This is a story about living in a dreamlike state...

I've spent the day feeling very unwell. I've drifted in and out of sleep. Every time I've woken up, I've been confused about where I am. What is this bed I'm sleeping in? Where is the bedroom door? Where is the toilet?

In my dreams today, I dreamt about two places which only exist in my mind. These two places where my brain thinks I've lived, are actually not real places at all. My brain is so jumbled up that it contains very detailed pictures of two places that I've never been to in my life - in my dreams, I know the colour of the walls, the layout of the rooms, the view from the windows, the furniture. In my dreams I feel absolutely certain that these are places where I've lived, but it's not true.

In those moments when I was waking up today, I was certain that I've lived in those imaginary places, and I had no idea where I actually was.

Strangely, those imaginary places feature quite regularly in my dreams. Sometimes I'm transported back to places I lived as a child, except those homes are always strangely altered in my dreams - they contain extra floors and corridors lead to unusual places. The two imaginary places which keep popping up in my dreams always look the same though - it's as though I know those places better than anywhere I've ever lived, even though they don't actually exist.

I think it's pretty clear that all the travelling around and living out of a suitcase has left me quite disturbed.

When I arrived home last night, I dumped my 4 bags onto the kitchen floor, which is pretty much where they remain, untouched. When I say "home" I don't really mean home in the sense that you might think of it, because I know I must leave here again very soon.

I've been feeling sick all day.

I don't feel well enough to go to work tomorrow.

Going to work entails me packing everything I need for the working week. Going to work entails me loading my bags into my car and driving across the country. Going to work entails me staying somewhere which isn't home, but yet it almost is.

I've become familiar with the hotels I stay in, except that the rooms are mirror-images of each other, so there's only a 50% chance that I'll get out of the right side of bed to stumble to the toilet in the middle of the night. When I reach for the bedside light-switch, there's a 50% chance that I'll flick the switch that turns on the bright main lights in the room, as opposed to the bedside lamp. I exist in a world where every bed is slightly unfamiliar, and the least familiar of all is the one that I suppose I might refer to as "in my home".

My stuff is spread all over the place. Some of my stuff in a friend's mum's garage. Some of my stuff is piled up in my bedroom. Some of my stuff is packed into suitcases and holdalls, so that it can be transported around from place to place. When I'm away from home, it's a 2.5 hour round-trip to collect anything that I might have forgotten, or anything that I might unexpectedly need.

I spend a huge amount of time trying to stay organised. The things I travel with are neatly partitioned: Work clothes and casual clothes, toiletries, medicines, gadgets, footwear, raincoats and other things which have crept into my luggage by accident, where holidays have overlapped with my on-the-road existence. I have no need of flip-flops, sunglasses and travel plug adapters, but yet these things end up being lugged around by me, because they're small and light so I never bothered to leave them behind.

Where do I live anyway? The bulk of my possessions are stored in somebody's garage. The things I need the most are transported around by me, everywhere I go. The majority of nights, I'm sleeping in a bed which is not my own. The only constant is my luggage - everything else changes. I never unpack my bags. I've become extremely adept at rummaging and locating the item I need.

If I wanted to go to work tomorrow, I would need to wash, dry and iron my work clothes. It's 11pm at night and I would need to leave at 7am to be at work on time, so that doesn't give me enough time to get the sleep I need as well as packing everything I need for the week ahead.

In some ways, I had a more settled life when I lived in a hostel. At least in the hostel, the bunkbeds were all identical and I got used to where the toilets were. I got used to the noise of the other inhabitants. I got used to homeless life, because I was living it 7 days a week, instead of having this split and nomadic existence.

The constant change in my life is unsettling, and that's why I think my mind has retreated into the realm of the imaginary. Not having a stable home is the reason why I find the imaginary homes in my head more familiar than the hotels rooms and rented places where I actually sleep.

The demands placed upon me have disturbed and unsettled my mind. I've been made sick by the lack of security and stability in my home life. My arduous yet delicate weekly routine is easily disturbed, with catastrophic results for my sense of wellbeing and ability to function.

Yes, I'm well-practiced at packing my bags and dealing with mirror-image hotel rooms, or even hostel dorms, while somehow maintaining the illusion that I have a settled and secure ordinary middle-class life, like my colleagues at work. Yes I can tolerate the intolerable, for a while, by sticking to my routines and following my procedures, but it's very demanding and I'm always on the verge of having a nervous breakdown from the stress.

My fridge is empty. My cupboards are bare. However, tomorrow I will remain "at home" and do my washing, and make my preparations for the remainder of the working week, which I imagine I will spend in a hotel. I will attempt to resume my routine. My routine is what I have instead of stability and security.

Tags: #homeless #nomad #sick

This is a story about corporate culture...

I've spent all year expecting my health to let me down, expecting my past to catch up with me, and expecting my mania to cause me to become intolerable in an open-plan office, curtailing my ambitions to return to a state of wealth, stability and all-round life prosperity.

Mania is a constant threat.

"You might want to keep your voice down and mind the swearwords" a trusted fellow contractor warns me in private. "You could hear me?" I ask - apparently my fog-horn voice was booming out as I was in my stride. I feel like I'm in my element, which translates to the sudden re-appearance of a cocky and self-assured version of myself who's too unguarded and outspoken to fit in well in a big organisation. This is what I've been dreading. This feels like nightmare scenarios of the past playing out all over again. This is what I hoped wouldn't happen.

There are a mountain of reasons why I'd be triggered into mania. After spending months living in a hotel, single and lonely as hell, I'm in a relationship now. After spending a whole year in desperate financial trouble, I've now almost repaid all my crippling debts. After the arduous task of getting through security vetting, credit checks, reference checks, and leaping over numerous other obstacles designed to trip people up - people just like me - I feel pretty well established at my workplace. Colleagues seek my opinion and applaud my work, but it all goes to my head and fans the flames of my ever-inflating ego. Any minor delusions of grandeur I might have been harbouring could quickly become all-consuming.

I have a quiet private conversation with another contractor. I wonder if I'm at all protected, if I reveal my mental illness. I assume that I'm not, because I'm a consultant, not an employee of the client who I'm working for. However, he reassures me that I'm afforded some protection in the law and I could consider disclosing my condition, in order to receive more lenient treatment if I can't manage to keep my big stupid mouth shut.

I take a tablet to sleep and a tablet to be able to get up and go to work - otherwise insomnia and anxiety would destroying my life and make me completely dysfunctional. Why don't I take a mood stabiliser?

I'm trying to tame the beast: I feel really physically unwell - run down - but yet my brain is fully focussed on achieving a spectacular thing at work; something I can crow about and something which will make a name for myself. I'm intent on proving a point to the world. It makes me happy, in a way, that I've dealt with enormous adversity and achieved a helluva lot in the space of 12 months. It makes me happy to travel at great speed. It makes me happy to rush along, even if I get a little burnt out.

The way that I perceive life can change completely overnight. It was less than a month ago that I thought life was pointless, boring, unfulfilling, absurd, and the task of repaying my debts, falling in love, finding a rewarding job and becoming stable and happy in a sustainable situation, was utterly impossible. Today, that dream seems to be tantalisingly within reach.

I have 4 short weeks until my next holiday.

I'm leaving the country.

Again.

In the past year I've been to Warsaw, Faro, Prague and Antalya. The more I travel, the happier I am. I'm going travelling during the Christmas and New Year holiday season, and I'm going away with my girlfriend, which is going to be incredibly nice. It would be churlish to complain about how lonely it was to spend a week in Turkey on my own, but it seems pretty obvious that I'm going to have an incredible time with my travelling companion.

It's important that I have a job to come home to in 2019. It's important that I don't fuck everything up.

Perhaps my paranoia is a little unjustified. I made it this far, didn't I? Even when I was sick in the first half of this year, I still managed to impress my clients and deliver their software projects. I've left a lasting good impression at the organisations where I've worked. I've impressed my colleagues. I probably shouldn't worry too much.

However, I must acknowledge that a little success can go to my head, and I can quickly turn into a maniac.

Need to stay sensible for the next 4 weeks. Need to keep quiet.

I could easily have worked 12 or 14 hour days all this week, but I resisted the urge. I could easily have worked today - a Saturday - when instead I should be resting and recharging my batteries. My body is physically sick, but my brain is buzzing. I'm limping along, because I need the money.

I'm paranoid because I see warning signs from years gone by. I'm paranoid because I know myself and I know my patterns of behaviour. I'm paranoid because there's a mountain of evidence that I'm spectacularly good at self-sabotaging.

I find it somewhat reassuring to look back through what I've written and published, and to see that I'm far less tired, strung out and outright bat-shit insane than I was a few years ago. I find it reassuring that I've learned a lot about my patterns of behaviour and how to manage my moods in a corporate environment. I've learned some skills for being part of a fit in or fuck off culture.

I hope I'm gonna be OK. I hope I can muddle through the next 4 weeks and go away on holiday feeling confident that I'm well-liked by my work colleagues, and they're going to welcome me back with open arms in 2019.

Can mania be bludgeoned into submission by sheer force of will? Can I use my mania to achieve what I want at work?

Only time will tell.

Tags: #bipolar #career

This is a story about having too much to lose...

I offer to you, the reader, a specimen of my handwriting which I liken to a form of shorthand. Having spent my adolescence and adult years in front of a keyboard, my brain forms words more quickly than my hand can move a pen on a page. I never learned the technique of neat, fast, legible handwriting, because it was always very clear to me that the skill was being made obsolete by technology.

It might surprise you that I can write at all, when my handwriting is so bad.

I'm genuinely mortified at my own incompetence at something which most grown adults managed to master as children. I'm a little hesitant to publish this unflattering piece of evidence.

I have no idea how many words I write per day. I'm a professional writer, in that I'm paid to write, but what I write is very technical so perhaps it doesn't count. Certainly I need a creative outlet during all those times when I'm not able to cut loose and let rip, in my rather drab beige corporate world, where artistic types could never survive and thrive.

I've almost fully abandoned my creative writing endeavours recently, because my time is neatly divided between my career and my attempts to fall in love. 8 hours sleep, 8 hours work, 8 hours romance.

My blog is the lynchpin of my identity. Of course, my highly paid employment affords me the luxury of being able to plough vast amounts of time and energy into a project which generates zero income - pure art - but my chosen daytime profession brings back so many memories of being labelled a geek, nerd or bookworm, and subsequently bullied, that I take no pleasure nor derive any self-esteem from my paid job.

It occurs to me that if I cease to write every day, I will lose my regular readers. I could easily melt away like snow in the sun, and be forgotten. I've often written about how the internet is littered with abandoned blogs, where the authors were initially filled with incredible enthusiasm, only to quickly get bored and wander off to find something more instantly gratifying.

I persevered through a very difficult period where pretty much nobody was reading, which was tough going. I persevered and then I popped out the other side and felt like I was getting somewhere. I started to feel like I was letting readers down if I didn't write every day.

Not writing for a few days - or more - was usually symptomatic of me coming unstuck. If I disappeared off the grid it was usually sensible to start ringing round the various hospitals to see if I could be located, or failing that the morgues. I really needed my readers, because ultimately they saved my life last year, quite literally.

I now find myself in very different circumstances.

I like the people who I'm working with - I think they're smart - and I like the stuff I'm doing at the office. I'm challenged and entertained. I'm finding that my days in gainful employment are passing increasingly effortlessly and that I'm taking a great deal of pride in the work that I do.

I like the special person I've recently met - I think she's amazing - and I like spending time with her. I'm finding it very easy to swap out the very many hours I spent in a pit of despair, for hours spent kissing and cuddling. I derive an enormous amount of enjoyment from abandoning all self-preservation instincts; allowing my emotions to run riot; my heart and soul completely laid open and vulnerable in a very childish and immature way, as I'm carried along with the initial excitement of a new relationship.

A more calculating and shrewd fellow would not write this.

My writing could be the undoing of both my job and my girlfriend. My writing could easily cause me to find myself unemployed and single. My writing could get me into big trouble.

I write tonight, because writing came first. There was madness and sadness, then came writing. I had so much to say. I've still got a lot to say.

I'm predisposed to short-lived obsessions. I'm predisposed to boom and bust. I'm predisposed towards highs and lows.

I could very easily decide tomorrow that I hate my job and the organisation I'm involved with, because of the vagaries of my mood. I could very easily decide tomorrow that I'm horribly heartbroken and that I'm irreparably damaged. I live my life to the very most extreme that it's possible to do.

I write because it would be foolish to make any sudden changes. I write because it's a very healthy and useful part of my routine. I write because of the enormously valuable connection it gives me to people all around the world, to whom I owe my life, quite literally.

It's regrettable that I haven't been able to keep up my daily blogging. I regret every single time that somebody came to visit this website, hoping to find something new, but they didn't find the latest instalment in my egotistical escapades, because I was too busy wooing my new love interest; too busy courting.

I had hoped that I would be able to squeeze some writing into my working day, but the perfect storm arrived - as it does so often - such that I haven't been bored at work for a long while. It would be churlish of me to abuse my privileged position, having spent so long complaining about being bored out of my mind and unfulfilled during office hours.

As has been the case for most of my blog posts recently, I'm writing more quickly than ever, in a desperate attempt to decant the contents of my mind onto the page during a snatched moment when it feels like an opportune time to write. I'm writing with an urgency that exceeds even my completer-finisher obsession with reaching my million-word milestone. Nobody is stopping me from writing - I have plenty of spare time - but it would be very easy for me to abandon my good habits.

I know that I will ruefully regret ever skipping even a single day of writing, should disaster befall me. I know that I will be doubly sad about abandoning my readers if there are any hiccups or bumps in the road which ruin my present twin obsessions: work and love. My blog is my backup plan. My blog is the thing that's always there - the steady constant in my life; the thing that loves me unconditionally; my loyal friend.

I appreciate that I lazily aggregate together all the many people whose lives I've touched, by egotistically broadcasting myself in this mostly one-way stream. I appreciate that I have innumerable very real friends who I'm neglecting, by interacting with people in this very strange way.

I can imagine some future point in time - when it all ends in tears - when I might perhaps find myself feeling suddenly very alone and realising that it was a mistake to hurl myself so completely from one thing into another. It does concern me that I only tend to think about what I'm gaining and never about what I'm losing.

I was accused of wanting to please everybody; wanting to be loved by everybody. That accusation is pretty fair and reasonable to be honest. Why not chuck in wanting to be the centre of attention too, while we're at it?

I don't feel very sorry about anything, it has to be said. If I'm a show-off narcissist, so fucking what? If it's all about me me me then do you think I really care? Do you think I haven't noticed that most of my sentences have started with "I" in this blog post?

Does it make me a bad person? Does it make me a bad friend?

I don't know and I can't answer every question all at once, even though I very much want to try. I've written at least twice as much as I wanted to. I wanted to be short and succinct, to give my friends a flavour of what's going on in my world; to give a little peek behind the curtain. However, as per usual I've launched into an all-out egocentric monologue about nothing in particular, except my total self-absorption.

In short, I'm scared of losing my job and my girlfriend, but I'm also scared of losing whatever the fuck this is... this blog... this website... this digital anchor in a physical world. What is this? Why is it important? Why bother?

If I had to choose - and there's no reason to suggest that I have to - then I choose to connect with the maximum number of people. I choose the stable thing over the unstable and unreliable thing. It's a brutal thing to say, but jobs and girlfriends have come and gone, but my writing has been a constant companion, delivering continuous improvement to my self-esteem and sense of identity.

I need to be a little careful, because I don't want my colleagues or my girlfriend to feel like I'm not crazy about them, and totally obsessed, but I also want to protect something I've worked really hard to build - my digital identity and the relationships which it has enabled me to build and maintain.

I've written more than I intended. I've poked and prodded at things which could very well have been left alone.

I'm going to intentionally hold my tongue now, because if I keep writing I'm going to keep digging a deeper hole.

Tags: #writing #career #relationships

This is a story about retail therapy...

My latest addiction is sock-buying. I am spending almost £16 a week on socks. My sock habit is raging out of control.

I'm not buying socks like the ones pictured above.

I've become hooked on buying stupid childish socks in bright colours and with cartoons on them. I'm getting immense pleasure from buying socks with whimsical slogans on them. I'm totally addicted to the buzz I get from choosing, buying and wearing sills socks.

I'm not a morning person.

However, choosing the socks I'm going to wear on any given day, is something that's a real highlight of my day. For something so relatively inexpensive - costing an average of £2.67 per pair - those simple socks pack a surprising punch. I feel genuine joy and happiness every time I see my growing sock collection and I pick out the pair that I'm in the mood to wear.

I have socks with an English breakfast of sausages, beans and fried eggs on them. I have socks with foxes on them. I have socks with dinosaurs on them. I have socks with hamburgers on them. I have socks with sock puppets on them, as a demonstration of the meta-stupidity I've descended into.

I know that other members of my clan of geeks have huge T-shirt collections, but it would be inappropriate for me to wear a T-shirt at work, no matter how witty and hilarious I thought its design was. My choice to wear silly socks is my way of thumbing my nose at the establishment, while also recognising that it's a pretty good idea not to bite the hand that feeds me - I'm well paid, I like my colleagues and I find the work to be increasingly tolerable.

Given the vast number of things which I could possibly become addicted, and the harmful behaviours and bodily abuse which could ensue, the sock thing seems mostly harmless.

Tags: #fashion #career #sleep #mornings

This is a story about drug dependency...

This is how I function. This is how I normalise myself. This is how I comply with society's demands. This is how I cope with social jet-lag. In our fit-in-or-fuck-off culture, this is how I conform. These are my crutches. I might appear functional and unimpaired. It might be somewhat insulting or offensive to describe myself as struggling in any way - perhaps I should instead talk about my wealth and privilege and acknowledge that since being born with a silver spoon in my mouth, my life has been uninterrupted gilded luxury; I've never known pain; I've never known suffering.

Think about the starving African children.

I comparison with the 8 or 9 bottles of red wine I was consuming every week - drinking alone - my use of a few sleeping pills and tranquillisers seems relatively safe and healthy.

This is all I have left.

I've had to eke out my dwindling supplies for far longer than I'd expected to. My opportunities to "re-up" have been constricted and constrained. I've been forced into drug withdrawal, which mercifully has been bearable because of my successful rationing strategies.

Insomnia has been the price I've paid for economising; suddenly cutting back on the medications I've become dependent on. Hypomania has been a very real and tangible consequence of the brain chemical destabilisation.

Perhaps I shouldn't meddle with my mind? Perhaps I should put my faith in the medical community? Perhaps there are people who know what's best for me?

Ironically, I'm using these medications - obtained on the black market - to plaster over the cracks and blend in with the very people who are specifically tasked with deciding what's best for you. I'm a member of the paternalistic elite. One should always remember that the people dishing out the advice and prescriptions are just as fucked up as everybody else.

My hypomania constantly threatens to boil over and create a disaster. My hypomania is a constant threat to all the health and wealth I've managed to accumulate this year. My hypomania is almost impossible to conceal, constantly attempting to sneak out from under the cover and camouflage I've carelessly draped over it, in the hopes of it being ignored and not talked about by my discreet, polite and extremely civilised colleagues.

Unable to sufficiently bludgeon my brain into submission to society's demands, using powerful psychiatric medications, my mask slips.

Exhaustion from the toll of 11.5 consecutive months desperately attempting to re-enter civilised society has reduced me to surviving on my instincts. I speak without thinking. It is only my well-practiced and well-rehearsed routines which allow me to continue to appear functional, when my mind has crumbled and descended into outright insanity internally. If I could only sit mute in my office chair at my desk, I would be fine, but unfortunately stuff pops into my head and pours out of my mouth before I have a chance to hold my tongue.

My medication dependency is a cruel mistress. My anxiety skyrockets in the late afternoon and evenings as my short-acting tranquilliser wears off. My insomnia robs me of refreshing and energy-replenishing sleep, leaving me almost paralysed by panic attacks about the simple task of getting out of bed, having a shower, getting dressed and going to work. Unless I take the right amount of pills at the right time, my mask of sanity quickly slips. The illusion of a functional productive member of society quickly evaporates, the moment that I skip a dose or start reducing my medication.

Of course, I'm hopelessly dependent. I admit it. So what?

My life revolves around my regular medication doses. So what?

Doesn't anybody's life revolve around cyclical things? Life and death, sunrise and sunset, summer and winter, weekdays and weekends, work and leisure, awake and asleep, hungry and satiated, horny and spent, love and loss. Some of the cycles are societally and culturally enforced to remain the same year-round, when it's clear that it's unnatural. Why the hell don't we sleep more in winter, when the days are shorter? Why the hell don't we sleep more when we're tired? Who the hell invented the fucking alarm clock and the 9 to 5 office job anyway?

I am quite literally tyrannised and oppressed - abusively coerced - into compliance with health-damaging social rituals, lest I be excluded from society; marginalised. It's in my rational economic self-interest to comply, but it's in the interests of my mental health to refuse to comply. Non-compliance will be met with harsh and intolerable economic sanctions.

Of course I seek out and consume the pharmaceuticals which 'normalise' me and allow me to cope; to function.

You might be surprised that I'm a junkie who needs his fix so that he can work a boring office job. You might think that junkies take drugs to feel pleasure and otherwise get high, but my drug dependency is mandated by the otherwise unbearable awfulness of the 9 to 5 grind.

You might think that people get rich off drugs by selling them. You might think that drugs will ruin your life, my drug dependency has been a mandatory part of repairing my life. Do you really think that it's humanly possible to achieve the kind of comeback - the recovery - which I've managed to complete during the past 11.5 months of turning up at the office and acting normal, without access to the full range of pharmaceutical options?

I've done the impossible: gotten off the streets, where I was sleeping rough, gotten out of the hostels, gotten off the terrible drugs, gotten out of the psych wards, repaid unimaginably huge debts, got myself a place to live of my own, got myself a respectable good job, held down that job, impressed my colleagues, delivered high quality work on time and on budget.

You think that was possible without performance enhancing drugs? Are there laws that say I can't use the very best of medical technology to allow me to function at my very best in a workplace environment? I'm not an athlete. I can use whatever the fuck I want and I have done.

It might seem logical to presume that I must now have a massive drug habit, because I've leaned so heavily on unhealthy coping mechanisms to get me to the point I'm at today.

I use the word "dependency" very carefully.

It's true that technically I am dependent on medications. It's true that abrupt cessation of the 2 or 3 medications I use on a regular basis would be catastrophic for my career, my reputation, my finances, my stability and all the other things in the house-of-cards which constitutes my life.

However, the doses I take are laughably negligible.

Instead of being in a horrible mess, the dose which maintains me in a functional and stable state is totally reasonable and acceptable. The problems I've stored up for the future - by becoming dependent on medications for normal day-to-day functioning - are pathetically tiny insignificant problems compared with the goddam mountainous obstacles I've had to tackle to get this far.

It concerns me that my stash is now critically low, because my whole happy healthy wealthy future hinges upon the continuation of the well-established routine for another 6 to 12 months, at the very least. If I can carry on with my dirty junkie medication dependency for another 18 months I will be rich as fuck compared to the struggling masses, which would be an unexpected result for anybody who's been brainwashed to believe that junkies like me are no-hope losers.

I don't go to the doctor. I don't have a psychiatrist. I don't have a psychologist. I don't have a community mental health team (CMHT) or a crisis team. I do what the fuck I want.

My experiments with being completely medication-free earlier in the year were a total disaster. I do hope that one day I'll be able to quit the pills, but I don't see how I'll ever be able to do when my health needs directly contradict capitalism's need to exploit me as an expendable commodity. There is a fundamental incompatibility between human needs and corporations' needs. There is a systemic inability to cope with anybody who deviates from the top of the bell curve.

I'm different, and I no longer expect society to accomodate me. I accept that I must alter myself - with pharmaceuticals - so that I can accomodate society's inflexible demands for homogeny and conformity.

I swallow a sleeping pill so that my social jet-lag is medically corrected. I swallow a short-acting tranquilliser so that the existential dread of working a pointless bullshit meaningless office job is bearable. I'm not overjoyed or happy to be doing it. In fact, I'm not happy at all about any of the situation. It would be fucking weird if I was artificially happy all the fucking time, because there's not a lot to be happy about during the death-throes of late capitalism.

You know what makes me happy? Spooning. Kittens. Holidays. Sex. Dreaming about going to live in a cabin in the woods. Delicious food. Binging on mindless entertainment. Extreme sports. Writing.

Should I be attempting to live the dream? Should I be trying to have it all? Should I mix work and pleasure?

Yes, I'm going to do all those things but you have to pay to play and it costs a fuckload of cash to make dreams come true.

I'll leave you with this quote:

"The power of inclosing land and owning propriety, was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murther their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or theeve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand, by the power of the sword; and so you justifie the wicked deeds of your fathers" -- A Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England, Gerrard Winstanley

It's up to the reader to decide whether I'm a Lord of the Manor, born into wealth and enjoying inheritance from my ancestors who plundered and stole. The fact that you've persevered reading this text in English using a computer or smartphone puts you into a certain socioeconomic set and suggests a level of academic achievement, which might suggest you might have benefitted equally from "the power of the sword" although you did not "kill or theeve" yourself.

All I can say of myself is that I'm trying to play by the rules in a rigged game. Nobody said I wasn't allowed to use performance enhancing drugs. This isn't sport, it's survival.

Tags: #medication #bipolar #mentalhealth #sleep #insomnia #career #addiction

This is a story about feeling overwhelmed...

My favourite movie is Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. I am almost able to recite the script, verbatim, from memory. I don't re-watch films. I don't re-read books. This movie is my one exception. I've seen it dozens of times.

I don't tend to use a lot of quotes or epigraphs in my writing. Why would I borrow somebody else's words when mine say exactly what I want? I'm confident enough in my own thinking and writing abilities to avoid the insecurity of believing that my own words have less value than somebody else's.

I do however offer this one quote from my favourite movie:

"Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I never wanted another." -- Captain Willard, Apocalypse Now

Having spent vast parts of this year tormented by extreme boredom, I am now swamped. I have something to get my teeth into at work, which also has quite a lot of pressure associated with it. I have a creative writing project - my novel - which I've been struggling to write due to poor preparation. I have my blog. I have dating. I also need to get fit, resume some of my hobbies, collect my mountain bike from the other side of the country and make some new friends. My work routine is well established and I'm making excellent progress financially, but it's time consuming and exhausting.

I wanted to be busy.

Now I am.

Never a dull moment, presently, but there's always something or somebody I'm neglecting. Sleep and a stable routine are early casualties, as I flit between many competing demands. Of course I'm having a lot of fun and I have boundless energy at times, but I crash down and become paralysed by anxiety.

Earlier today I thought it might be easier to just kill myself, rather than have to get two taxis and a train, wash and dry all my clothes for the week ahead, and drive to the office at the crack of dawn. It was only a fleeting moment of suicidality and it wasn't particularly serious because I didn't start to plan the act, but I definitely couldn't face the heap of tasks ahead of me. It depressed me that my novel and my blog were going to potentially become casualties - so much writing to do.

I'm somewhat regretting having asked for so much, and been given it all eventually, all in a short space of time. For a while almost none of my needs were being met, and then suddenly I've been swamped by everything all at once.

I can't quite figure out how to balance all the things I need. Money, challenging work, sleep and intimacy are probably my top four priorities, but each one brings a swathe of other complications. The more things I add into my simple life, the more destabilised I become. I worry that I'm going to end up repeating the mistakes of previous years, when I became over-tired and over-stressed, which pushed me into a state of mania. Mania will be fatal to my career. Mania will be fatal to my relationships. Mania will be fatal to my financial stability.

I wondered to myself if I've made a mistake in being unmedicated. I think I was just desperately sleep deprived though.

My life violently see-saws between the dread of Sunday night and Monday morning, binge drinking on a Thursday and Friday night, stopping my sleeping pills and tranquillisers at the weekend and suffering dreadful insomnia and anxiety, and some other rather destabilising things, such as dating. I swing between the fear that my life is going to become over-complicated and stressful, and the fear that I'm going to die alone. I know that my simplified life brings vast financial rewards, but the lack of kisses and cuddles is almost unbearable. Living out of a suitcase is awful. Drinking alone is unhealthy. Changing my routine is destabilising and exhausting. Other people are unpredictable.

It's a difficult balancing act: trying to live a sustainable and stable life when I'm naturally prone to mood instability, and I am dealing with a number of things which are dreadfully broken.

This sounds like quite a whinge-fest. On the whole, I have lots of things to be very grateful for. A lot of my problems are nice problems to have.

I shouldn't complain.

I'd rather be busy.

I wanted a mission.

Tags: #bipolar #depression #suicide #anxiety #relationships #sex #career #debt

This is a story about perseverance...

Despite the exhaustive lengths I've gone to in order to make myself understood, surprisingly few people have any appreciation of my achievements in conquering insurmountable odds. It shocks me that there is a complete lack of comprehension of the magnitude of the task, of starting a journey of recovery locked up on a psych ward, unemployed, homeless, £54,000 in debt, physically dependent on addictive substances and having just survived a suicide attempt that was very nearly successful. "Have you tried yoga? Have you tried kale smoothies?" people still write to me.

Yes, I take offence to being patronised.

I still take offence to being patronised.

"You're only one trite platitude away from complete recovery" people seem to think.

Oh. My. God.

Drop everything.

A fucking meme saved my fucking life.

Said nobody ever.

A self-help book saved my life.

Said a bunch of idiots who failed to establish a causative relationship.

I'm a fucking computer scientist so I don't hold a lot of sway with superstitious beliefs in sky monsters, fate, karma, astrology, homeopathy, acupuncture, healing crystals, tarot cards and all that other mumbo-jumbo. I believe in cold hard cash. I believe in empirically proven theories which have been peer reviewed, with reliably reproducible experimental results.

In a way, my whole life has been conducted in a very scientific manner, which should come as no surprise given that my career has been dedicated to working in a logical and rational field, governed by rigid formal rules. There's no room for airy-fairy hand-waving nonsense bullshit in my professional field. There's a right answer and a wrong answer, and it's not possible to put your faith in god to fix your goddam code. It's not possible to put your faith in god to fix your goddam life. There are no higher powers. There is no supernatural. No amount of exercise and good diet is going to repay your £54,000 debt.

If it seems like I'm labouring the same points over and over again, and telling the same miserable story which appears to have changed very little in the 13 or so months since I was in an utterly fucked situation, you're a total fucking moron.

Of course my story is repetitive.

Of course my story is miserable.

Of course my story is boring.

Of course my story has changed very little.

From the start of December until now, I've lived out of a suitcase in hotels, working a Monday to Friday 9 to 5 job. All I do is work, sleep, eat and write my blog.

I'm paying back £54,000 of debt.

I didn't start with nothing. I started with less than nothing. I started at a considerable disadvantage.

Starting with nothing would have been a fucking dream.

Most people in my situation would have declared bankruptcy. Most people in my situation would have given up.

I'm not most people.

Most people would never have had the opportunity to get £54,000 in debt. Most people would never be able to repay £54,000 in debt. It costs £10,800 a year to service a debt of £54,000, assuming a credit card interest rate of 20%. Do you have a spare £10,800 kicking around every year?

Remember that I also started this journey locked up on a psych ward, jobless and without a vehicle.

How do you think you'd get out of that particular sticky situation?

"I'd get a job"

Yeah? How much would that job pay? Would you also need a place to live? Would you need to pay transport costs to get you to the fucking job?

It's a hard problem to solve.

No amount of inspirational quote memes can solve the problem. No amount of exercise and good diet can solve the problem. No amount of being patronised as fuck by people who don't have problems will solve the problem.

If I sound angry and that I'm raging... you're damn right.

It's been ludicrously difficult and stressful to get to this point.

I might sound like a scratched record. You might wish for me to be telling a happier and more uplifting story, but the truth is that it's hard damn work to dig yourself out of a very deep hole. I'm sorry that in reality there are no quick fixes. I'm sorry that the real world is not at all like the fantasy world. There are no overnight successes. There are no sudden improvements. There is no solution in the form of a goddam inspirational quote meme.

If your life is sorted, well fucking done. Big congrats.

If your life is sorted, please don't think that you can jump into my world and quickly figure out what I'm doing wrong. Please don't fall into the trap of seeing yourself as some sort of saviour. Please don't patronise me by assuming that I'm overlooking some easy short-cut.

My story sucks because my life sucks, but my life is improving very slowly.

It takes relentless patient persistent perseverance to fix a fucking shit-tonne of problems. I don't tell the story to entertain and amuse you. I tell my story because it's real and I don't know how it's going to end. I tell my story because I think it's important to bear witness to the struggle - the reality - of people who are trying to re-enter civilised society, having been marginalised and excluded.

If you're getting impatient for the good bits, fuck off. I'm impatient too. There are no short-cuts and it's me who has to put up with the daily misery of the painfully slow progress.

Yes, at some future point I hope to sum up this whole rotten period in an executive summary; a short synopsis. When the dreadful task is finally completed, I can change my story to something different. For now, the story seems to be the same miserable repetitive depressing crap, because that's the reality of my life.

I think there's a lot to be celebrated in my achievements of the past year, but of course we have been reared on a diet of Hollywood and Disney movies, so the feeble-minded are encouraged to believe that every story should be a simple fairytale. Reality doesn't care about your desire for easy-to-understand, linear and uplifting tales of overnight success. Reality is an absolute bastard that needs to be bludgeoned to death with sheer determination; force of will. Reality is boring as fuck, most of the time.

Of course my day-to-day tale is mostly banal, hence why my debts are being repaid with exceptional speed. I have sacrificed pleasing fantasy for real achievement, at the cost of childish fantasies about following my dreams. I sell my brain and body to the highest bidder and put myself through an ordeal of misery, because it brings in a lot of cold hard cash.

It offends me when people who've enjoyed wealth, privilege and fucked about doing whatever the fuck they want, talk to me about how I should be living my life. They followed their dreams and indulged their selfish wants, but I don't have that luxury. I am forced to inhabit reality. I live in a capitalist plutocratic society dominated by global corporations, and I have to work for a living because I was £54,000 in debt, jobless, homeless, without a vehicle and locked up in a psychiatric institution. Do you understand?

I don't get to dream. I don't get to live in a fantasy world. I'm forced to inhabit reality.

Tags: #debt #career #homeless #hospital #mentalhealth #bipolar #depression #suicide

This is a story about normalising...

There is some debate about what type of bipolar disorder I suffer from. I've always thought that I had the milder type 2 variety, because my 'high' periods had never caused me any problems at work or at home, but perhaps it's only because I've been fortunate enough to enjoy wealth and privilege that I've gotten away without suffering dire consequences. In fact, my 'high' periods have always produced far more wealth than my stable periods, reinforcing the idea that I don't have a very severe mental illness at all.

The world around us produces bipolarity.

Most of the time, there's nothing to do at our boring bullshit jobs. Most of the time we're in neutral gear coasting along. Most of the time our lives are filled with bland monotony.

We need to cram for exams. We need to shine in job interviews. We need to dazzle our new work colleagues. We need to work crazy hours to finish projects in time for deadlines. We need to dedicate ourselves to solving very hard problems, by thinking about them intensely without getting distracted. We need to pursue our love interests obsessively. We need to practice, practice, practice - to the exclusion of everything else - if we want to get good at a particular skill or sport.

We reward every bipolar aspect of somebody's personality. We celebrate bipolarity.

Who cares if you're depressed all summer, so long as you got through your final exams? Who cares if writing your dissertation or thesis nearly killed you, so long as you finished it on time? Who cares if your project burnt you out as long as the deadline was met? Who cares that nearly every aspect of modern life wrings more out of you than you can healthily give, so long as you're winning?

We are driven to use substances which confer a competitive advantage. Alcohol will tranquillise your jangled nerves. Caffeine and nicotine will pep you up. Who cares that there's a price to be paid for using these uppers and downers? Society will handsomely reward you for skipping sleep and using every substance available to you, at the expense of your health.

I'm a lifelong sufferer of social jetlag. To work 9 to 5 hours in an office is torturous because my body clock is not designed to run to that schedule. I'm genetically programmed differently from all those obedient little drones who find it easy to rise and shine. My DNA is completely different from that of an early bird. We're very different animals.

I'm a lifelong sufferer of interminable insufferable excruciatingly painful boredom. Waiting for something interesting to happen at work and for things to get exciting has consumed 95% of my wasted fucking time, spent looking busy at my desk.

Once all the waste-of-space dead-wood losers have finished having endless meetings and not making any decisions, when the project deadlines loom large, finally I have my moment to shine. I can't understand why anybody would have me - a miserable depressed cynic who turns up insultingly late every day - around in the office ruining morale, except that I'm pretty handy to have available when something actually needs fucking doing, which is surprisingly rarely. I guess the reason why my services are retained is because I can usually cobble something together that works, pretty damn quickly, although it always requires hypomanic levels of obsessive round-the-clock effort.

It appears that it's me who is aberrant, so I must comply and conform to the world around me. Because most people are wage-slave drones who do a whole lot of nothing most of the time, I am forced to pretend I'm just like them. I'm forced to act like I'm perfectly OK bumbling along doing sweet F.A. for most of the 40-hour week. I'm forced to act like I prefer be bored out of my tiny mind 95% of the time, just like them.

The problem is that I build up a lot of pent-up energy, like a compressed spring.

When eventually there's something to do, I race along at breakneck pace. When at long last I'm unleashed I tear along as fast as I can, because it's so damn wonderful to be free, having been held back for an eternity.

The system worked for a couple of decades. I managed to fit in for my whole career. I managed to get along just fine, even though I had a mental illness the whole time: bipolar disorder.

I discovered the unalloyed joy of telling people to fuck off. I discovered that it's not the end of the world if you quit your job and start your own company, because you were being exploited and unfairly discriminated against. I discovered that the whole capitalist society is rigged to make you paranoid about becoming unemployable, because of gaps on your CV or other less-than-ideal obedient slave behaviour.

What I later discovered is that there is a lot of very easy money to be made in the corporate world, if you're prepared to sell your soul and suffer the interminable boredom. It's easy money provided you're prepared to put up with an unfulfilling career doing things which are morally dubious. You can become a prostitute, getting fucked by the rich, or you can become a corporate whore and fuck the poor on behalf of the rich.

Only the rich have the luxury of being able to mess around doing so-called philanthropic things, with money they made from war, drugs, slavery, pimping and other forms of exploitation.

My working week consists of a whole lot of keeping my mouth shut because of my vested interests. The best thing I can do is sit quietly at my desk for 40 hours a week. Nobody cares whether I do any work or not, so long as I'm a willing participant in the conspiracy of silence. The more silent I am the better. There is an inversely proportionate relationship between how much I speak and how much I earn.

This time of year is always very difficult for me. I've had a helluva year to get to this point, but I'm in a good position to cement the gains I've made.

[I screwed up copy-pasting this text, which I'd put in the clipboard in the event that I accidentally lost my progress. I lost a few hundred words, but I'm not going to retype them now. This will have to do. I'm frustrated, but I've already written more than a thousand words, which is plenty]

Tags: #bipolar

This is a story about workload...

Pictured above is part of the puzzle about how I was able to keep writing, even when I was sectioned and locked up on a psych ward. Underneath the NHS-provided pyjamas is a mobile broadband router, which was smuggled into hospital by my guardian angel. It was a lot easier to write when I was kept under lock and key, because I wasn't expected to do anything other than eat, sleep and take pills twice a day. Now I have a full-time job and I'm very reluctant to risk writing when I'm supposed to be working.

In November I'm going to write another novel.

My first novel pretty much wrote itself. I did what all wannabe authors are supposed to do, by writing about what I knew. I had a very good idea of the plot and the structure of the book. It was surprisingly easy, although I did struggle briefly at around the 40,000 word mark, when I realised I hadn't made enough notes and I was risking tripping myself up. In the end, my 52,000 word debut novel was completed in under a month and I was pleased wit my achievement.

I thought my second novel would be easy too. I picked my favourite style of story: a utopia/dystopia. I had some characters in mind and a vague plot idea. I had done a little research. I was woefully under-prepared, but I thought I'd probably be able to wing it - I believe the term is "pantster"... doing things by the seat of my pants. Arrogantly and perhaps still touched with a little madness - 2017 was a very rough year - I thought my second novel was going to be good but it really wasn't. My style was inconsistent and I made some decisions which made writing the book very difficult. I wasn't well enough practiced at writing dialogue and fleshing out my characters. I took pleasure in very technical descriptions of scenes and a lot of factual aspects of what I was writing about, but it certainly wasn't good storytelling, in a lot of the chapters. Eventually, I abandoned the effort, having written 42,000 words in a month. I do have the remaining chapters planned out, but I think I'd like to rewrite the whole thing. I like the concept of the book, but as I progressed with it, I started to deeply regret mistakes I'd made. I started to hate the project. It became a real chore.

A big mistake I made was stopping blogging while I was writing my novels. Also, live-publishing the draft manuscript created a huge amount of pressure. I missed blogging soooo much. My heart ached to be blogging again. I wanted to experiment with the medium dot com platform, where there's a big community of writers, but I really regretted neglecting my own website and my regular readers.

So, I need to keep writing my blog every day, no matter what.

But, it's a huge workload.

Working a full time job. Writing a blog post every day. Writing a novel.

That's a lot of work.

I do want to write another novel. I want to give myself total freedom this time. I want to take the pressure of making my draft manuscript public off myself. This time, I'm going to let the creative juices flow and write about whatever I'm motivated to write about. This time, I'm going to keep my blog going at the same time, because it's hard for me to get through daily life without having a public journal/diary type thing, to keep me connected to the world.

I've created a lot of work for myself. Perhaps it seems like a good use of my time, to spend an hour or two writing every day, instead of watching mindless entertainment. Perhaps it's a good thing to connect with people all over the world, and to have built a personal brand which brings me a lot of pride in my achievement. However, I spend as much time thinking "what am I going to write today?" as I do thinking "what am I going to do at work today?" which has both upsides and downsides. When work isn't going well, at least I have an outlet for my creativity and energy. When I'm very tired and perhaps I really should be taking it easy, I feel somewhat obliged to write something, even when I'm not in the mood, because I don't want to interrupt the routine.

I'm getting nervous about the workload of a full-time job, a blog and a novel, all at once.

I'm a completer-finisher.

I was gutted that I didn't finish my second novel.

So many wannabe novelists will work on a manuscript for years and years, but they'll never actually finish. If you don't produce a finished draft, you'll never be able to publish. If you never complete a novel, you're not really a novelist at all. So many wannabe writers will start blogs and then abandon them, or write them very sporadically. Most blogs have a big burst of energy at the start, before the novelty quickly wears off.

If I start novel number three, I'm damn well going to finish it.

It might not be good. It might be silly. It might be downright bad, but I'd love to complete a second novel, because I learned so much writing the first and I'm so proud of the achievement. I also think I might really enjoy myself, if I'm writing mostly in private for once, without the pressure of any expectations I've built, that I can actually tell a half-decent story. My first novel really is a half-decent story, but that actually ended up contributing even more pressure, especially when it dawned on me that I was going to either fail, or produce something pretty bad, having been expecting to sail through and bash out another half-decent effort without too much difficulty.

I worry that I'm going to get lost in my imaginary world and so engrossed in writing that I might be tempted to write while I'm at work, and be irritated by bothersome interruptions, like my colleagues expecting me to do my damn job. I worry that I'm burning myself out, living a double-life. It's surprisingly time and energy consuming, just writing my blog and staying on top of social media, as well as working my full-time job.

Obviously, this stream-of-consciousness-y type stuff pretty much writes itself. I connect my thoughts and feelings directly to the keyboard and the words just tumble out of me and onto the page. I'm well practiced at doing blog posts just like this.

Writing fiction is a whole different kettle of fish. Sometimes the words come easily and sometimes it's like pulling teeth.

So... my challenge for November is to write another novel, but this time I have complete freedom and indeed I'm encouraging myself to be as fantastical as possible, and not artificially constrain myself with arbitrary rules about having to create an ultra-realistic fictional world, restricted by real-world limitations. It seems ridiculous that a geek like me hasn't written any sci-fi up until now, but I'm always loathe to behave as anybody might expect me to.

It's time to have some fun and do whatever I want in my fictional world, and the draft manuscript is going to be kept under wraps this time, so that I'm not constantly worrying about what other people think about my writing and my story.

That's the plan.

Tags: #writing #novel

This is a story about the perception of time...

Smoke machines, lasers, fountains, stage lights, people in costumes, animatronics and a powerful public address soundsystem combine to create quite a spectacle, for evening entertainment in Turkish Disneyworld. There are lots of magical, surprising and delightful moments in this theme-park, with adjoining hotel, and there's lots to do. Time has passed quite weirdly slowly though.

It struck me that I won't ever relax and enjoy myself, because I'm extremely paranoid that something's going to go wrong and my paint-by-numbers simple plan to restore my life to debt-free, health, wealth and prosperity, is going to be ruined by something unexpected.

I suppose people who have borrowed heavily against their future predicted earnings, so that they could buy a house and a car, have resigned themselves to sleepless nights worrying about losing their job and being unable to make repayments, rapidly causing their entire comfortable existence to crumble and be irreparably destroyed by reposessions, bailiffs and a bad credit score. If you go bankrupt you won't be able to rent a place to live or get a good job, because of credit checks and general employment contract exclusions, discriminating against former bankrupts.

If you imagine that there's a safety net there to catch you, you're naïve. Every property you might hope to rent is not only barred to bankrupts, but also to anybody receiving housing benefit. "NO DSS" every single advert for every single property on the market, quite clearly states. Capitalism and banking are closing ranks, creating an system that goes beyond that of a hostile environment to actively create vast numbers of homeless, unemployable, economic lepers who can't get back into civilised society no matter how hard they try.

Legislation which addresses the rehabilitation of former offenders, is quite strict about who is and isn't allowed to know a person's criminal record. The system of credit checks and your credit file is firmly in the civil sector. The use of credit data is extensively used to discriminate against people. Those who are in receipt of state welfare benefits are discriminated against, wherever that data is available to the rentier class.

We are increasingly corralled into minimum-wage zero-hours contract McJobs, with zero security and insufficient pay to afford a basic standard of living, where every letter which hits the doormat potentially delivers an economically catastrophic blow. While wealthy ignoramuses far removed from the reality of daily life for ordinary people, imagine that the social problems must be due to poor budgeting skills, they simply haven't a clue what it's like to live your entire life not having any surplus money to set aside for unexpected demands for cash. If a person who's in receipt of £73 weekly income gets a £80 parking fine, how are they supposed to pay it?

Of course, I'm clearly far-removed from the struggles of poverty... or am I?

I am lucky enough to be able to survive more than 2 missed paycheques without ending up on the street, when ⅓^rd of UK people are not so fortunate. However, my so-called financial security is due to having access to a good line of credit, which is not the same as having a pot of savings for unexpected expenses. If I suffer another period without income, I slip deeper into debt and my miserable existence continues.

It might seem foolish to spend money on a new iPhone and a holiday, when I'm deep in debt, but I worked for 10 consecutive months without a nice relaxing break. The rewards for my hard work have come in the guise of a place to live and enough money to be able to travel to work, which aren't really rewards at all. The next big reward is going to be the repayment of a significant chunk of debt, which again isn't really a reward. Working relentlessly without reward is not a sustainable situation, so I've chosen to prolong my indebtedness a little bit, because I can't put my entire life on hold, eating cold baked beans and living in a cardboard box, for the sake of getting out of debt a little quicker.

There are many aspects of my attitude and behaviour which seem very vulgar. How dare I talk about poverty and financial distress, when I seemingly have a good job and spare cash? How dare I talk about money worries and the burden of debt? How dare I compare myself with people who are two missed paycheques away from ending up on the streets?

I've been on the streets. I've slept rough. I know how quickly everything can fall apart. I can tell you exactly how I'd end up back on the streets.

Yes, I can borrow to service the interest on my loans, but that only delays the inevitable temporarily. Yes, I'm seemingly quite employable, but there's no point getting a job which doesn't pay enough money to repay my debts. Yes, I seem to have access to enough cash for rent, deposit, car and other major expenses, but that cash comes from my credit facilities, not my savings.

I've been battling a toxic combination of ill-health and mountainous debt for far too long. I'm starting to feel like it's an unwinnable battle. Of course, capitalists, bankers and the rentier class don't want you to be able to escape your economic fate - they want you to be insecure, so that you'll accept a minimum wage zero-hours contract McJob and kindly donate 100% of your income in the form of rent, bills and interest on loans, to those who really don't need the money.

This week has gone really slowly.

This year has gone really slowly.

As it stands, there's a plan in place which will dig me out of the hole I've been stuck in for far too many years. It's heavily reliant on better luck than previous years. I really don't need anybody throwing a spanner in the works. I really don't need to find myself unexpectedly looking for work again, as has happened far too often in the past.

If it seems like I'm unaware of my good fortune - unable to get things in perspective - then it's due to the present discomforts. Of course, I may look back upon this time and be unable to understand what I was complaining about so much. Unpleasant memories always fade faster than pleasant ones. I'm sure I'll look back with some regret, that I didn't enjoy myself more along the way; take more pleasure in the journey.

It's hard for those who've gotten used to having money to relate to those who've gotten used to living in fear of the letters hitting the doormat, the phone ringing and the doorbell. It's hard for those who've gotten used to regular income, to relate to those whose unreliable health has meant that financial planning is hard, and regular mortgage payments have become a tyranny; fear of getting into rent arrears and facing eviction being a constant nightmare. It's hard for those who don't have mountainous debts to relate to those who know that their entire lives could be destroyed in the blink of an eye; how quickly a small debt can become a ridiculously huge sum of money once legal fees, court fees and recovery costs have been added on. Money - or lack thereof - can destroy a person like nothing else.

Yes I could have saved myself some money here and there, but the thing that's going to save me from my dire situation is not economising and budgeting... it's oodles of cold hard cash. The thing I need is for the coming months to go as planned, so I can keep working and keep earning money. You can economise and budget as much as you want, but 100% of nothing is still nothing. If you earn nothing, it doesn't matter how great you are at financial planning, you're in deep trouble.

One big variable is my health. My health could scupper my plans to work hard. Hence the holiday. Hence the rest.

It might seem wasteful to have spent 5 out of 7 days in bed, but I needed to recharge the batteries.

It might seem wasteful to have spent so much of the last year miserable, but I needed to pay off my mountainous debts.

If I could go to sleep and wake up next March, with no recollection of the intervening months, then I'd absolutely love to do that. I'd gladly give up all those many months of my life, to be able to press the fast-forward button and skip the anxiety-inducing and super-stressful, boring, monotonous and unrewarding bullshit in-between then and now.

Yes, I'm wishing my life away.

Tags: #holiday #debt