This is a story about keeping up appearances...

I have a tattoo that I can't cover up, which tells the world that I've had problems with suicide attempts, self-harm, depression, bipolar, alcoholism and substance abuse. I have a blog which puts me on page 2 of Google if you search for my name. I have a Twitter account that has the most followers out of anybody who shares my name. I'm hardly being shy and retiring about my dark past. I'm hardly keeping my skeletons in the cupboard.

One of my work colleagues has already found my blog - by Google'ing me - and has visited a few times. I can see that he uses the WiFi at work and I can see that he uses his Apple iPhone Plus. That's happened waaaay too soon.

An old friend who I know from the kitesurfing community recommended me for the job. He's friends with another colleague on Facebook. I don't use Facebook much, but when I do, it's usually because I'm having suicidal thoughts and it's a cry for help. If my friend commented on something I put on Facebook, my other work colleague might see it.

It's a small world, so that's why it's a good idea to be open and transparent. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.

Of course, people who suffer from mental health problems - including addiction - are heavily stigmatised. If I didn't think I was able to do my job highly effectively, with an excellent level of professionalism and reliability, then I'd be slightly more reluctant to publish the inner-workings of my mind, and make my struggles a matter of public record.

I take my readers on a journey on me, and some of them will become sympathetic towards me and my story. Generally, if you read forwards and follow along with me, you'll gain a positive view, but if you read backwards then you'll dislike me and imagine that I enjoy the benefit of hindsight, which I don't.

It was particularly telling, the difference in reactions to my attempted suicide last September. My colleague who had followed my progress on my blog was sympathetic and caring. My colleague who read back through my blog, starting from the point where I believed I was going to die, was so unsympathetic that he sacked me and evicted me from my home, because I was on a life-support system and therefore unable to phone and say that I was going to be out of the office for a couple of days. He literally didn't care that I was in a coma with a tube down my throat and a machine breathing for me. That's the difference that it makes, reading my blog backwards versus reading it forwards - it can make a person not care that I'm dying, or it can elicit a sympathetic response to my plight.

For the avoidance of any doubt, I'm through the worst of my suicidal moments, now that the stress levels in my life are subsiding. Naturally, being homeless, close to bankruptcy, jobless, friendless, single, new to an area and generally having nothing and nobody is pretty damn awful for a person's mental health. In the space of 6 months I've made some friends, got a girlfriend, earned some money, bought a car, rented an apartment, got a local job and gotten myself a bit more settled, although I'm still a long way off having security and stability.

What might annoy my colleagues is thinking they've got a bargain - that I'm an expert in my field and I've got talent and experience - when in actual fact they've got a homeless bankrupt junkie alcoholic with mental health problems who never even knew how to switch a computer on until yesterday. Surely I could have been bought for minimum wage, because I'm desperate and vulnerable? This was certainly the case with the guy who didn't care that I was on life support - he felt ripped off, when he discovered the truth about me, even though I had nearly completed the first phase of the project I'd been working on, and the results had been fantastic.

I think really horrible people are few and far between. I think unethical exploitative bosses are few and far between. I really don't think it's going to be a problem that my real identity doesn't quite marry up with corporate expectations. I'm always well presented at work. Nobody would be any the wiser about my dark past, except for the aforementioned tattoo, of course.

I'm mentioning the tattoo and putting up a picture of myself without my infallible disguise quite deliberately, of course. Of course I know what I'm doing. I'm not exactly unhappy about anybody knowing about who I am, because I find it too exhausting to wear the corporate mask and pretend I'm perfect. It's not nice to have to live a lie and cover up any struggles I might have in my personal life.

It's been nearly 8 months since I had any problems with my mental health. I don't take any drugs or medications. I drink in moderation. I'm not suicidal. I'm not self-harming. I'm delivering high-quality work to the satisfaction of my bosses. My finances are improving. I've got my own place. I've got my little car. I've got my girlfriend. I've got my friends. Things aren't perfect, but they're improving and they'll continue to improve as long as I'm allowed to keep working and earning money.

It's a big gamble to keep this big digital presence alive. I obviously can't write about anything that would be unprofessional, breach my code-of-conduct, bring my profession into disrepute, breach confidentiality or any any way shape or form be considered unacceptable behaviour, but to delete my blog and my Twitter and Facebook account and expunge myself from the internet would be a considerable loss to me, and would be likely to negatively affect my ability to cope and function.

I hope that if my colleague(s) continue to read this, they can see it for what it is - my healthy coping mechanism, and something I need, because it brings me great comfort and a lot of care and support.

So far, I only know for definite that one work colleague is reading my blog. I hope to make friends at work. I need friends. I don't see it as a bad thing that somebody's reading.

I don't want the secret identity thing. I don't want the double-life thing. I've got nothing to hide; nothing to be ashamed of.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia

This is a story about overcrowding...

In the animal kingdom resources are scarce. Food is hard to come by so the best areas to hunt and gather are highly sought after. Defending your territory requires a constant battle with other individuals who want to encroach. Controlling resources gives a surplus of food, which means that surplus can be used to rear offspring. Having a food surplus means you're attractive to a mate - you clearly have the genes to protect your territory, which means you should be a good provider and your offspring should reach genetic maturity and be able to pass on your genes.

In the animal kingdom, what's good for the individual is generally good for the species. Territory disputes will result in fights, some of which may be fatal, but self-preservation instincts cause animals to prefer to avoid conflict. There is no 'delicate equilibrium' - the animal kingdom is a constant battle that ebbs and flows, and whole species are regularly wiped out, for no other reason than pure bad luck - the starting conditions and what happens thereafter are decided by the roll of a dice.

When humans behave like animals, they revere violence, muscle, domination, cruelty, bullying, monopolies, power, control, conquest, shows of force, agression and all the other vulgar traits of a supposedly intelligent creature, which leads to rape and pillage when it is allowed to continue unchecked. We celebrate the rapists in our culture - the 'hero' soldiers and the meathead bullies; the 1% who control 50% of the wealth. We revere the bestial. We worship the animalistic.

When an animal gets a food surplus, it then wants a sex surplus. It's a common male fantasy to want a harem of females. Obviously, with there being an approximately 50:50 male to female population ratio, there are going to be men who are going to lose out. In the animal kingdom, those 'beta' males would fight with the 'alphas' for breeding rights. This is something that we see culturally celebrated - there are various rituals that seem to demonstrate that there's a 'victor' in a simulated 'battle'... it's called sport. It's a zero-sum game: for there to be a winner, there has to be a loser.

We are not animals. We are humans and that is distinct and different, because we are self-aware. We are able to preserve knowledge between generations using spoken, written - and more recently - video as a communication mechanism. We have language. We have reason and logic and science.

Prostitution is an evolutionary advancement. Prostitution allows anybody who is capable of generating value in society to be able to access sex. Prostitution allows sex to be traded with the smartest individuals, and not just the strongest. Having sex with the smartest is an evolutionary advancement, because it allows the species to develop at a rate that grows exponentially, because it is not restricted by selective breeding and genetic mutation - if smart people fuck, they raise smart kids... not because of their genes, but because of their upbringing.

Clearly, we are in the middle of an evolutionary split. If you think about the big 5 tech companies - Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft - then imagine how the founders of those companies would fare in the stone age, you'd be pretty sure that those guys would not get laid. The multi-billion dollar tech company founders are classic 'beta' males, aren't they?

Meanwhile, toxic masculinity has reached such epic proportions that the swollen muscles and tanned skin, that 100 years ago would have shown that you were a farm worker, and therefore poor and stupid, is now revered as attractive.

One branch of society worships agression and bestial behaviour - fighting, war, muscle - while another branch of humanity is rapidly evolving and pulling away from the thick-skulled knuckle-draggers. Who's going to win in a fight? You with your muscles and tiny brain, or me with my army of AI-controlled drones? Who's going to win? The dirt poor idiots, or the richest smartest people on the planet?

The geeks are inheriting the earth.

Meanwhile, homosexuality seems to be the next evolutionary stage. Homosexuality means unlimited sex without having to engage in the bullshit drama that's always created during bestial, animalistic, heteronormative fulfilment of the will of the genes. Procreation is a massive distraction from deep thinking and scientific discovery. A scientist can dedicate their whole life to research and pass on their knowledge through what they write and publish, so there's really no need for any genetic heirs. We all benefit handsomely from the work of the geniuses who have lived and died before, whether they had children or not. Anybody is capable of reading the works of a great scientist and becoming one themselves. The birth of knowledge is far more important than the birth of beasts.

Then, suicide. The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

The vast body of discovered knowledge is far greater than the human mind was evolved to cope with. We are not supposed to know the secrets of the universe. We are not supposed to understand that we are mortal creatures who are cosmically insignificant. To attempt to grasp the ungraspable is to destroy our own sense of wellbeing. There's cold comfort knowing that we're held onto the surface of a rock by the weakest physical force - gravity - while we orbit a ball of gas that's a dying star in the vacuum of space, in a universe that's so vast it's beyond comprehension. We weren't supposed to travel in motor cars. We weren't supposed to fly in jet planes. We weren't supposed to live in skyscrapers. Everything about modern life is anathema to us - it creates great anxiety and distress. Just think about how many people have a fear of flying.

Suicide is a natural response for a person who can comprehend their own mortality and see that life is suffering. A smart person can see that their life is meaningless. A smart person can comprehend their insignificance in the universe. Once you've figured out that life is pointless, and life is suffering, then suicide is logical. The smartest humans will quickly assimilate enough knowledge to see that it's not worth suffering and that death is preferable to life. The survival instinct is genetically programmed, to ensure survival of the species. If the individual is suffering, then of course their own individual suffering is more important than the survival of the species as a whole. In fact, the suicide of those who are prone to suicidal thoughts is better for the survival of the species, although the gene persists because it is intellect that makes a person more likely to commit suicide. Suicide is an intellectual's best option, to end the suffering.

Humans are incredibly adaptable, and we have learned to live with the anxiety-inducing awfulness of the modern world, where most of us cram into overcrowded cities for economic reasons. Most of us are living with cramped living conditions, crime, disease, pollution, noise, ugly buildings, bright lights, overcrowded transport networks and all the other terrible things that modern urban living has given us. We like to think we're terribly technologically advanced, but we've simply gotten used to all the bad stuff that would leave stone age man whimpering; cowering in a corner with fear and overloaded senses.

Devolution - de-evolution - is happening. Humanity has fragmented. The thick-skulled knuckle-draggers will drag themselves back to the stone age, because that's where they feel comfortable. The stupid ones will have loads of children, and they'll teach those children to be stupid. Stupidity is celebrated in the underclass.

If you're smart, you won't have kids and you'll kill yourself.

Tags: #suicide #politics #economics

This is a story about the origins of [my] bipolar disorder...

Here are a couple of select conversations from the last year that might help you to understand the circumstances that influence my mood instability.

Me: "I'd like to discharge myself from hospital, please"

Doctors: "No. You are on a high dependency ward. You will die"

Me: "It can't be that bad. I want to discharge myself, please"

Doctors: "Your kidneys aren't working. You need dialysis. Your blood has dangerously high levels of potassium in it and you could go into cardiac arrest at any moment"

Me: "But I need to go to work otherwise I will lose my job"

Doctors: "You can't work if you're dead"

Me: "I'm going to have to risk it"

Why would I do such a staggeringly stupid thing? Why would I risk my life like that? It seems patently absurd, doesn't it?

For my whole career, bosses and shareholders have demanded only one thing: do more, faster.

I decided that I was being exploited. I'm the one who makes the software. Without my software, there's no product; there's no business and there's no profit. Without software that I've built, no amount of lawyers and salespeople and middle managers and jumped-up idiots with important sounding job titles, would have anything to do other than burn what little money the company had left. If the software is the product, then you've got nothing if you've got no software. If the software is what allows you to do thousands of times more volume than you'd be able to do without it, then you haven't got a business if you haven't got the software - your business model would collapse. Your business is software.

I'm not saying that software is important. Software can't build a house. Software can't plant carrots. Software can't dispose of your sewerage. Software is bullshit. However, most of the economy is bullshit - at least 85% bullshit here in the UK anyway.

So, anyway, some jumped-up little twat with his daddy's money comes up to me saying "I'm an entrepreneur and I've got a genius idea... I just need a geek to make the software". On closer inspection the software is where the genius lies. When the business idea is examined with close scrutiny, it turns out that none of the important details have been figured out. Turning an idea into a working business - the execution - is something that gets figured out by the lawyers and software engineers. The "entrepreneur" just provides his daddy's money, while he walks around with his chest puffed out pretending like he's a serious businessman.

The next thing that happens is that I say "how much money have you got to spend and when do you need to have a working product?". The answer is always the same: "I haven't got any money and I need it yesterday".

Where did the budget go for the software? It seems to have all been spent on employing a bunch of old schoolchums to do "brand consultancy" or "business development". Basically, the directors fly all around the world attending conferences and "networking", which is very costly because they're running up huge expenses. Meanwhile, the geek is expected to churn out the software - "I don't know what it is, but is it finished yet?" - as fast as they possibly can. It's quite common now for very capable young computer programmers to work unpaid, or on slave wages, because they're desperate to gain commercial experience. Some idiots even think that I'd enjoy working on a software project for free, like it's a motherf**king hobby or something.

So, I arrived at the situation where I would always work at top speed. I've pleased my bosses and shareholders, not because I give them what they want, but because I've generally been much faster and much cheaper than anybody they've used before. In short: I deliver.

I was working so damn hard all the time and not seeing much of a reward for the dedication I put into my job, so I started to work for myself. I made software and I sold it. I made some iPhone apps and I sold them. One of my apps took me half a day to code and it was downloaded thousands of times. This made sense to me - the whole reason I work with computers is because they can do things while I sleep; a computer can perform many thousandfold tasks than I ever could. It makes sense that I would use a computer to leverage my talents and efforts.

I didn't quite understand that the whole reason why I came to be writing iPhone apps was because I'd been burnt out by my employer. I'd landed a hell of a project. The world's biggest project, in fact - "Nick, would you mind creating us a system that can process a quadrillion dollars worth of credit default swaps, please? Have it done as soon as you can, please, there's a good chap... we've got a global economy that needs wrecking".

I didn't quite understand that I burnt myself out again writing iPhone apps. I coded as fast as I could. I catnapped and skipped meals. I worked 7 days a week. I knew that every moment that I wasn't coding was another moment that my competitors were potentially going to release a similar app. I had to be first to market with my ideas. I had to be the first person in the Apple App Store with an app that did something that nobody else had thought of yet.

I decided to start a proper business. I decided that I'd create a piece of software with a recurring license cost. I decided to create a piece of Software as a Service (SaaS) and then I'd be able to earn money while I slept, once I'd completed the system. I didn't have any of my daddy's money to spend though. I didn't raise any money from friends and family. I just had me and my idea, my software engineering skills and 24 hours in every single day.

I didn't quite understand that I burnt myself out doing my startup. I didn't understand that writing the software - the hard bit - was only the beginning of what I had to do. I had to raise investment to be able to market my product. I had to sell the product. I had to support the product. I had to do all the business administration. I had to raise investment to be able to afford to hire people, so that I didn't collapse under the weight of all those competing demands. I didn't go fast enough though, so I did collapse.

With every burst of intense focus and effort, there would be a windfall. Particularly in investment banking, if you do a good job then you get a big fat juicy bonus. If you make an app that goes to #1 in the App Store charts then you get a windfall. Even if you do a startup, you can sometimes get a reward - my startup was at least profitable; investable.

The pattern of behaviour was established. It made sense to me to work as hard and as fast as I could, because the rewards seemed to be there.

When I run a software project - a team of people who work for me - then I put developer welfare as the top priority. I set realistic deadlines. I allow time for people to catch their breath. If the pressure starts to increase, then I move the deadline rather than asking people to work longer hours. Bosses should hate me, but I underpromise and overdeliver, and I run happy motivated high-performing teams. I get great feedback from the people who work for me.

When I'm coding, I seem to forget about my own mental health. When I've got a tough deadline and a tough deliverable, I'll work as hard as I can. I get scared. I think I've forgotten how to code. I feel like my skills are rusty and outdated. I feel old and useless. So, because of this fear, I go as fast as I possibly can.

It hasn't helped that I've never quite managed to gain a comfortable financial cushion that would allow me to feel like I can consider my health and general mental wellbeing, as well as just delivering the software. I always put work as my first priority.

Me: "I'm going to go to London to do some IT consultancy for an investment bank"

Psychiatrist: "But that's what you always do, and you know it makes you unwell"

Me: "But I need the money"

Psychiatrist: "You need to look after your mental health"

Me: "My mental health can wait. I'm nearly bankrupt"

Psychiatrist: "Well go bankrupt then. Allow yourself time to recover"

Me: "But then I'll never be able to work in investment banking again"

Psychiatrist: "That might be a good thing. It makes you unwell"

Me: "Yes, but it also makes me rich"

In the interests of completing the picture: I am not rich. The amount that I earn would make me rich if I could stay well for long enough to keep working, but the stress and the pressure also mean that I almost always get sick. It's a horrible catch 22.

So, I've completed another software system and it's live - it's up and running and people like it. My boss is pleased. Am I burnt out? Yes, I am a little. I had to bunk off work yesterday. In fact, I've bunked 3 out of the last 9 days. Is this the beginning of me starting to take a little more care of myself?

The cycle is very much not over. I need at least another one or two decent length contracts before I have that all-important financial cushion. It's going to take me until the end of the year to get back to financial security. It's going to be months and months before the ever-present threat of running out of money goes away, even if some money is slowly starting to trickle into my bank account.

It's quite ludicrous that I was on collision course with certain bankruptcy, and now I'm solvent and I've delivered another project on time and on budget. Last year was the year where I gave up. Everything was just too damn hard. I had a great contract, then my kidneys packed up. I had an OK contract but the boss didn't seem to realise he'd hired a bit of rock star at a bargain basement price. I got a contract, but I only just had enough money to be able to afford to go to work... I was running on petrol fumes.

If you were to ask the most stable person you know to live my life, I guarantee that their mood would be unstable as hell. How can you expect anybody to go through the kinds of ups and downs that I go through, without accompanying high and low mood? My mood is a sane reaction to an insane world.

I don't think I have bipolar disorder. I think I'm a product of my environment.

Tags: #bipolar #career #computing #banking

This is a story about how nothing really mattress...

This is the last double bed I slept in, 27 days ago. That's my brand new bedding with brand new pillows and a brand new duvet. I moved to Manchester with nothing more than my laptop and a bag of clothes. New life - clean slate. This is the apartment where I tried to kill myself. It was a miserable place and I'm glad I never slept there again.

I woke up on Saturday 9th September, and I was miserable. I wrote a blog post in this bed, about how miserable I was and how close I was to committing suicide. It was prescient.

The next bed I lay upon was owned by a guy who I had become friends with through my girlfriend. My girlfriend at the time was of no fixed abode - sofa surfing with a guy who she met on a dating website. I'd travelled to this friend's apartment to see my girlfriend. We lay kissing and cuddling on our friend's bed. Then, we broke up.

Coming home to my miserable apartment, I didn't get into bed - I took a massive overdose and lay on the bathroom floor in the dark, waiting to die. The next bed I laid upon was in the Accident & Emergency department of the nearest hospital.

I'm presuming - because I was unconscious - that I stayed on the same hospital bed, as I was transferred from A&E resus to the Intensive Treatment Unit (ITU) and then to a High Dependency ward. I was on life support. I was having seizures. I don't remember any of this.

I vaguely remember having to scramble across onto a different bed, to move me out of the High Dependency ward and onto a general ward. I remember this because there was a bag of my piss sloshing around that had to be moved too, and there was a tube coming out of my penis, which I had to be careful not to entangle with anything. The tube that was going up my dick yanked my male member around - it wasn't a comfortable experience.

From hospital I was thrown in a police cell. There was a 'bed' made of concrete painted with light blue paint - the same glossy paint that adorned the floor and walls of the cell. To slightly soften the hard concrete, there was a thin blue foam mat, which was wipe-clean. I did not sleep.

Driven home by the two police who had interviewed me - at 2am in the morning - I finally got back home at 3:30am. My sleep medication was nowhere to be found and I'd had a traumatic day - sleep was impossible. I lay awake on my bed, waiting until the earliest possible moment I could go to the office and try to find a work colleague - I was in a desperate situation and I needed help from somebody friendly and sympathetic to my plight: alone in a strange city with no friends or family; no smartphone, laptop, debit card, credit cards, cash or driving license.

After a second dreadful day I was pretty fucked up, as one might expect of somebody abandoned in such shitty circumstances. As sleep deprivation reached the 40+ hour mark, I ended up back at the same hospital's Accident & Emergency department that I had been in 5 days earlier.

Another day, another hospital bed. This one I came round face down on, with my wrists handcuffed behind my back, after having received an intramuscular injection of 4mg of lorazepam. It was approximately 3am in the morning - now 6 days after my original hospital admission.

Sectioned first under a 136 (up to 72 hours) and then upgraded to a section 2 (up to 28 days) I was then taken to a secure psychiatric facility with airlock-type doors, to stop anybody escaping. I was given a private room that was quite nicely appointed, with a writing desk and an ensuite wet-room.

Having blearily come round in the early hours of the Tuesday morning, it was now Thursday night. I finally had a single bed in a comparatively peaceful environment in which to collapse and sleep, mercifully with the assistance of some zopiclone to calm my jangled nerves and soothe me into my slumbers.

Gone were the bleeps and hisses of the machines that were keeping people alive, on the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), replaced with the sound of alarms, slamming doors, shouting and running in corridors, as my fellow patients were restrained by staff. I found it somewhat comforting, to know that my crisis was no longer at its peak.

After 8 days on the PICU, I was transferred to an acute psych ward. It was terrifying.

With me in hospital I had two Apple iPhones, two Apple Macbooks, a Nintendo Switch and £1,150 in £50 notes. It's not really recommended to have that amount of valuables on your person, in amongst some very poor and deprived people. The wealth disparity was vulgar.

My guardian angel facilitated the return of my surplus iPhone and Macbook - Apple were excellent and refunded me with no quibbles.

I begun life on the new ward in a private bedroom, but I didn't have an ensuite shower and the TV blasted right next door for 19 hours a day, at full volume. At first, I was too tired to care and I could sleep through the dawn chorus of utter bullshit television a million decibels, but then it started to keep me awake, leaving me less than 5 hours of shut-eye per night.

Then, the dreaded dormitory. Dorms are a mixed bag - very dependent on the luck of the draw, in terms of your fellow occupants. Security is a massive concern, as nothing more than a privacy curtain separated my personal possessions from anybody who'd care to have a look through my bags. Snoring can be a pain in the arse, with one person able to keep everybody else awake listening to their noisy slumbers. Thankfully, my dorm buddies weren't too bad.

This morning I woke up to "second; minute; hour; power; shower" repeated over and over, as a poetic dorm buddy wrote a new rap. That was 5:15am. It was still dark. He was pretty loud. He's sleeping now - snoring.

Today, I'm bustin' out of the psych ward. Watch out, general public of the United Kingdom - I'm going to be moving among you again as a free man.

This is my current bed. I'm lying on it as I type this. I don't know what the bed or the room I'm sleeping in tonight looks like - I've never set foot in the house I'm going to travel to this afternoon. It's a leap in the dark, as is my wont.

Some of my few remaining worldly possessions are here with me in Manchester and some are in London. I'm surprised that I haven't lost more of my valuables. I can't quite bring myself to do the maths, to figure how much money I've lost on this crazy jaunt to the North of England. What does it matter? I'm alive and about to be accepted into the fold of a kind family who are taking me in - the IT consultant who lost his mind in a city where he didn't have any friends or family. It's unlikely that I'd have ended up homeless, but I wasn't relishing the prospect of being chucked off the psych ward and into a dreadful bed & breakfast, in some shitty suburb.

The very definition of "my" home and "my" bed has been smashed to smithereens. Tonight will be the tenth bed I've lain upon in less than 28 days, including several hospital beds and the concrete slab that passes for a bed in a police cell.

Distress flares were fired off and a good samaritan is coming to rescue me from a fairly dire situation.

Tonight, I sleep in a normal house for the first time in what feels like a very long time.

Tags: #hospital #mentalhealth #nhs

This is a story about the comeback kid...

Here's quite an interesting document, to me anyway - it says that I was transferred to a Northern city hospital's intensive care unit (ITU) on Sunday 10th September and all I had were the clothes on my back. The date of my original admission to hospital - Saturday 9th September 2017 - is shown quite clearly in the top left, under my name.

The reason why this document is interesting to me, is that I started having seizures at some point after arriving in hospital. I was already well into a fatal tramadol and codeine overdose when the emergency services got to me. I'm pretty sure I remember the hospital telling me that they'd make me as comfortable as possible but I was probably going to die, or words to that effect.

I've been through all my paperwork and I can't find my hospital discharge summary. I suspect that it may have gone wayward during the insane events of the Wednesday & Thursday following my fatal overdose. I will be obtaining another copy as soon as I can. Any documents I can lay my hands on are useful for me, because seizures, coma and unconsciousness are not particularly conducive to remembering the events of my hospitalisation very well.

What must be self-evident is that I was very sick indeed, to have been in intensive care.

Anybody who's followed my story knows about my plans. One only needs to go back to a blog post on August 10th to see one of the actual boxes of legally prescribed medication that constituted part of my fatal overdose.

I use those words fatal overdose quite deliberately. I had calculated the dose that would be fatal, doubled it and then chucked in another shitload of prescription opiates for good measure. I wasn't messing around. This wasn't a cry for help. This wasn't some attention seeking bullshit. This was a very real, calculated, pre-planned and meticulously executed suicide - following the precise steps that I had outlined earlier in the day.

It might surprise you to learn that I set an alarm on my phone, so that I wouldn't tweet or otherwise let on that I was in the process of killing myself, before I was beyond the point of no return. Who does that? Certainly not somebody who has any intention of going on living, I would've thought. Would you be brave enough to take a fatal overdose and gamble that you might get saved by social media? Seems like a pretty dumb publicity stunt or way of getting attention - in all probability you'd just wind up dead.

I remember when I was in the Emergency Department of the hospital, trying desperately to get a drink of water - I was fully aware that having more fluids in me would allow more of the deadly medications to be absorbed into my bloodstream, accelerating my death. The hospital were wise to my suicidal intent and they knew that they could ignore my requests to not be treated, as soon as I fell unconscious or started having seizures. The anaesthetists must have stepped in at some point and put me into a medically induced coma.

Imagine waking up in a hospital gown, with a tube coming out of your piss hole, sellotaped to your leg. Imagine waking up and not being able to speak, because there's a tube down your throat. Imagine waking up and all you can see all around you are machines that are either pumping stuff into you or taking stuff out - loads of screens and loads of digital readouts. I had more input and output ports than a Personal Computer (PC) from the 1990s.

I've written about this before, but I need to write about it again, because I'm trying to process what happened to me with only the scant information that's available. Between the hospital and the police, they pretty much conspired to keep my friends, family and work colleagues completely in the dark about whether I'd lived or died and what the hell was going on. I wasn't really conscious until Tuesday 12th of September 2017 - that's quite a long time to be in limbo land. On the Tuesday, I was vaguely aware that my sister and my work colleagues wanted to speak to me, and I wanted to speak to them, but I wasn't allowed to. What utter bullshit.

The police have since phoned the company that I was working for, and told them in no uncertain terms that I was in hospital and not at all able to communicate with them to let them know I was going to be off work on the Monday & Tuesday. However, the company has severed all contact with me and has been avoiding the office since Wednesday 13th September 2017. What on earth could they be so afraid of, that they daren't answer the phone or go to the office? What on earth are they thinking? I have no idea, because they won't return my calls or reply to my emails.

Over that Wednesday & Thursday following my fatal overdose, everything collapsed around my ears. Without a phone, wallet, cash, laptop or any of the other things most of us take for granted every single day, I was lost in a city that was nearly completely alien to me, with not a single person to turn to. It was highly distressing. It was exhausting and stressful, to go from place to place, replacing whatever I could.

The Apple Store in the nearby shopping centre became the centre of my world, having been impolitely muscled out of my office with rather flimsy excuses. I dug my heels in, because something fishy was going on and I wanted people to come clean - what the fuck was going on? Why was I being treated so unprofessionally? It was a horrible experience, and not something I should have been put through, given my recent discharge from hospital.

I received a phonecall saying I had an email with some letters from a solicitor, from the company I was working for. How was I supposed to read this email, without my laptop or smartphone? Nobody from the company would speak to me properly. I did not receive even the bare minimum professional courtesy that should be extended to somebody who'd been a valued member of the team for some time.

Because the matter is now being handled by legal professionals, due to the complete refusal of the company to treat me with the common decency that any human being might expect - let alone adhere to contract and UK laws - I can't really go into any more detail. I'll be sure to share the details of any court proceedings so that this blasted company can't get away with their inexcusable misbehaviour.

Of course, the pages of this blog document my darkest secrets in unflinching detail, but this is therapy for me and I do not mix my professional and my social media identities in a way that might besmirch or sully the reputation of a company that is trading ethically and within the law. There are a lot of Nick Grants out there in the world, and I'm just one of many. In fact, this whole blog could have been created by somebody who maliciously intended to impersonate me, for nefarious purposes, couldn't it? Have you been careful to check who actually controls my Twitter, Facebook and blog? Is there anywhere that there is a direct reference to who and what I actually do for a day job, that could justify the mistreatment I've suffered?

One should remember that this blog has been the best thing I ever did, in terms of being able to stabilise my life and recover my poise after homelessness, addiction, alcoholism, financial problems and a whole world of pain, absolutely tore me to shreds. Should I hang my head in shame and hide in the shadows? Should I keep my mouth shut, and pretend that nothing bad ever happened to me?

There's absolutely no way you're gonna shut me up without killing me. I'm loud and I'm proud. It's more important that I write my story in unflinching detail, than cowering in fear and attempting to cover up what's happened to me. What have I got to be ashamed of? I've worked damn hard to get my shit together after it was blown to bits, so I'm damn well going to write about it.

Of course, culturally we only allow those who are already successful to share their stories of their life struggles, that challenge the status quo and our preconceptions. Paul Gascoigne and George Best have done a lot to bring the ethical debates surrounding alcohol abuse into the public consciousness, for example. Ronnie O'Sullivan and Stephen Fry have candidly shared their experiences of cocaine addiction, but yet we still revere them as great people... why is this? If you've been reading carefully, you'll know that I'm teetotal and I'm not on any drugs, except for pregabalin (for nerve damage) and zopiclone (because it's bloody hard to sleep on a noisy psychiatric ward of a hospital) which are both legally prescribed to me.

It seems I've taken a battering, because of foolish assumptions that have been made about me. Just about the only correct assumption that you could've made, is that I should probably be dead, after having ingested such a massive overdose and had plenty of time for it to take effect before the emergency services got me to hospital.

I really can't get myself into the mindset, where I would mistreat somebody who'd been hospitalised and was very sick. Please, somebody explain to me what have I done wrong, apart from what I've already very publicly admitted to? Is it right to crucify me; to punish me beyond the punishment that I've already suffered? Do you not think it was awful, what I've been through? Why would you put the boot in and kick me when I'm down? I don't understand why the shit continues to be rained down upon my head.

Does somebody want to explain to me how it's at all ethical, that I came to find myself homeless, unemployed and isolated in a city I'd never set foot in two months ago, after I took all the risks and put in so much effort to try and make a go of things?

Answers on a postcard to Nick Grant, Planet Earth.

Tags: #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #bipolar #career

This is a story about the gutter press...

It was some time in 2009 or 2010... I forget exactly when. My life consisted of a mortgage, a house, a cat and an Apple Macbook laptop computer. Thanks to an alarmist sensationalistic tabloid newspaper, my attention was drawn to what were commonly referred to at the time as "legal highs".

In a game of cat & mouse, the government attempted to legislate against clever chemists, who could cook up concoctions that would evade the laws more quickly than they could be passed. "Meow meow" became an iconic drug of choice, for grown adults who have a right to choose what they put into their own bodies. We don't have policemen at the bottom of mountains and cliff faces, telling climbers that it's "too dangerous" for them to scale the treacherous heights.

The irony is, that I was a posterboy for a life of conformity that we are all supposed to aspire towards - I had the millstone of debt around my neck and a life of indentured servitude to look forward to. Despite my hefty income, I was destined to spend over 20 years - the prime of my life - servicing the unreasonable debts that I had been forced to incur, simply to have a secure place to live.

A decade earlier, there had been a nightclub - The Chunnel Club - which ran an event every Friday called Trinity which had two railway arches in London's Vauxhall. Under each arch, DJs played very distinctly different dance music. A drug dealer stood by the toilets and for £10 per tablet, one could purchase a 'Turbo Mitsubishi' which packed a powerful punch of 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)... more commonly known as ecstasy.

Had it not been for the tabloid newspaper printing articles about the legal drugs accessible for sale online, I would have been blissfully unaware of what treasures there were to be bought on internet. I quickly discovered that an analogue - a chemical cousin - of MDMA was readily available for next-day delivery via the Royal Mail.

By 2012, the long arm of the law had abolished the purchase and sale of most of the chemicals that posed little significant risk to my health and wellbeing. Thankfully, Gawker (a website) had published an article that pretty much provided a step-by-step guide on how to access the dark web, and the Silk Road drugs marketplace. I was in a position that no wealthy middle-class person would expect to find themselves: with an unlimited choice of illegal drugs available at my fingertips.

It should be noted at this point that I've never had a drug dealer. This should be re-iterated: although I purchased drugs off one reliable dealer in a club in London, I never knew his name nor have I ever scored drugs from a dealer in the conventional sense. For the uninitiated, this means having a bunch of phone numbers stored in your contact list, and ringing round to see if the narcotics that you desire can be supplied - to 'score' in the colloquial vernacular.

When one 'joins the club' of middle class guffawing overpaid twats, very often one is insulated from the seedy world of illegal narcotics the scruffy shitholes where drugs are sold from, by the most enterprising individuals who can't quite escape the life of poverty that seeks to forever keep them in their tracksuits and council estates.

God bless the internet - provider of drugs to people who would otherwise not have a fucking clue where to get them from.

It cannot be understated, the role that the media helpfully played, in drawing my attention to matters that I would otherwise have been blissfully unware of. I had no idea what "meow meow" was or that it could be bought online just like a product that one might purchase from Amazon dot com. I had no idea what Tor and the Silk Road were. I was familiar with Bitcoin, but only as a digital currency that happened to tickle my geek gland in around 2010. These terms might be gobbldegook to you and I applaud your ignorance, for it has protected you from an underworld that you never want to plumb the depths of.

From Tor and the Silk Road, arose the Black Market Road, Agora, Alphabay, Hansa and Dream Market, plus a million other wannabe imitators. Silk Road 2 - the sequel - was briefly the best place to purchase narcotics online.

Ronald Reagan - an actor - and his wife Nancy, started a completely insane moral crusade against human nature that spawned technological innovation, making it easier than ever before to access high-purity drugs at rock-bottom prices. I had no idea what "just say no" meant as a child, growing up, but by the time I reached adulthood I owed a great debt of gratitude to the Regans' legacy, of ensuring an unending supply of easily accessible powerful narcotics.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and many of the things that we take for granted today in our advanced industrialised society, were born as a result of the arms race and the space race. It seems so hilariously ironic that the attempts by the FBI, CIA, DEA and other US law-enforcement agencies, to destroy the drugs business, has resulted in a far more efficient system that can reliably deliver whatever I want, next day. God bless America, and her moral crusade to turn us all into debt-laden consuming automatons, who do not question authority and the need to relentlessly replace the shit we buy - designed to become obsolete within a year or so.

For every dark web marketplace that is shut down, another 10 will spring up in their place. The authorities' efforts should be applauded, because they are pushing the innovators to invent solutions and technologies that far outpace governments and their systems of societal control.

The founder of the Silk Road was a naïve young man who knew very little about technology - the ease with which he set up a site selling the best part of a quarter of a billion dollars of drugs per annum, is truly astounding. I mean, the guy was a fucking amateur - the trail he left is still all there for all to see, all over the internet... just Google "frosty" and "Dread Pirate Roberts".

God bless the gutter press, for keeping me informed of developments in the narcotics supply chain.

Tags: #drugs

This is a story about convenience...

I emerge from my apartment building, take a right turn and walk down a street I've never walked down before, in a city I've never visited before. I reach a T-junction and I look left and right. Which way will lead me to what I want: somewhere to buy a roll of toilet tissue? I turn right again and when I reach the end of another unfamiliar road, I see a shop which is open until late at night. My instincts have guided me swiftly and directly to the nearest supplier of nearly everything that a man could need.

As I step inside this branch of a well-known chain of miniature supermarkets, the first thing I see is a range of 5 different flavours of noodles. To the plastic containers, one merely needs to add boiling water, producing something that tastes and smells like a small meal in around 5 minutes.

I had already eaten half a Chinese take-out, when I realised to my horror that in my haste to make way for home and satiate my hunger, I had forgotten to procure anything to drink - to wash down my food - or to deal with any digested remains.

I dismiss the dishes that can be prepared with very little cookery, and continue to peruse the shelves. I almost forget the reason why I left the house, when the next thing that catches my eye is a fridge full of cold beer. It was only an hour or so ago that I switched my fridge on - it had been switched off and left empty, while my apartment was unoccupied.

Now with a basket containing 100% alcoholic beverages, I find some concentrated juice drink to balance out my diet. Then, I force myself to get the one thing I left home to come out to buy, before I forget... distracted by dizzying array of choices, colours, prices and imagined tastes, as I browse the different foods on offer.

Making my way to the cashier to pay, I realise I have nothing but shampoo and shower gel - no soap for my hands and no detergent for the cups, plates and cutlery that I'm going to make dirty. I return to the shelves which I already visited, and drop more things into my shopping basket.

Emerging onto the darkening streets with plastic bags in hand, I curse as I remember that I will have to go out again to purchase my next meal. Forward planning, I am not.

I grumble with frustration as the part of my fridge designed to hold milk and orange juice will not immediately accept the alcoholic beverages in their boxed container - the first thing that I put into my fridge; my priorities are clear. I have no milk and I have no orange juice... I can buy those in the morning.

I realised I can never be a bachelor again, because I've been married and divorced. I recalled a time when I owned a house and cooked a 5-course meal with canapés, dining with the girl I had yet to marry, along with another couple. It was a suburban cliché that could have been lifted straight from the 1970s - domestic bliss.

If the operating lever of my life had been on the "suck" setting up until a certain point, it got flipped to "blow" and the contents of the vacuum cleaner bag were ejaculated back out. In a few short years, everything that had taken decades to grow and build was a dusty unrecognisable mess. Like belly button fluff - which is always blue - the colourful fabric of existence ends up as homogenous greyish crap that you toss into the trash can.

Anybody brave enough to pick through the remnants of what has been chewed through the machine may find recognisable things, but most people are repelled by something that they associate with dirtiness - I'm somehow unclean; untouchable.

I make a bet with a boy about the date of Kurt Cobain's suicide. I win a pint. The boy wasn't even alive on that day. There's something timeless in this moment where we compare notes from the past: both of us having lived in a school boarding house. How is this possible? How is it that I'm heading backwards, while this boy is heading forwards? On the day he was born, I went to my very first all-weekend music festival, yet our lives criss-cross and the dates are irrelevant. His face fell as I got an Apple Macbook out of my backpack, and I knew he'd lost another bet, having expected me to be a corporate man in a grey suit. I was that corporate man in a grey suit, but wasn't I supposed to just get older and then die?

I write and I mix the tenses; I jumble up the sequence of events. Who knows which way the arrow of time points and if time flows linearly? Does my story make more sense if I tell it backwards? The way that our memories work dictates the convention of telling stories in the past tense, but humanity does not dictate the laws of the universe... most of us subscribe to a worldview that is conveniently bitesize, but not at all correct.

I've flown through the turbulence of existence, experiencing ripples in the fabric of spacetime - like unseen variations in the density of air, which cause an aeroplane to suddenly drop and spill the passengers' drinks.

Today has been the most stressful day of my life. I woke up shaking, as if I was shivering with cold.

Despite the vast amount of things I've experienced and can remember, all I can really tell you for certain is that I've survived until today, which is a minor miracle. It sounds incredibly egocentric - the universe, after all, does not exist for my benefit - but to all intents and purposes, the sum total of all available sensory inputs that my brain has gathered in thirty-something years, has shown me precisely the opposite, despite my most diligent investigations into the underpinnings of our scientific understanding of the world around us.

I now need to stop pulling on that loose thread, because the wooly jumper of my mind has unravelled completely and now I'm gathering it back up into a messy spool.

I collapse into a bed I've never slept in, with brand new bedding.

I'm exhausted, of course.

Tags: #career #physics

This is a story about a life philosophy...

Here I am stood taking photographs at the summit of the highest mountain in the Hawaiian Islands - an altitude of 13,796 feet above sea level. Sea level is where I started that morning. Any mountain above 12,000 feet will affect susceptible people with dizziness, shortness of breath, weakness and could even present a life-threatening situation for somebody with pre-existing heart or breathing problems. So, dangerous, but not that dangerous. Nobody gets a pulmonary oedema up here, in this cold thin air, but very few can thrive in this oxygen-depleted environment.

There are ostensibly two ways to get up a mountain: you can walk, or you can use some kind of mechanised assistance (e.g. helicopter, cable car or even drive if somebody has made a road to the summit). I used to scoff at the idea of taking 'the easy way out'. I used to think that using cable cars and funicular railways in the Alps was cheating... you hadn't really conquered the mountain at all. However, after my first summer season in Chamonix valley, I realised there's no point nitpicking over a pile of rocks: most climbers who attempt the North face of The Eiger will use the railway to the summit, which stops halfway to let anybody out who wants to tackle its vertical wall of death. Tourists watch as men and women laden with ropes and other equipment, venture out of a hole that was made to clear the railway tunnel of snow. Are they less brave? Many have lost their lives attempting this 'easy' route up the mountain.

There you are, see. 13,796 feet. You can see this elevation post in the bottom left hand corner of the previous photo. But how did I get up there, more importantly?

In 2008 through to 2011, I was bootstrapping. That is to say, I was building profitable business(es) using my own money and with very little outside help. Then, I got out of my depth and I phoned a friend. I begged him to come on board with my latest venture, which promised to have the most growth potential of anything I'd done before, plus it had an overlap - in the education space - with some of my friend's expertise.

My friend told me he was a mentor on a technology accelerator program, affiliated to TechStars, which was based in Cambridge and was taking place that coming summer. I have to admit, I'd never heard of Y-Combinator, SeedCamp, 500-Startups, TechStars or any of the other myriad accelerators that were springing up. The idea was simple though: take a bunch of promising teams, incubate them and connect them with the best minds in the world of tech, have a demo day and help them to raise angel investment or venture capital (VC).

I was enthused and given a new direction. There was hope and relief that I might no longer suffer the isolation and loneliness of being 'the boss'. I really wanted to be part of this ecosystem.

I applied for TechStars Boulder, in Colorado, USA, as well as the TechStars affiliate program that my friend was going to be a mentor on, in Cambridge, UK. My company was shortlisted for Boulder, so I flew out to Denver, drove to Boulder and met with David Cohen - one of the co-founders of TechStars. My company just missed the cut for Boulder, but was offered a place on the Cambridge program, which I accepted. On demo day, Brad Feld - the other founder of TechStars - watched my pitch and I got to meet him. I was rubbing shoulders with people who had achieved, or were about to achieve, greatness.

For example: you know that robot that's in the new Star Wars movies? The one that's a ball that rolls around and makes bleeping noises a bit like R2-D2? BB-8, it's called. Anyway, the toy version of that is based on the Sphero, and Sphero were one of the teams to go through the TechStars program. I got to meet those guys in Boulder. Now they have one of the best selling children's toys, thanks to a Star Wars brand licensing deal, which was undoubtably in part due to the TechStars program... that's how it works.

Once the TechStars program was done, I had two role models to choose between. Both had pregnant girlfriends, but they had very different aspirations and priorities.

David, co-founder of my business, was intent on making life comfortable for him and his family. He'd made a big sacrifice, living away from home while we were doing the accelerator program. He'd made a risky commitment, ploughing money into a company that - at that time - didn't really have any protectable intellectual property or reliable and significant income stream. Although I talked him into the idea of taking our company BIG and getting half a million pounds worth of investment to allow us to grow, I think he really wanted to take things a lot slower and more carefully, and more importantly, get back home to his pregnant girlfriend.

Jakub, who I had been sharing a house with for months along with his co-founder Jan, seemed to be fixated on Silicon Valley and being a BIG success. I hope he wouldn't be angry with me for spilling the beans that he really regretted coming to Cambridge, UK, when their company could easily have gotten onto one of the Silicon Valley based accelerators, which is where, ultimately, he wanted to end up. Jakub had been obsessed by the trials and tribulations of Apple Corporation, and was 100% a Mac man, not a PC. Whether or not he wanted/wants to follow in the footsteps of Steve Jobs... one only need to look at his professionally taken photograph for his online profile: holding his chin in just the same way as the man who resurrected the struggling Apple Corp, and built it to be the world's biggest company, by market capitalisation.

Schopenhauer thought that the best thing in life would be to not be born at all, and the second best thing was simply to keep suffering to a minimum. Nietzsche realised that without suffering, how can we really experience elation? If you take the helicopter to the top of the mountain, you don't get the same feeling of achievement and success as you do if you walk up there. Nietzsche said that the world needs people like Steve Jobs, who was a millionaire by the age of 23, in 1978, and was worth $19 billion at the time of his death. Nietsche talks about supermen (übermensch) and the last men. Nietsche reviled these "last men" as he called them: men who were comfortable and content with mediocrity; men who would look at the stars and blink, in his words, rather than strive to achieve the very maximum they could in life - becoming superstars themselves.

I'm now in an uncomfortable in-between place. I neither achieved the übermensch nor the life of comfortable mediocrity.

Did I give up, because I was overwhelmed by the enormity of the task that lay ahead? Did I simply make mistakes, in choosing business partners who weren't as ambitious as me; as gung-ho, committed and fearless? Was the lack of support I received from my now ex-wife, my undoing?

Or, am I - as Nietzsche feared - one of the last men. The ones who are prepared to slave along in miserable existence because I'm not brave enough; bold enough to reach for the stars; to follow in the footsteps of those who've reached the top.

I'm torn, because I believe in socialist & humanist values: I believe in wealth redistribution, state monopolies, free education, free healthcare, free housing and a whole host of other things that would see me labelled as "Marxist", "Stalinist", "Leninist", "Maoist" or some other -ist, meant in the pejorative. Sometimes, I do wonder if people would work as hard, if they didn't want big mansions, swimming pools, helicopters, private jets, superyachts and all the other trimmings of exorbitant wealth. However, I know enough successful people to know that they just wanted to see a dream realised; a goal achieved: they didn't know how to stop working so hard, and they couldn't if they tried.

Strangely, although I've been shown the way and my eyes have been opened to the possibility of achieving great wealth in my lifetime, I've been left with nothing but depression. I'm depressed because I can see that hard work is required in life, whichever path you choose, but I'm also depressed because I opened the Pandora's Box of yachts and supercars and other prized possessions of those who followed their difficult task to completion: they reached the summit of the mountain.

I used to play a psychological trick when climbing mountains, which is to imagine every summit that you see is a false one, and that behind it will be an even higher summit, so your anticipation of your reward never turns into disappointment, which could lead you to giving up and turning back.

Another psychological trick I played in life, was never to dream and aspire to own things that were well out of reach. I bought a house, a yacht, a speedboat and a fast car... but these were all modest items that I was able to save up my wages and purchase. I never dreamt of owning a mansion or a brand-new Ferrari, for example, although the latter was achievable if that was my one dream in life, which it wasn't. I played a psychological trick, of forcing myself to be modest with my aspirations and rein in my ambitions, and to make incremental improvements rather than shoot for the top prize.

Now, I take short-cuts. I cheat. I know how high I can get, but I don't want to make the effort again. It hurt too much to be on the express elevator to the top, and to start to dream about all the wonderful things I could do with that wealth, only to crash to earth and be devastated. I'd like to be comfortable, but even that hurts, because it still requires effort as well as denying that I'd really like to own a nice big yacht, a supercar and a big house.

Do I begrudge my friends their success? Of course not, but it doesn't inspire me. Maybe it does inspire others, but when I look around, most people are fighting to just hang onto what little they've got. Would I tax my friend heavily because I'm a failure and I want to grab a piece of the wealth he created? Would I expect him to be humble and give credit to the society that helped him get to the top, even though we shouldn't try to drag everybody down to an equal level - equally mediocre and comfortable, according to Nietzsche? Yes, in a way I do still stand by my politics: I prefer flat structures to pyramids. I like it when everyone gets rich because of co-operation in society, rather than just a tiny handful who get rich at the expense of everybody else. We must remember that we're playing a zero-sum game - for every billionaire, there are millions of starving mouths and people without clean drinking water.

My friend was 9 years old when communism ended in his home country. He has been deeply affected. I'm not sure what makes me so certain that wealth should be redistributed, and the vulnerable protected, but I'm certainly going to tip-toe around the subject when I see my friend Jakub tomorrow, which will be the first time I will have had to offer face-to-face congratulations on him reaching the summit: he's rich now, by most ordinary people's standards, but I will attest that he build that wealth, with his team: it wasn't gifted to him by inheritance; it wasn't stolen or conned; it wasn't embezzled. He earned it and he deserves congratulating.

I'm still torn up about that question though: is it better to have 7 billion contented, comfortable people, or 100 or so obscenely wealthy ones, and half the world in desperate poverty.

In fact, no, scratch that. I go for comfortable. I go for "the last men" even if Nietzsche so hated them. Fuck him, that pompous German twat.

Tags: #philosophy #startups #career #friends

This is a story about Nick Grant...

Here's where I start and end each day. My side is the far side with all the pillows. This is how morning begins, with the gathering of pillows to prop myself up in bed. You can also tell this is a morning photo, because of the dressing gown casually tossed aside. Also, because it's day and not night. I spend most of my life in bed.

Here you can see the charger for my laptop within grabbing distance of the bed. Normally the laptop would be within grabbing distance too. My day would usually start with checking my phone for Facebook notifications, WhatsApp messages, Twitter notifications and emails that don't look too scary, like I'd actually have to do anything about them.

I don't normally get up at 'breakfast' time, but this is what I would eat if I could be bothered to boil water, pour it into a pot and stir for a couple of minutes. Sounds like hard work to me. I would normally go for two slices of buttered toast, which I would take back to bed, in order to get crumbs everywhere for that lovely scratchy feel when trying to sleep.

Ah, I see you've found my floordrobe. Here are clothes that are clean, or at least appear clean and don't have any sick or pooh on them. It's against my religious beliefs to eat lunch in a dressing gown, so I normally don the garment which is on the top of the pile, having checked for sick and pooh. Then I saunter into the kitchen to see what I can have for lunch, requiring the least effort.

Mmmmm... it's brunch. Breakfast is a drink - a protein shake with the aforementioned oats, but all you have to do is shake the bottle. Lunch is also a kind of drink - soup - but you have to microwave it for 6 whole minutes or else it's not pleasant to drink like the protein shake. Also, do not drink the soup in big gulps straight from the container like you would with the shake... or at least not until it's cooled down.

All that getting dressed and microwaving has left me ravenous. I have supplemented my brunch with several packets of crisps and enough cheese to clog most ordinary people's arteries. As you can see, I'm still very busy doing things on my laptop that don't earn me any money.

Right, time to do something producti... wait a minute. There's hundreds of Sky TV channels, Apple TV, Netflix, Amazon Video, Now TV and BBC iPlayer. Let's find something educational to watch. Perhaps a documentary about history or something.

I suppose I could read a book; expand my mind; grow my intellec... wait a second. THERE'S A MAN AND HE'S GOT A FUCKING DOG. HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS? I can see how my afternoon is going to be spent. This is what a productive day at home looks like... TO THE MAX.

Fucking books everywhere. It's the academic equivalent of flopping your dick out at a dinner party and saying "pretty impressive, huh?". Fuck off books. I have to find out what happens to that man. And his dog. It's important.

Awww the dog owners keep giving their dogs little treats. I think I deserve a snack. It has been a stressful day. So many snacks; so little time. All your snacks are belong to me.

I should really go out; get some exercise. You can't eat as much as I do when you're not doing any physical activity all day. I'd better check what it looks like out there. There might be a blizzard, or a hurricane. There might be robbers or nuclear fallout. Nobody ever got killed to death while watching TV, did they?

Ah there it is - the outside. In fact, I am outside on the balcony. This surely counts as going outside AND exercise. That will do for the day. I'm exhausted. Looks a bit dodgy down there - I'm sure it's wall-to-wall robbers. That sky is threatening too - I'm sure that hurricane is going to arrive any minute now. Safety first; time to go back inside where it's safe.

People have been talking about "the hum" for years now. Well, I found out what it is. This fucking thing hums 24 hours a day. You can hear it even with all the double glazed windows and doors shut. Well, I suppose that's why this flat only cost a gazzilion pounds instead of a bazzilion pounds. London... the place where you're grateful to live with a fucking loud humming noise, just to own a tiny flat. My flat's valued at twice as much as this one and doesn't have a hum and it's bigger... but I couldn't afford to buy it.

I never drink before midday, but sadly that only applies on weekends and holidays. I've got to wait until 6pm and there's no white wine or gin left, and the red wine will stain my teeth, which will be a dead giveaway that I've been on the booze all afternoon. I suppose I can just look at it longingly.

I might just wait here in the hallway for her to get home. I'm lonely. Why does she have to work and pay the mortgage and buy everything I eat and cook and clean and take care of my every whim? Perhaps this is why some cultures allow multiple wives. I don't see why I shouldn't be allowed my own harem. I'm sure men would be in favour of bigamy if we held a referendum, which is at least 50% of the vote.

This is kind of like Big Brother Live, except you only see a contestant very occasionally and very briefly, as they walk down the corridor. Admittedly, I don't think that Endemol are going to pay me very much for the rights to produce the programme. It's entertaining me a bit though, and maybe I will be here at the very moment she arrives home. If I just wait here... will my patience hold out?

I said I was going to cook tonight. I'm making meatball fornication. I've got balls and I'm going to fornicate. Seriously though, here is a meal on top of a stove. I can cook and everything. I'm a modern man.

Only kidding. If I was actually going to prepare a meal, it would be a microwave ready meal. I was kidding about the preparing meals thing too. She's cooking chicken fajitas, and I'm under strict instructions not to eat the ingredients which are in the fridg... oh fuck. I ate the cheddar. No grated cheese for us on our fajitas. Oh well; I did eat quite a lot of cheese earlier, so at least *I* haven't missed out.

Hurrah! She's home. That deserves a toast. I'm going to drink all the alcoholz. Gin & tonic followed by white wine as an aperitif, then red wine with dinner and dessert, and then 'special squash' which can only be made while she's in the toilet. Sadly, the noise of me unscrewing a bottle cap means I normally get busted. Also, I reek of booze.

Time for bed. I'd better just take my medication. They all say "do not consume alcohol while taking this medication" but that's just advice, right, like traffic lights when you're on a bike. The doctor also told me not to take the maximum dose of tramadol and not to take it at the same time as the codeine but what the fuck does that jumped up twat know with their fucking 5 years of training. Fuck off. I'm also prescribing myself a combination of zopiclone, xanax and diazepam... all at doses well exceeding what those stingy bastard doctors will give me. It's the only way to get a decent night's sleep. Note: there's the dexedrine to help me wake up from my lethal cocktail of drugs, assuming I haven't died in my sleep.

"I'm just going to turn the fan on" she says just before we switch out the lights AS IF THE FUCKING HUM WASN'T BAD ENOUGH. Why was I even born? Why must I suffer like this? I must have been a paedophile in a previous life or something. YES, PLEASE! MORE NOISE WHILE I TRY AND SLEEP. Then the drugs kick in and the next thing I know she's kissing me goodbye before she leaves to go to her so-called job that earns the so-called money that pays the so-called mortgage and bills.

As you can tell, I'm the breadwinner and the brains of the operation round here. Man of the house; master of my domain.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my life.

Tags: #career #london

This is a story about being naughty...

If you're thinking about what you're going to get me for Christmas, I'd like a tame raccoon or squirrel. But, I know that I've been a bad boy, so I've been crossed off Santa's list. There's a black mark against my name.

How do you know a 'wrong un' when you meet one? How do you know a lost cause? How do you know that somebody's got an evil streak?

I once begged the police to punish me. I was convinced that I was a bad man and I should be locked up. The police have cautioned me four times, but never brought a prosecution. The police deal with bad people every day, don't they? Cops & robbers; cowboys & indians; goodies & baddies; right & wrong; innocent & guilty. If anybody knows what a bad lad looks like, it'd be them, wouldn't it?

But what about all my victims?

Obviously I've shoplifted, pick-pocketed, mugged, defrauded, burgled, assaulted, vandalised, robbed and generally gone on a crime spree, leaving a trail of misery in my wake.

Except I haven't.

Maybe it's a question of morality. Morality is absolute, not relative, isn't it? If a billionaire steals an apple that was the only food that a whole starving family had to eat, that's exactly the same crime as the father of the starving family, stealing an apple from a billionaire who owns all the orchards. Theft is immoral, always. All crimes are equally bad.

Presumably, if there are gods and they smite the wicked, anything shit that's happening to me is all part of some divine comeuppance for my evil deeds?

However, the evidence doesn't show that. Despite being a desperately bad boy, who's misbehaved like crazy, it seems to have done little to destroy my health, wealth and prospects. I certainly don't want to take my good fortune for granted. I'm well aware how close to disaster I've been and I know how much assistance I've received from some lovely people. But... doesn't the conventional wisdom say that I should be disowned, excluded and thrown onto the bonfire of human bodies that we make with anybody who strays from the righteous path?

Lock up your daughters!

In fact, you're probably better off keeping your daughters away from the kiddie-fiddling priests who claim to be moral authorities and pillars of our society. Your children can't 'catch' my mental illness. I'm not an active promoter of dangerously deadly deeds. I don't leave cyanide-soaked baby rusks lying around, and drop HIV-infected hypodermic syringe needles all over the place.

Is there something intrinsically attractive about a bad boy?

Why would anybody want to get close to somebody with flaws? Why would you be drawn to somebody who's sad, vulnerable, lonely, sick?

We know that kittens and puppies instil protective instincts in us, so why shouldn't the same be true of a homme fatale? If I wasn't rescued when I was on my knees, I'd be dead. If all the 'best' boys are taken, then what's the next best choice? Do you go for one of the second-rate options, or do you find a broken one and fix him up?

It's said that men find a woman they love, and they hope they'll never change, but they do. Women find a man they love and they hope they do change, but they don't.

Wouldn't it be good if you could find a bad boy and turn him into a model boyfriend; a perfect partner?

"You knew what I was like when you married me" said I, never.

I tried so hard to re-shape who I was - to bend and twist my personality - to please my ex-wife, but it was the wrong thing to do. I tried to please my parents; to impress them. Waste of fucking time.

'Good' and 'bad' are labels that other people want to attach. Behaviour is amoral, because it's driven by circumstances, environment, upbringing, instinct, natural urges and evolved biases. We have strong views about things that other people should or shouldn't be doing, but we want freedom for ourselves. Our moral code is defined by our own unique moral compass.

So, if you think your kids are being naughty this Christmas: the question is not "how can I control this naughty child and make them do what I want?" but instead you should ask yourself "what is driving their behaviour and what do they want?"

For my part, I've decided I'm going to drink lots of Tizer, bite people, scream, pull the ornaments off the Christmas tree, refuse to sit at the table, repeatedly say "I want sweeties" while crying lots and not let anybody else play with the toys.

Tags: #childhood #christmas