This is a story about wearing a straightjacket...

Life is better in flip flops. Life is best of all barefoot and with lush green grass underfoot, in some nice warm sunny climate. Why is it that we get so little of what our soul is screaming out for sometimes?

I decided to wear a grey suit and chase the dollars, as a technologist/engineer working in banking. That's a double whammy. Not only are you already working in a dry technical field, but you're also entering the bleak world of bean counting, which is daily corporate drudgery. There's no room for creativity or colourful characters in banking's IT departments.

My game plan has always been to earn enough to not have to worry about money. It's kind of worked. At times, I have been able to go for long stretches of my life without ever having to check my bank balance or do any budgeting. I've been able to have everything I wanted, when I wanted it, without thinking twice. However, there's another price to be paid: freedom.

In order to fit in a neat little box, and slot in and play nice with the other drones in the hive, you have to sacrifice any individual freedom of expression. There's no room for free spirits in the great grand pyramid scheme of corporate finance, capitalism and wage slavery. You need to appear to be a regular guy who is playing by the same rules as everybody else. You can't buck the trend. You can't beat the street.

Whether it's working 5 days a week, when you could easily afford to drop your hours to 3 days a week, or taking only 5 weeks of holiday when you could afford to only work 6 months of the year... you have to still put in the hours, weeks and months, to appear to be corporate enough to be allowed into the grand palaces of glass & steel.

Learning when to keep your mouth shut. Knowing who you're allowed to escalate issues to. Whose head are you allowed to go above. Learning which arses to kiss, who to brown nose. Learning when to come in early and when to leave late. Learning exactly which shade of grey is culturally in fashion at any given moment, and curtailing any longings you might have for a bright and gaudy tie or other flamboyant display of individuality.

You might have seen a scene in American Psycho, or perhaps read the chapter in the book, where the main protagonist and a colleague are comparing their business cards. The style details that they notice would escape the gaze of most people who are not immersed in the bland corporate world, but something as subtle as the serif on a font is a blaring foghorn to those who spend their days in a desert, devoid of all creativity.

This blog might appear to be intellectual masturbation, but really all this stuff had to come out. I've spent the best part of 20 years with no creative outlet. Sure, I got to design a few logos during my forays into startup land, and I got to do the graphics and sound for my iPhone games, but that was the briefest of respite from an unrelenting demand for my time to be spent pushing paper around a desk in a dreary office.

Ok, so I can't really complain. I've had a lifestyle and opportunities that many could only dream of. However, there is a feeling that everything that has come from that world is somehow dirty, and it's only by burning everything to the ground, and starting again, that I will find any peace and comfort. Everything that I've built using money from the corporate realm has felt just as fake as that entire make-work world.

Do you have to become destitute to appreciate things? What trigger is necessary in your life, to tell you to stop and smell the roses? What point do you reach, where you are prepared to watch your entire life fall into ruins, with some element of glee, with some sense of liberation? How is it that you can be happier as a person, when your whole world is collapsing?

Maybe I'll never own my own home and garden again. However I've lived in Royal Kensington Park Gardens. I didn't own the gardens, but when the park wardens have finished their sweep for any remaining interlopers (like me) after they have closed the park gates, and you have managed to evade discovery, then you pretty much have the place to yourself until the next morning.

The bulk of the homeless people in the park clustered unwisely and lazily around each other and the park entrances. They frequently robbed each other and got into fights. The park wardens and the police knew where to find them, and would go and antagonise them whenever park life was becoming a bit to cushy.

Being the lone wolf that I am, I found myself a thorny bush, with thick ground cover such that me and my tent were obscured from view, within its thorn-free centre. My bush was located a long way from any of the park entrances or paths through the park. It was in a part of the park that far fewer people would visit, as there's no monuments, statues, lake or other attraction. There was quite an extensive preparatory scouting operation and a lot of thought went into choosing my spot.

If you have chosen a more conventional lifestyle, you are probably in fear of eviction. You are probably afraid to default on your mortgage payments or get into rent arrears. You are probably fearful of losing your home and being turfed out onto the streets. Actually, it was pretty exciting and fun at times.

I really don't recommend that you become homeless if you have a family. It's more of a leisure activity for a single man in reasonable physical health, who has no fear of public ridicule or being ostracised.

Actually, this whole downward spiral has been immensely liberating. Who would honestly quit their job in order to write the equivalent of two novels, all of which would make them completely unemployable, and none of which would be commercial. There is no content here in this blog which is monetizable. I write because I have to... this stuff's been bottled up for too long. It has to go down on paper, before I lose my mind.

Who gets to be an artist? Who is allowed to have art as a career aspiration? Who has the talent? Or is it only the spoilt brat children of the moneyed elite who get to spend their days penning poetry and painting? How do artists pay the rent? How do artists eat?

Sorry, that sounds like I'm giving myself the title "artist" which is clearly undeserved, unearned. But what on earth is this monstrosity of a creation going to turn out to be? Calling the curious ramblings of an idiot in the process of losing his mind, an artwork, is surely preposterously pompous and delusional. Let's just keep calling it a blog for now. It will surely descend into an account of what I had for breakfast and other such banality anyway.

Surely words have to be printed on paper and bound into a book, before there can be any credibility for somebody's writing. Surely, unless there is a willing publisher, then the words are worthless. Without a publisher's mark, why should anybody care what somebody has taken the time to write?

There's a proper book from a proper author. I could quote from the book, and of course the words would have much greater gravitas, authority, because they're coming from a work of physical publishing. Ink had to soak into paper, and glue had to dry on a binding, for me to be able to hold this object in my hand, so therefore it exists, unlike this blog which is just made of ones and zeros and squirted down a fibre optic cable across thousands of miles.

A friend charmingly refers to my blog as a "blag" and naturally he doesn't read it. I'm not sure I'm blagging. I'm pretty much an expert in blagging and this feels like the complete opposite. I'm laying my soul bare here. I'm pouring my heart out. I'm giving you all the ammunition you need to destroy me.

There's a considerable leap of faith here, to lay yourself wide open to ridicule and shame. My actions are wide open to be criticised and cut to pieces. Every bit of my life can be dissected, like some lab animal. You'd be second to the carcass though. I already thoroughly dismantled my own mind and picked over the bones of my past.

I like to think that there might be something here after extensive editing, that could prove interesting to those going through the complete self-destruction of their life. Certainly there is inspiration that I have taken from other people's narratives of their descent into madness, addiction and destitution. I'm trying to emulate their writing, but also add to that body of literature, as I have struggled to find enough to read to satisfy my own demand.

But, let's just call this writing practice. I know that everything I've written to date is far too jumbled up and mixing topics to follow any kind of thread that somebody could just sit down and follow with any interest. It's too hard to find the nuggets that tickle your individual fancy.

Things would probably be a lot harder and flow a lot less verbosely if I was to set myself the strict constraints of a plot to follow and having to keep things in chronological order. This jumble of thoughts would struggle to make it out of my brain and onto a page if they had to be ordered, structured, constrained.

I hope you don't think I'm arrogant for considering the possibility that other people might read what I write. Perhaps it's naïve to even think that I could offer an interesting tale to another lost soul, wandering aimlessly or feeling alone.

Anyway, I'm going to go and eat my tea now.

Tags: #career