm halfway there.

In actual fact, I'm being a bit premature. My total outstanding debt is £43,250 and I've managed to save up £23,400, which is more than 50% but I haven't actually made a substantial repayment yet, because I'm terribly afraid that I'm going to get sick. I'm on the brink of having a nervous breakdown. It's been unbelievably stressful and exhausting to get to this point.

Did I mention that I quit addictive painkillers and sleeping pills?

A little over a year ago I was physically addicted to vast quantities of Valium and Xanax, as well as everything else.

How the hell does a homeless, bankrupt, drug addict, with mountainous debts, go from being sectioned in a secure psych ward, to being able to repay nearly £25k of debts as well as renting a house, buying a car and holding down a good job?

Compensation.

To compensate for the horrific withdrawal of all those medications, which caused massive problems with anxiety and insomnia, it has been necessary for me to compensate. To compensate for the stress and the misery of being flat broke and having the threat of bankruptcy, homelessness and destitution hanging over me; the stress of having to work really hard to service debts and save up money to get back in the black - that's required me to compensate.

I've been compensating for the horrendous things going on in my personal life; the incredible stress.

I've compensated by over-eating and drinking too much.

The stress has been off the fucking charts.

My drinking has been out of control.

I've put on weight.

If you think I should eat less, eat healthy, exercise more and generally look after myself, I ask you to re-consider what I just told you. Somehow I've managed to quit 5 physically addictive medications, move house twice, service debts of over £50k, save up £24k, work 3 jobs, please my clients, zoom all over the fucking country and generally live a miserable austere life with no reward for my efforts.

My mealtimes and my alcoholism are all I've got to live for at the moment. Getting fat, unfit and destroying my health with alcohol isn't my idea of a great way to live - it's a reaction to my extreme circumstances, and the horrible suffering associated with the stress of being massively indebted, skint, insecure and withdrawing from very addictive medications.

A lot of people aren't able to tolerate the horribleness of the anxiety, the insomnia and generally feeling like you're going to die, when you stop taking medications like Valium and Xanax. A lot of people will be hooked for life on their antidepressants, sleeping pills, tranquillisers, sedatives, painkillers and other such medications, because they can't stand the withdrawal.

A lot of people are destroyed by their debts. So many suicides are precipitated by financial problems. When you're deep in a debt hole and bankruptcy seems to be like the only option, that's a life-ruining thing to happen, because a bankruptcy is a black mark against your name for the rest of your life. Try renting a place to live as a bankrupt. Try getting a good job as a bankrupt. Try living any kind of life in this modern debt-driven society as a bankrupt.

My way of compensating for the difficulties in my life has been to comfort eat and get drunk.

I hate it.

I'm getting fat and unfit. I'm destroying my health.

It's a race against time.

I need to clear my debts before my unhealthy eating and abusive drinking kills me.

Don't tell me to eat healthy, eat less, drink less, exercise and otherwise make my life any more fucking miserable than it already is. I know what I'm doing to myself and I know what I'd do if I wasn't under such extreme pressure and stress; so distressed and living a life of such abject misery. I'm taking a very calculated but extreme risk, to escape from the trap - the trap of debt, the trap of addiction, the trap of homelessness, the trap of poverty, the trap of mental health problems, the trap of misery and hopelessness.

That I've managed to almost escape so much that threatened to destroy me, is remarkable. The only way I've managed to achieve it is by compensating with over-eating and drinking too much. My health is getting fucked up. My appearance is getting fucked up. I hate everything about my life, but I'm halfway to freedom.

I did intend on writing this once I've finally managed to make a great big £24,000 downpayment on my debts, bringing things down to an amount I can pay back in 3 or 4 months, which seems much more achievable.

I've achieved the fucking impossible.

I had to write this now, because I can't hold on much longer. Every week is unbearable, but every week inches me a little closer to freedom.

Getting to the end of September will be a huge milestone.

October I need to take some well-earned and very overdue rest.

November and December I need to make sure I stay sane and healthy and keep my job.

2019 is potentially the year I turn my whole life around.

Still so far to go.

It fucking sucks.

But there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

Tags: #debt #homeless #capitalism #banking #suicide #addiction #medication

This is a story about late capitalism...

Having been part of the JPMorgan team who built a system to process more than a quadrillion dollars of credit default swaps per annum, and also the system to find out who was holding the pass-the-parcel when the music stopped, only to discover it was full of dog shit, I feel pretty responsible for the credit crunch and financial crisis, which has plunged us into a global recession many times worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s. I'm pretty disillusioned with capitalism.

I've had front-row seats for most of the insanity of the past 25 years - dot com, Y2K, 9/11, credit crunch, financial crisis of 2007/8, Bitcoin etc. etc. - and I was a fully paid-up subscribing member of the 2% profiting handsomely from others' misfortune with my snout deep in the trough.

By 2008 I was sickened by the way I'd turned a blind eye and ignored my moral compass, because I enjoyed the wealth and privilege. I was able to buy a house, a yacht, a speedboat, sportscars and go on enough luxury holidays to help me set aside my misgivings about what the investment banks were doing to the global economy, by creating fabricated securities such as derivatives, which were somehow valued at a vastly greater sum of money than the aggregate value of all the precious metals, gems, land, property, cattle, food, commodities, industrial plant, machinery, companies and cash that exists on the whole planet. I was shackled with golden handcuffs - who in their right mind would give up their trophy wife and pull their kids out of private school, to slum it with the hoi polloi?

I decided that I was sickened by the bullshit synthetic world of digital securities and digital bank balances, and the global computer network with all its software and data, which actually doesn't create anything real or tangible. It seemed like the infamous tulip speculation bubble in the Netherlands during the 1600s. It seemed like utter insanity to place so much importance on a bunch of binary ones and zeros which exist nowhere but as a tiny magnetic bump on a disk platter, an electron in a memory chip or a photon in a fibre optic cable. The entire weight of the internet is estimated to be about the same as a golf ball, if you add up all the electrons. It's madness to think that any of our digital scorekeeping - i.e. your bank balance - will matter at all when global warming really starts to bite.

I quit my investment banking IT job at JPMorgan and I retrained as an electrician. I wanted to build real and tangible things with my hands. I wanted to learn a trade which couldn't be outsourced or automated. I wanted to escape the virtual realm of high finance and software and into a field which could make a real difference in people's lives. Try living for a day without your lighting, heating, hot water, power shower, cooker, dishwasher, washing machine, tumble dryer, kettle, toaster, fridge, freezer and the myriad other electrical appliances which you don't even notice are there in your life, saving you untold time and physical labour.

It turns out, we don't value tradesmen as much as we value bankers.

I could've scraped a living, but it was hard work with little reward. The work was dangerous and dirty and the general public expected to get everything for virtually nothing. I didn't much fancy working my whole life with the threat of bankruptcy and my home being repossessed, never having enough spare money to enjoy what little leisure time I had. Economically, it wasn't viable to be a tradesman, except as a kind of break-even hobby. It made no economic sense to use 100% of my brains and brawn, but receive so little reward.

Subsequently, I've returned to making software systems for banks, doing so as a consultant and getting paid even more. I've been a leech on a leech, and the cash has poured in.

Throughout this journey my priorities have completely changed. Instead of aspiring to acquire and accumulate vastly more than I would ever need, and fantasising about buying bigger and better houses, yachts and other material possessions, my fantasies have taken on a completely different guise.

I've been fantasising about quitting the rat race, and having secure housing. I've been fantasising about having enough money to read books and write. I've been fantasising about having time and being free from the tyranny of the alarm clock and bullshit jobs.

I'd live in a Soviet-style apartment and have beige products - no consumer choice - if I could be intellectually free. I'd travel on the bus and give up exotic foreign holidays if I no longer had to play along with the charade of late-capitalism, where we are all commuting too far, working too many hours, and living under constant threat of losing our jobs, losing our homes and subsequently being made destitute. Given the choice, I choose equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity.

It seems pretty obvious that the equal opportunities experiment has run its course and it would be inhumane to continue. Free markets are efficient, but they are only efficient at stripping away people's security, happiness, dignity and any hope of ever feeling content or satisfied. Capitalism is - by its very nature - a force which will price gouge humanity for the basic essentials, such as food, housing, transport, healthcare, medicine and to some extent education.

Our poorest 50% struggle to afford the basics, while even the very rich are miserably struggling to attain the academic qualifications which will allow them to compete, lest they be trampled by the struggling masses, desperate to realise their opportunities. The competitive element of capitalism has turned us into slaves. Our lives our wretched and appalling.

I desperately want to drop out of the rat race, but to do so would see me persecuted. I wouldn't even be allowed to sleep rough and beg for food without being arrested and locked up. Society offers me no ability to house, feed and clothe myself, with any degree of security or quality of life. Working a zero-hours contract McJob is not going to earn me enough to pay rent and bills, buy food, travel to work and have any kind of life worth living. The theft of our time and freedom is an awful crime perpetrated against most of society. The chance to stop and smell the roses is denied to us when we do not have secure food and housing.

The only viable solution that I can see is universal basic income (UBI). I just don't see how else we're going to be able to stop the terrible decline in living standards and save humanity from the tyranny of exploitation by the capitalists. It seems like we're at breaking point when even the middle class children are becoming slaves to the capitalists, with enormous loans for their education, which might win them a low-paid job in a completely unrelated field from their university degree if they're lucky - the unlucky ones end up unemployed.

It's a sad state of affairs when our fantasies revolve around basic needs, such as secure housing.

It's not my idea of a good time, sitting at home smoking cannabis and playing computer games, but I don't see any reason why it's not morally acceptable or right to allow people to do that, and not threaten them with homelessness and starvation if they don't get a bullshit McJob and otherwise comply with the tyranny of late-capitalism.

The idea that we live in a land of opportunity and that hard work will bring rewards has been proven to be a lie, and ever more-so during each passing year. It's time to let people live lives of quiet dignity, rather than frantic futile desperation.

It's time to just give everybody enough money to live in peace.

Tags: #economics #banking #computing #politics #debt #capitalism

This is a story about the beer fear...

My mood and my perceptions swing wildly between a cautious sense of optimism and overwhelming defeatism. On a good day I can be thinking about how far I've travelled and how much improved my circumstances are; I can feel really hopeful about the future and I say to myself "not long to go until I'm quite financially comfortable". On those good days I'm pleased with my achievements; proud. On a bad day I think I've made a huge mistake and I've wandered up a one-way street; I'm convinced that I've been wasting my time and I haven't made any progress at all. On the bad days the uphill struggle seems impossible to sustain and it's pointless to continue flogging a dead horse; I say to myself "there's still so far to travel and I'll never make it".

I was doing some Google searches yesterday and by accident I discovered that there was a problem with my site's position in the rankings - searching "manic grant" wasn't bringing my site back as the number one hit. I was distraught. For a moment I felt as if I'd been living in a fantasy world - hallucinating - and everything I'd worked so hard on for 3 years was just dribbling nonsense which had been identified as spam by Google. I started to doubt my ability to write. I started to think that perhaps I'm semi-brain-dead and nobody's had the heart to tell me yet - everybody is just humouring me. Tiny mistakes became magnified in my mind. I misspelled the word "novelist" and I was crushed with embarrassment; cringing at my pseudo-intellectualism. I felt dumb.

The first day of the working week back in the office was every bit as dreadful as I hoped it wouldn't be, and perhaps even worse still. There were a lot of moments where I felt like walking out, because I couldn't stand to be so bored with nothing to do; nothing to keep me busy and allow me to escape my own thoughts. I so desperately needed to escape my own thoughts, because all I can think about is how many more boring days I've got to endure when I've already reached the limit of what I can tolerate.

I don't think the problem is Mondays (or Tuesday in this case).

I don't think the problem is the job.

I don't think there's a problem.

What's happening is that I keep having very boozy weekends with teetotal Sundays (or in this case bank holiday Monday) because I have to get up early and drive for the best part of an hour and a half to get to work. My brain keeps suffering repeated periods of alcohol withdrawal at the beginning of the week. While this might be tolerably OK for the majority of people - and indeed getting drunk at the weekend is the norm - my brain has been highly sensitised to GABA agonist type chemicals, because I spent most of 2017 highly medicated with neuropathic painkillers, sleeping pills and tranquillisers. As a result, I probably have a high alcohol tolerance and I feel the unpleasant withdrawal symptoms very acutely.

A friend of mine describes a phenomenon he calls the "beer fear" as a gnawing anxiety, sense of hopelessness and generally unease; the sensation that the world's about to end, even though you can't put your finger on why. This very much tallies with how I've been feeling.

When I take a break from drinking, after a few days of insomnia, anxiety and negative thoughts, the "beer fear" goes away and some energy, enthusiasm and positive thinking return. All the hopeless thoughts seem nonsensical and are forgotten - it's a complete mindset change.

Since December I said to myself I was allowed to eat as much junk food as I wanted, and to get as drunk as I wanted because I deserved to have those things as a reward for the stress and hard work of working away from home. For most of the past 9 months I've drunk at least a bottle of wine every day, plus I've had periods where I've used leftover prescriptions of painkillers, sleeping pills and tranquillisers, all in a desperate attempt to make the time pass more quickly and less painfully. I was desperately stressed at the start of the year but now my circumstances have improved remarkably, but I guess I'm still paying a bit of a price for those bad habits I got into.

If I drink far less I know that it'll be easier to get up in the mornings and the working day will pass more bearably. I know that I'll lose weight, get fitter and have more energy and motivation to do things. I know that I'll have fewer periods of feeling like everything's hopeless, pointless, ruined and unbearably awful.

The question is: how do I get through my working week, my lonely evenings and my lonely weekends without alcohol? I've become habituated into having a couple of bottles of red wine on a Friday night and spending most of Saturday wishing I hadn't. It's ludicrous, because my rational analysis quite clearly indicates that alcohol is causing more harm than good, but yet I can't quite imagine not having it as my dependable reward for the miserable drudgery of the working week.

Comfort eating and comfort boozing is not bringing me much happiness, ultimately. I want to be fit not fat, so things are going to have to change. I'm 99% certain that the origin of my existential crises and overwhelming self-doubt is driven by the violent mood swings and altered perceptions caused by alcohol withdrawal.

I imagine that tomorrow I will feel a little better than today, and on Thursday I will feel much better... but then the drinking starts all over again. Need to break the cycle somehow.

Tags: #alcohol #medication

This is a story about stage fright...

I'm annoyed with myself. I feel like I've let myself down. I've squandered another great opportunity. I've wasted a good chance.

For the past 23 or 24 days, I've been writing as much as I possibly can as fast as I possibly can. I threw caution to the wind and decided to increase my daily word count in a desperate attempt to reach a million words as quickly as possible, because the end was in sight. Nobody much wants to read 2,000+ words of rambling drivel from somebody whose sole intention is to churn out enough copy to achieve an arbitrary objective. I haven't given enough careful consideration to what I want to say before I've said it. I've gotten swept up in the numbers and abandoned my longer-term objective of writing little self-contained pieces on specific subjects. Quality has suffered.

I decided I wanted to write about monkey dust because it was in the newspapers. Nobody much wants to read about addiction problems, because it brings out the ugly side of human nature. We all know very well, because of demonising tabloid news articles, that addicts can become desperate and depraved and can do dreadful things. It's impossible to write about addiction without a little of the stigma attaching itself to the author. People view you as a bit dirty and undesirable if you admit to having had substance abuse issues. It's often better to brush any addiction issues under the carpet and pretend they never happened, for the sake of avoiding stigma and demonisation.

I've written a lot about writing, which is far too meta. I've really gone on and on ad nauseam about my word counts and my million word goal. I've left my readers in absolutely no doubt about my unwavering and blinkered aim and objective, which mercifully will have been achieved in the next couple of days. 997,849 words to date, and counting.

I'm annoyed.

I'm annoyed because I write about all kinds of things, and sometimes I write things I'm really pleased with. Sometimes I write things and I'm pleasantly surprised to receive messages saying that I really nailed something and it resonated with my readers. It's amazing when I write something that's good enough for people to take the time to give me positive feedback. Feedback is a kind gift. However, annoyingly I've been writing for the sake of writing, just to achieve sheer volume and as a way of coping during a quite unpleasant period of my life where I'm living out of a suitcase.

What has particularly irked me is that I've suddenly had a flood of new visitors to my blog, reading my stuff at a time when I feel like I'm writing really badly. I feel like people are getting a really bad impression of who I am and what makes me tick. I feel like I'm representing myself very poorly, given my recent spate of rushed and voluminous but otherwise not-very-high-quality crap that I've just churned out for the sake of maintaining my daily target word count.

My 'pinned' Twitter post is something I wrote about my experience of regaining consciousness in hospital, after a suicide attempt. I thought it was important to pin it because I'm approaching the anniversary of that event and it weighs heavy on my mind just how crappy I'm feeling still. I'm finding it important to revisit key moments in the past few years of my life to gauge how I'm progressing; indeed to see if I'm progressing at all. I keep having moments where I feel like I'm not getting anywhere at all, and I lose hope that I'll be able to ever have better and happier times. When I lose hope, I lose the will to live.

I re-read my Surviving Suicide post and I was appalled at the quality. For some reason the punctuation was very strange and I'd told the story in a very odd way. It wasn't my usual writing style at all. I was embarrassed and frustrated that a lot of people had read it when it needed thoroughly proofreading and editing. It was a poor representation of both the experience and the quality - or lack thereof - of my prose.

It seems totally impossible to predict when and what will engage with people on social media. Sometimes I sit down and write something which seems rambling and ranty to me, but is very well received. Sometimes I write something that's throwaway and it sparks an unexpectedly huge response.

After my suicide attempt last year, I was very unwell. I found myself discharged from hospital with no support and a whole heap of problems to deal with - I was missing my wallet, mobile phone, laptop and other devices which would allow me to get in contact with anybody. My medications had all been taken to hospital and I had to go to my doctor to re-obtain prescriptions for everything. I had to use my passport - my only form of ID - to get cash and replace my phone. It was all a very big ask of somebody who'd just survived a suicide attempt and was totally alone in an unfamiliar city. The stress and abrupt cessation of the medications which were keeping me mentally stable, tipped me into outright insanity.

A great number of people had been worried - quite rightly - about my safety and wellbeing. For several days there wasn't a lot of information freely circulating about whether I'd survived my suicide attempt or not. I feel very frustrated and upset that I was then subsequently too unwell to communicate very effectively. The ordeal I went through post-hospital-discharge destroyed a lot of my opportunity to comport myself with any dignity and give a good impression of myself; to connect with concerned and caring people.

In the 11+ intervening months between then and now, I've managed to gain some rhythm and routine and greatly stabilise myself. My life is vastly improved. Although I'm still living somewhere with very few friends and no family - no local connections - I've got secure housing and more financial security, at least. I've spent almost all of the last 11 months free from medication and substance abuse and my mental health has been comparatively stable. To be unmedicated and functional, and to have been able to keep writing throughout the journey, is something I'm very proud of. To have worked hard, held down jobs and finished important projects is something which is great for my confidence. The achievements of the past 11 months give me hope that I'll be able to have a better quality of life in the not-too-distant future.

Another great big surge of blog visitors was precipitated by a tweet which unexpectedly seemed to hit a nerve. Again, I've been left feeling ill-prepared to capitalise on the opportunity which presented itself; I've not communicated effectively. I was thoroughly caught on the hop.

What I had wanted to do was to reach my arbitrary million word target, then to have a consolidation period where I'd write at a more leisurely pace and attempt to increase the quality. Only then would I perhaps start to talk about how I'd reached my million-word goal. I didn't want anybody to really see that the final sprint to the finish line was done in a rather ugly and ungainly fashion. I feel like somebody who's started telling a joke, only to realise that they've forgotten the punchline.

It's now 998,772 words, by the way.

What exactly is the punchline of this joke anyway? Clearly having a million-word suicide note is something that's caught people's eye, but it's not a suicide note unless I kill myself, is it? Irony of ironies, having a massive flood of supportive messages from all corners of the globe has turned my sense of isolation and loneliness into happiness that I've managed to connect with so many people. Nothing could be better than something so positive that's almost completely unexpected.

I'd psychologically prepared myself for a general "meh!" response to my million word achievement, but I hadn't imagined that I'd get a massive response before I even reached 1-million words.

From what I've experienced of the battle to be heard - noticed - things are always much much harder than you could ever have imagined, and when you do manage to get a bit of exposure that you think will propel you to stardom, fame and fortune, the result is always incredibly disappointing. Having something you wrote retweeted by an account with millions of followers doesn't result in a huge surge of readers suddenly devouring every bit of content you ever wrote. Getting mentioned in the media doesn't bring vast numbers of intrigued visitors; doen't generate hundreds and thousands of new fans. It's a tough gig getting noticed and being heard.

"What are you going to do when the spotlight's on you? What have you got to say that's so important?"

These are good questions. When you get your 5-minutes of fame, what are you going to do with it? Why should anybody listen to you? Why do you deserve to be on stage? Why should anybody share their platform with you? What have you got to say that's interesting and different and profound and original and witty and funny?

Of course, you might find that when you suddenly find yourself holding the microphone, your mind goes blank. BZZZT! NEXT! YOU'RE RUBBISH! GET OFF!! GET OUT OF MY FACE!! LOSER!!!

One of the reasons why I don't really tweet is that I like to compose my thoughts in reclusive isolation, and to then share them when I feel like they're fully-formed. Instead of delivering a series of 280-character soundbites and having the distraction of wondering how each one is being received, and the subsequent discussion that follows, I can dump 2,000 words out into the world in a single lump, and then forget about it. I'm getting things off my chest with very little discourse and dialogue. In a way, I'm lecturing. It's been easier to get to this point without getting sidetracked in the comments section.

I always had a strong belief that having the weight of a vast amount of published content behind me would give me more credibility. While I might have undermined my own credibility with periods when I've been writing rubbish, the sheer volume of my creative output is hard to overlook. To keep writing and publishing and not really worrying too much about the hit-and-miss nature of things, is the only way to keep moving forwards and to become prolific enough to be notable. Perhaps my writing is all of dubious quality, but through sheer perseverance I'm getting somewhere.

999,310 words.

Some time ago I decided that 700 words was the sweet spot for a blog post - not too short and not too long. Yes, sometimes people want the occasional long read, but most of the time they like to catch up regularly and stay up to date, and that requires nice short, sharp, concise and thoughtfully composed blog posts.

I am now within 700 words of the finish line.

This is amazing.

Tomorrow, I can reach my goal at a leisurely pace. Tomorrow is the day when I want readers to be with me; crossing the line with me. Tomorrow is the culmination of 1,082 days writing an average of 924 words. Tomorrow, my arbitrary goal is finally achieved and my "headline" number has been reached.

Tomorrow I will write something good, I promise.

The pressure.

So. Much. Pressure.

The spotlight is on me.

Will I choke? Will I have stage fright and be unable to utter a word?

I so want to write something good.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia

This is a story about the end of summer...

The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting longer and the hot sunny weather is being replaced by grey skies and rain. It won't be long before the shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops can be stored away again until next year, because it'll be too cold for summer clothes. It won't be long before the 9-month long miserable British winter is back.

Of course, I'm worrying about tomorrow's problems today. I should be enjoying the last of the summer, but I need to make hay while the sun shines. My health has been OK during the first month of my new job, but I never know when it's going to let me down. I need to earn as much cash as possible as quickly as possible, before I can relax and loosen the purse strings. I daren't take a holiday until I'm in a more secure position. I needed to make a good first impression at work and earn the trust and respect of my colleagues.

I wanted to go to Prague to see friends, but I'm postponing it until the summer holiday madness has died down. I wanted to go to Ireland to see friends, but I'm postponing it until I've got more energy for travelling. I need to have at least a 1-week holiday of rest and relaxation, somewhere peaceful with a pleasant climate. Everything has been put on hold while I re-establish myself and slowly refill my depleted savings.

The seasons can affect me horribly, but I haven't felt at all lifted by the summer months. I suppose I've had a whole series of summers where I've had horrific stress and upheaval, so I don't see summertime as a time to enjoy myself. Looking back over the past 3 Augusts, I've been working myself to the bone during each one, in a desperate attempt to gather enough cash to get through the dreadful winter months.

This year is unusual, because I've been working non-stop since December and I've got relatively secure income until next summer. In theory, I could relax a little bit, given that I now have a secure place to live and a small financial safety net. In practice, I'm so heavily debt-laden, exhausted and downtrodden from the demands of the past few years, that I daren't take my foot off the gas pedal for a single second - it's flat out all the way to the finish line, which is still a long way away.

I suppose if my health holds out until December time, I'll feel a lot of regret that I didn't enjoy the summer months at all, but if I manage to get to December without a major incident then I'll be quite comfortably financially secure, so I can take a luxury foreign holiday. It's hard to balance the needs of today with the huge prize of financial freedom, provided I can cling on by my fingernails for long enough.

I've worked full-time for 9 consecutive months without a holiday, and 25 consecutive months if we include periods where I was sick and unable to work. The relentless stress and strain of dealing with having to move house, change jobs and keep working, is taking its toll - my physical health is deteriorating. My skin is pale, I've put on weight, I'm unfit and I'm tired all the time.

September is a tricky time for me. In previous years I've attempted suicide, been hospitalised and lost jobs. It would be great if I could get through September without a major incident. I desperately want to jet off somewhere, but I think the most sensible thing to do is to keep up the rhythm and routine and try to break the curse. I successfully made it through Jinxed January this year, so I should be able to use my momentum to carry me through September.

On September 6th, I celebrate my 3-year blogging anniversary. On September 9th it'll have been a year since my most serious and near-fatal suicide attempt. On September 10th it's World Suicide Prevention Day. On September 19th it's my sister's birthday. If I can get through all of that without incident, and reach the end of the month, then I'll be really pleased.

In October the clocks go back and it really starts to feel like winter. I think it'll be impossible for me to get to the end of the year without a holiday, and I'll desperately need one by October. I might be stretching a little too far to manage to last that long without a break, but it would be amazing if I could have a 1-week break in late-October to lift my spirits and carry me to the end of the year.

November's just crappy. I've got nothing good to say about November.

The build-up to Christmas in December does improve people's mood, and things slow down at work - although that's not necessarily a good thing - but the festivities should hopefully carry me until the day when I can leave the country for a couple of weeks, in search of winter sunshine.

If I can reach December, I'll have been working full-time for a whole year without totally screwing up. I think it's important to know I can manage to work for an entire year without my health getting so bad I'm unable to work. Having more money means more security and less stress, so hopefully things will get easier and easier, although I'm dreading the worsening of the weather.

The important thing is to keep moving forwards and not to stop, because if I stop then I will lose my gains incredibly quickly. In the blink of an eye I'll be back in a financially distressed situation. In the blink of an eye all the hope and possibility will disappear. It's remarkable how hard I've worked and how much cash I've generated, but how little of it seems to have actually stayed in my pocket - it's all been hoovered up by debts and living expenses and otherwise greedily devoured by the vultures who prey upon me. I've got to run just to stand still.

Sure, the skies are reasonably blue outside and it's relatively mild, but I'm acutely aware that there are very tough times ahead.

It might seem churlish to complain when I've had enough fortune to find myself still in a position to be able to potentially recover and return to a pleasant life in civilised society, but I've worked my ass off through yet another spoiled summer, and I'm going to be working very hard for the foreseeable future. It's hard to get excited about the prospect of yet more months of hard graft, with very few things to look forward to. Obviously, everything is super fragile and I'm very anxious that one little thing going wrong could spell disaster.

Things don't feel sustainable or realistically attainable. I feel sick and tired.

Tags: #depression #SAD #suicide #homeless #debt #mentalhealth