Nick Grant

This is a story about fitting in...

I'm on holiday now. This required a very considerable amount of effort, including a hasty dash to the airport two days earlier than planned, and a couple of very expensive COVID-19 tests: one PCR and one LAMP.

Anyway, with all my COVID-19-free credentials in place, I was able to travel and reach my destination. The stress about whether or not the winter second wave [of COVID-19] would overwhelm the hospitals, and necessitate more lockdowns and travel bans, was almost unbearable, given how hard I've been working, for such a prolonged period. Although you might say it was foolish, I was pinning a lot of hopes on a Christmas getaway, as a reward.

Who am I to get a reward when so many people have lost their jobs, can't pay their rent/mortgage and/or bills, are using food banks and are otherwise suffering dreadfully?

Nobody. I'm a nobody. I'm not entitled to it. I just have it and that's the way it is. I'm a have and most people on the planet are have nots, and it really sucks. I didn't choose the time and place of my birth. I didn't choose my parents. I didn't choose most of the important stuff, which yielded this result: I am on holiday, in a hot and sunny location, with a few dollars in my pocket and no particular worries about keeping a roof over my head or food on the table.

I did ask for this. I did want this. Did I feel entitled to it? Only as much entitlement as is proportional to the effort and emotional energy expended, I think. Only as much entitlement as is proportional to the psychological damage which would have been inflicted.

There are people who've had their life savings wiped out. There are people whose lifelong dream business has been bankrupted. There are, of course, many people who've lost loved ones, who they had planned to spend many more happy years in the company of. Entire industries - like cruise liners - and their ancillary businesses, have been wiped out. Hospitality was pretty much wiped out. Cinemas, theatres... the performing arts, like theatres and live music venues... wiped out.

I can't speak for those people, who have suffered those misfortunes and hardships. I can empathise with them, sure, but I have my own unique situation.

I've been writing "the world's longest suicide note" for five and a half years. That time period has included no fewer than four life-threatening suicide 'attempts'... I write the word "attempts" in inverted commas, because none were particularly well planned or executed, but instead they were provoked by circumstances beyond my control.

This year, I decided, things were going to be different. My preparations have far exceeded anything I've done before.

Some years before I started writing this "suicide note" I had obtained some potassium cyanide, which comforted me, knowing I had the option of a reliable exit method. Then, during an acrimonious divorce, I made the decision to safely dispose of it, believing that a clean break and a fresh start, would lead me away from suicide. I was wrong.

I've had some difficulty obtaining potassium cyanide again, but the synthesis of sodium cyanide is not beyond the abilities of a keen amateur chemist, with a decent budget to purchase some very specific pieces of equipment. Dealing with molten salts at 600 degrees centigrade, and indeed, any handling of an extremely potent poison, outside of a laboratory, and without professional training and supervision, was bound to be extremely dangerous, but it seemed viable.

Somewhat daunted by the task of synthesising my own sodium cyanide, I then explored the more obvious route: although there were challenges, obtaining compressed inert gas was, comparatively, easy. I have resolved never to detail the precise paraphernalia and method, because the "barrier to entry" is a useful obstacle for the impulsive... I am alive, because my impulsive suicidal acts were far less likely to succeed.

It comforted me to know that, whatever happened, I would not have a repeat of previous years when I have found myself hospitalised; surviving. It comforted me to know that I had control, no matter what circumstances arose: if I was blocked from travelling to somewhere hot and sunny, then I would have everything I needed to end my life, already in place.

It seems a bit like a childish temper tantrum, when I write it down, but if you've followed the story, then you'll know that I've spent a very long time bordering on suicide, and it should not be seen - in this context - as a rash or tantrum-like act, to end my life, due to a "final straw" being too much to bear.

Thinking about it now, lying on a sun lounger, drinking an ice cold beer, enjoying gorgeous hot weather and clear blue skies, looking at the sea... it seems unthinkable that I would have the paraphernalia to swiftly, painlessly, and reliably commit suicide, sitting at home, ready to be used whenever it's needed. As thought experiment, I asked myself "how would I kill myself, right here, right now?" and the answer was easy: there are some really massive cliffs I could throw myself off. However, unsurprisingly, the positive psychological effect of a long-overdue holiday finally arriving, has completely changed my mindset: why shouldn't I enjoy a nice rest, and go back to the UK feeling refreshed, and keep working for as many years as I feel able to, before I 'retire' by killing myself? For sure, sitting in the sun, drinking ice-cold beer, I put an optimistic upper-bound estimate of 10 or even 15 more years, before it's time to go. I had probably not got 10 or 15 weeks, or even 10 or 15 more days left in me, when I attempted to leave the UK.

Having lost 12kg (26 pounds... the best part of 2 stone) in weight and substantially improved my fitness through regular exercise, plus spent almost half of 2020 completely sober, it gladdens me greatly to drink beer and wine, and stuff my face with french fries smothered with cheese & bacon. If you don't think I have paid for what I am enjoying, you are a fool. Am I entitled to it? No. Of course not. I was prepared to die for it, but that's all; nothing much. And of course, I never forget, that 97% of the world will work much harder and risk much more for their shot at happiness, and most will fail... but I'm not them, am I? I'm me.

Exceptionalism and individualism, exemplified by the idea that "the rules don't apply to me", is writ large at the moment, with Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic showing just how idiotic the nations of the USA and UK can behave, thinking that they can go it alone, and that through Ayn Randian "rational self-interest" anything other than a hellscape will emerge, has now been proven, beyond all reasonable doubt, to be wrong; unbelievably wrong. I'm well aware that my words are full of hypocrisy, but I actually don't care: my plans are different from yours. You are attempting to make copies of your genes, via breeding, and I am resigned to my fate: suicide.

I probably won't write again for a while. My routine now involves sun loungers and ice-cold beers, so my need for this coping mechanism has been almost eliminated.

In my concluding comments, I should at least make this unambiguously clear: I feel very fortunate to have been able to slip the bonds of the plague-infested United Kingdom, and make my way to a hot and sunny country, where I am enjoying fine fare; relaxing and otherwise somewhat unencumbered by the weight of my responsibilities, temporarily. A holiday is probably not a universal cure for major depression, but it fucking helps. If you had any worries that you would learn that I was in hospital or dead, at some point over the festive period, you should be reassured that I'm 99% certain to be sipping cold beer in the sun, in a relaxed mood.

It was a 50:50 coin flip, but things turned out just fine.

Tags: #suicide #holiday #depression #mentalhealth #bipolar #work #career #capitalism #politics #philosophy

This is a story about confidentiality...

Does that blurry blob at the end of the rainbow look recognisable to you? Are you sure? Isn't it far too pixelated for you to be able to figure out what it is? Haven't I gone to great enough lengths in my obfuscation, to make it unintelligible?

Do you think that, if you search, you'll find somewhere I slipped up... some place where I mentioned a person's name, an organisation name, a project name?

I know you're looking.

I've collected the data and done the analysis; I have the stats.

I know what things you've searched for.

What I don't know is why you're searching... but I can guess. You want to see if I'm badmouthing you, or your organisation, or your project.

I assure you, there's not a single word - nay, not a single letter - which references you, your organisation or your project.

I've been working for a very long time, for a very large number of organisations, and almost all of them have been extremely paranoid about security. I started my career in defence, dealing with highly classified documents and going to places which required very high security clearance. I shouldn't particularly even say that but it was a long time ago. I'm not allowed to say whether - today - I hold any kind of security clearance, or have access to any kind of classified or otherwise sensitive material, for the obvious reason that it would compromise security... these are lessons I learned when I started my career, in defence, in 1997. That's a hell of a long time to spend, strictly adhering to security and confidentiality procedures, and so they are deeply ingrained in me.

After leaving defence, I moved into investment banking. Banks, as you might well imagine, are just as paranoid about security as the defence industry, because bad people want to steal money just as much as they want to steal intelligence, weapons and suchlike.

Like I said... for most of the past 23 years, it has been a routine part of my career, to treat every piece of information that I possess, or have access to, with the utmost respect and adherence to a strict code of conduct, with extreme penalty for transgression. Also, like I said, I am neither confirming nor denying my present activities, or anything else, which would prove useful to a bad person, or persons.

The other reason for searching the 1.4 million words I've written and published, is because I am, admittedly, a very harsh critic of fuckwittery. "Fuckwittery" has been very deliberately chosen by me as a nondescript term. As the famous quotation goes: "I cannot give you a definition of pornography, but I know it when I see it".

Am I supposed to be sorry that I don't like fuckwittery?

Am I supposed to pretend that I do like fuckwittery?

I need to vent, and I don't really have any opportunity to vent, given that I live on my own, with no nearby friends or family, no housemates, no partner... nobody. Are you getting that? Is that getting into your thick skull? I've got nobody. If I had severe chest pain, I would just lie down on the floor and hope to die: I wouldn't phone anybody, I wouldn't text anybody... I would just hope that my heart would stop before... before what? Who would knock on my door? Who would ring my doorbell? Anybody who came to my house, like a neighbour asking if it's OK to park on my driveway, would just presume that I wasn't home. THAT'S THE WAY MY LIFE IS.

It was unfortunate that, last Christmas, me ex-girlfriend was certain that I was at home, and after she spent several days persistently shouting through my letterbox, and getting no reply, she called the emergency services. It was unfortunate, because otherwise I would not have had to experience 2020. It was unfortunate because I was so close to what I wanted. I was so close to dying of multiple organ failure. Frankly, I didn't give a shit what I died of... I just wanted to die. I lay dying, knowing that my organs were shutting down, in a lot of discomfort for DAYS AND DAYS and I NEVER ONCE thought that I wanted to phone, text or email anybody.

DO YOU GET IT?

So, this is what I do. This is how I cope. This is where I vent.

When I see insufferable fuckwittery, beyond the limit of what I can cope with, I write - in general - about the insanity of the world. I don't write about YOU. I don't write about YOUR ORGANISATION. I don't write about YOUR PROJECT. But I DO write about how utterly fucked up and stupid the world is, and what an incredible amount of fuckwittery the world contains.

If you're taking things personally, I'm sorry, that was never my intention. If you ask yourself the question "am I a fuckwit" and the answer is "no" then VERY CLEARLY I AM NOT WRITING ABOUT YOU so you've got nothing to worry about.

Anyway, feel free to search away through all the 1.4 million words, but you can take my word as gospel: you're not going to find any slip-ups, because I'm not a fuckwit.

If I have written something about a specific person, or organisation, they know why I did that, and they know that it was the truth, otherwise I'd have been sued for libel; they know that I was within my rights, in terms of my contractual obligations and code of conduct, otherwise I'd have been disciplined or sacked. But, generally, it's not my style. 99.999% of the time, I'll never write about anybody, any organisation, or any project, or suchlike.

Fuckwitterly is so commonplace that there's no need to single out any individuals, organisations or projects, for direct attack... it's perfectly adequate to make vague statements which apply to millions of really shitty badly-run organisations, with their bazillions of terrible projects, stuffed full of utterly appalling fuckwits; fuckwits of mind-boggling magnitude.

But, it must be remembered, that in the vast ocean of fuckwittery, there are lots and lots of lovely lovely people, who I like and respect very much, and want to be friends with... but things haven't worked out like that. Instead, I'm isolated and suicidal, and my patience for fuckwittery does very occasionally boil over... and the pages of this website are where you might find one or two clues that I'M REALLY FUCKING SICK OF THE FUCKWITTERY.

Of course, to hope to find a fuckwit-free utopia, at any point in my lifetime, is ludicrously improbable. The best I can hope for is to end my life, having created a tiny island, which is mostly free of fuckwittery, in the unimaginably humongous ocean of fuckwittery.

This was supposed to be a "sorry I made you upset" essay, but it's probably turned out to be rather the opposite.

Anyway... keep hunting; keep reading. You might learn a little about who I am, which couldn't hurt, even if you decide that I'm an incurably horrible man... at least it's more information than you possessed before, when you presumably thought that I was Jesus Christ and had led a life entirely free of sin; an infinitely patient, kind, forgiving and tolerant man. I AM NOT THAT MAN. I AM A LUNATIC WITH BIPOLAR DISORDER WHO IS SUICIDALLY DEPRESSED AND IS SICK OF THIS LATE-STAGE OF CAPITALISM TO THE POINT I WOULD BE GLAD TO HEAR THE WORLD WILL BE OBLITERATED BY AN ASTEROID.

I hope you're making notes. Make sure you bring this up at my next performance review.

Tags: #work #career #bipolar

This is a story about borrowing...

Let us imagine, for a moment, that you decide - hypothetically - to operate your life in the same way that a corporation operates. Let's examine all the tricks you could use if you were a miniature corporation, instead of a human.

Firstly, you can take our life insurance, just like an ordinary person can. In the corporate world it isn't called life insurance, but it's the same thing. Just like life insurance, it gets paid in the event of death. In the corporate world, that 'death' can be considered debt default; bankruptcy: when a company can no longer pay back its debts - in default - it's bankrupt, or in other words 'dead'. Likewise an individual will be hounded by debt collectors until their death.

Regular insurance doesn't allow you to insure the same risk more than once, otherwise we'd all just buy a million insurance policies for our mobile phone, and then flush it down the toilet or otherwise deliberately smash it to pieces, then we could claim a million times, and get a million cheques from the insurance companies: instant millionaire!

You would assume that it would be illegal to insure the risk of a company defaulting on its debts more than once, but no such law exists. So, the first thing you should do as a miniature corporation is start borrowing money. Then, you should buy a million insurance policies. Then, all you have to do is stop paying back the debt, and when the company is declared in default of its debt obligations, and therefore bankrupt, you can claim your millions from those insurance policies.

That's just one example.

"Where will I get the money for all those insurance policies?" you might ask. Well, as a corporation, that's really easy: you can borrow it.

The bigger you are as a corporation, the more you can borrow, but even a miniature corporation is governed by the same rules. You only need to borrow £10,000 if the insurance policies cost £100 each. Then, when you stop paying your debt, you will be able to claim £10,000 insurance money 1,000 times.

That's how credit default swaps work.

Want another example?

Let us imagine that you want to make your publicly traded company into one of the most valuable companies in the FTSE-100 - the top hundred most valuable companies traded on the London Stock Exchange - then the process is very simple. Firstly, you find a company on the London Stock Exchange which is virtually worthless, but not bankrupt. Then, you borrow money to buy that company, which will be sold to you very cheaply, because its valuation is so worthless. Next, you borrow even more money, which you use to artificially inflate your turnover: you can use a second company which does something like unscrewing the nuts off bolts, as your main commercial trading partner. The company which has screwed the nuts off the bolts can then purchase a service from your public company, to screw the nuts back onto the bolts. Obviously, the cost of each process charged to each other is the same. Then, to make things more efficient, no nuts or bolts are actually shipped between either company, but the two companies continue to do the transactions electronically: one for 'unscrewing digital nuts off digital bolts' and the other for 'screwing digital nuts onto digital bolts'. This process can continue, thousands of times a day, costing hundreds of millions of pounds per day to each company, but each company is receiving an equal amount of payment for its services.

Now that we have a publicly trading company, which is doing billions of pounds of turnover every year, it can then ask investors for money, to fund its expansion plans. Because the billions of dollars of turnover are very impressive, investors will flock to the opportunity: clearly a company with such high turnover must be very valuable.

The injection of capital into the public company allows it to acquire other public companies, and in so doing, its valuation increases. The process need only repeat, until the company is valuable enough (has a high enough market capitalisation) to enter the FTSE-250 (the top 250 most valuable companies traded on the London Stock Exchange).

At the point that the public company is listed on the FTSE-250, pension funds are mandated to purchase a substantial stake in it. The mandatory purchase naturally inflates the valuation of the company. Using that windfall, more acquisitions can be made, in order to purchase other FTSE-250 companies. Eventually, the company's valuation is enough to rank it in the top one hundred most valuable companies traded on the London Stock Exchange, and pension funds will have to buy even more of it's stock. It's not optional that the pension funds will buy vast amounts of the company... they are duty bound to buy shares in the company, simply because it is in the FTSE-100.

Then, once you have become a FTSE-100 traded company, you will be able to borrow insanely huge amounts of money - tens of billions of pounds - in order to use for the important business of "digital nut and bolt screwing/unscrewing" and for the acquisition of other companies.

Finally, throughout all of this, you will have been able to pay yourself, as the CEO and founder of a FTSE-100 company, many millions of pounds in salary, and many hundreds of millions in valuable shares, plus give yourself a hefty golden parachute and enormous salary, before you leave.

If you thought that your money problems were caused by your own inability to do simple arithmetic: subtracting your household expenses from your wage income, then you were mistaken: you were simply not thinking and acting like a corporation.

Tags: #capitalism

This is a story about maximising impact...

Assuming that you care about leaving the world in a better state than you found it, which of course you do not, the topic is an interesting one to explore as a thought experiment, given that the real-world possibility of you or I making any meaningful sacrifices in noble pursuit of a better world, is precisely zero.

So, let me quickly explain all the ways that you think you are making the world better, but you are not: recycling, buying a more economical car, thinking that your child[ren] will be the next Einstein[s] and will solve the climate crisis, sponsored fun-runs, charity giving, sharing stuff on social media, hand-wringing, deluding yourself that your tight-fistedness regarding the radiator thermostat is in any way motivated by man-made climate change, and not sheer unadulterated selfish money-grubbing greed.

Fundamentally, you and I will make so-called 'changes' to our lives, as long as we don't have to change anything at all. We will happily tick an online checkbox which says "make my flight carbon neutral" so long as the amount of money it costs is so little that we don't notice it at all. We will buy products which claim to be eco-friendly, so long as they don't impact our household finances. We will drive a more economical car, because it costs us less money to fill up with fossil fuel, and it drives just the same as one which makes no such pious claim.

Then, we must consider those who have dedicated their lives to charity work.

We must admit, in all truth, that charity has had a very long time to prove its worth, and has yet failed to make any meaningful difference to the world: hunger, poverty, deprivation, preventable disease and other man-made catastrophes are more prevalent than ever, and additionally there is famine and a refugee crisis brewing, which will affect billions, as a result of man-made climate change, which charities - such a Greenpeace - have failed to arrest, despite their long-lived popularity and vast sums of donations which are received every year.

From examination of the data, the conclusion is inescapable: the charity sector is run almost entirely for the benefit of those who work within it. Sure, a few people are helped, in order to maintain a flimsy façade of plausibility, but the data is too overwhelming: charities whose mission is to eradicated poverty, are not eradicating poverty; charities whose mission is to eradicate hunder, are not eradicating hunger; charities whose mission is to eradicate preventable disease, are not eradicating preventable disease.

I'm sorry to be uncharitable, but charity has been an abysmal failure.

I'm sure that those who work in the charity sector are very full of themselves and their work, no doubt buoyed by the heart-rending stories of a the handful of individuals who were the one-in-a-million that actually got helped. However, looking at the big picture: the only success of charity, is as a useful way for capitalism and its supporters, to pretend like they're doing something about the problems it creates. It is extremely cheap for a large multinational corporation, to spend a tiny fraction on corporate and social responsibility, and to milk that for all the PR opportunities it presents.

Fundamentally, charity is aiding and abetting society's ills; charity is perpetuating and endorsing human misery; charity is propping up a status quo, which creates the very problems which it declares as its charitable mission to eradicate.

There are some very well-meaning well-intentioned and very smart people who work in the charity sector, undoubtedly, but the data is dismal; the prognosis is stark... charity has failed, completely and utterly, except as a lickspittle of capitalism, allowing things to get as bad as they have done.

The solutions are twofold: firstly, the smart people need to quit charity work, and get into the multinational corporations, to muzzle those dangerous beasts; to give those amoral entities a moral compass. Secondly, the smart people need to quit charity work and get into governments, to muzzle those dangerous beasts, and give politics a moral compass.

We cannot have it, where all the smart humans with a conscience are neatly compartmentalised into a sector where they can be easily controlled and marginalised, except as a useful vehicle for corporate PR. We cannot have it, where corporations and governments, are entirely staffed by conscience-lacking avaricious selfish greedy humans, entirely without internal opposition from colleagues.

Tags: #charity #capitalism

This is a story about wishing my life away...

As a child I wanted to be a grown-up so that I could drive a car and buy whatever the heck I wanted; eat whatever I want; do whatever I want. Life has, in fact, kinda worked out for me in that regard. Life has, essentially, turned out to be everything I expected it to be. It really is child's play in fact, provided you stay true to your childish ambitions: I do, in fact, enjoy driving, expensive toys, eating whatever I want, and doing whatever I want.

I don't think I was ever so naïve as to think that things didn't have to be paid for. In fact, if there's one thing which has been front and centre of my mind, since the moment that consciousness sprang into my infant mind, it's that everything has to be paid for. You have to pay to play: I've always understood this.

As with childhood, I know that there's no other route to get where I want other than waiting. I had to wait until 17 years of age to get a full driving license, to enjoy the freedom of the road on my own. I had to wait for everything else I wanted too. I'm waiting now. My whole life is mostly waiting. Waiting for the stuff I want.

Older people, and particularly parents, are somewhat idiotic in telling children and younger people to not wish their lives away. It's moronic to tell somebody who has no freedom and cannot get what they want, that they should cherish a time of misery, suffering, deprivation and unmet want. What is there to cherish about being homeless? What is there to cherish about being hungry? What is there to cherish about having the world flaunt everything in your face, while you can only look on jealously? What is there to cherish about the impotence of having your life controlled by others? What is there to cherish in the waiting?

I've often written about this, but if I could take a pill and wake up ten years from now with no memory of the intervening decade, but all of my earnings in the bank, of course I'd take it. There's nothing I want from the present. I only want the opportunities which money can buy, which are locked up in the future, with nothing but grinding standing in the way.

Grinding is a well-understood thing, amongst younger people. In the absence of any realistic prospect of being able to afford to buy a house and start a family, it seems obvious that virtual worlds would flourish. Starting with games like The Sims, and then the infamous World of Warcraft, there has been an enormous explosion in popularity of games which aren't won per se, but instead offer a virtual reality where achievement and progress are possible, in a way which is not possible in the real world. No amount of supermarket shelf stacking will enable a young person to escape from their socioeconomic predicament - their preordained doom - and as such, it's little wonder that their tiny amount of disposable income would be frittered away on virtual objects; purchasing power so inadequate as to acquire any of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, such as shelter.

The gamification of life is all-pervasive. School is not about learning, but about grades to get into university. University is not about learning, it's the only route into a career without a ludicrously low glass ceiling. Jobs are not about passion or vocation, but each one a means to an end: a stepping stone on a career path towards... towards what? Towards a pension, and death hopefully. At least, hopefully, a long, painful, uncomfortable, illness-ridden, but not impoverished retirement, hopefully. At some point along the way, a partner will be acquired - whose looks and intelligence will be scored - and later there will be children who will also score points for their academic achievements. Everybody is keeping score.

The grind seems necessary, somehow. A means to an end, perhaps. Except, the summit is never reached. The goals are never achieved. There's no winning this game.

Tags: #suicide #depression #capitalism #work #career

This is a story about alarm clocks...

How many people start the day, jolted from their pleasant slumbers by their alarm clock, repeatedly pressing the snooze button because they want and need more sleep? Is it 50% of the world's population? Is it 75% of the world's population? Is it 95% of the world's population? Certainly, in Europe, North America, New Zealand, Australia - and a bunch of other 'westernised' societies - the figure will be exceedingly high. That's an incredible amount of unnecessary human misery and suffering, in my opinion. Why the hell is society functioning like that, with its most productive members so exhausted?

I do not subscribe to the rat race, insofar as accepting that social jetlag is an inevitable part of the prime years of my life. I do not accept decades of torturous suffering. I refuse to be part of that.

Many years ago, I was unable to get out of bed, one morning. I lay in that bed for weeks, paralysed by depression. But, I don't think it was depression: it was my body's natural reaction to an abhorrent situation. Nobody should have to get up in the morning, against nature. It's unnatural. It's an offence to human existence. It's toxic to human health and wellbeing. No. No way. Not doing it.

But.

It's almost impossible to fight against the established order of society. Even though almost everybody is exhausted and socially jetlagged, because of the rat race, nobody wants to flinch first; nobody wants to be the person who gives up, lest other eager competitors steal their place in the rat race.

In an arms race, eventually, the only outcome is the destruction of human civilisation. This is the point that we've arrived at: life has become uncivilised in the extreme.

So.

What are we going to do about it?

Let me tell you a little bit about my life. I go to bed at the same time every night, and I always fall asleep quickly. Then, I always wake up before I need to wake up. I never set an alarm clock. I'm never woken up unnaturally: I always wake up, doze peacefully a little longer, start thinking about my day, read a little news on my phone, then get up when I'm ready. I'm almost always among the first of my colleagues to start my working day. Sounds too good to be true? Well, yes, certainly this can't be achieved without a little cheating.

How do I cheat?

Well, that's really easy, so I'm not going to beat about the bush. The answer is obvious: sleep medication.

Yes, that's right, sleep medication is the obvious treatment for social jetlag.

Sleep medication.

It's that simple.

There are two problems: firstly, your doctor will not give you any effective sleep medication, because otherwise society would be a happier, better rested, and a less miserable torturous place, and we couldn't possibly have that, could we?!?! Secondly, getting a great night of sleep every night, and waking up naturally every morning feeling refreshed, starting work early without need in alarm clock, is really great so it's hard to want to go back to being tired all the time, and hating every single morning when the alarm goes off. Obviously, you need a virtually unlimited supply of effective sleep medication, to last you until retirement.

Good news though: capitalism plans on continuing to manufacture goods and services, for as long as there's demand. Also good news: while you continue to be useful to capitalism, you will be given tokens which you can exchange for goods and services. More good news: while you have needs and valuable tokens, and capitalism produces goods and services, there will be people willing to facilitate the exchange of those tokens for the goods and services, in exchange for a profit margin. Good news all round: while capitalism demands that you get out of bed unnaturally early in the morning, there will be a plentiful supply of sleep medication, to allow you to cope with the social jetlag.

Of course, when capitalism collapses, I'm going to have some pretty bad insomnia, but maybe that's advantageous. When everybody else is sleeping, overcome by exhaustion, I'll have plenty of extra hours awake to scavenge the looted supermarkets for scraps.

Don't waste your time with your doctor: capitalism has already created efficient markets, where you can procure whatever you need at a highly competitive price.

Tags: #medication #sleep #mentalhealth #depression

This is a story about one-way streets...

An important reason why people commit suicide, which demands further discussion, is the way that life is set up so that retreat is almost impossible. Nobody ever asks for a demotion. Nobody ever asks for a pay cut. Nobody ever wants to pull their kids out of private school to put them into state school. Nobody ever wants to cut off their kids' allowance, or stop paying into a savings account for their university education. Nobody ever wants to lose their trophy partner, because they can't afford to keep them in the manner to which they have been accustomed. Nobody wants to downsize or move in with family. It's all a one-way street.

Taken in aggregate, a small bump in the road can easily be understood as something which would prompt somebody to commit suicide. While you might say to somebody who's lost their job "just get another job" it's actually much more complicated than that: most people are only one or two missed paycheques away from major financial difficulties. The whole house of cards can collapse very easily: everybody is leveraged to the max.

Of course, you might say that it's silly to get worked up about material things. "Of course" everyone would understand about having to sell the fancy car, not go on holiday, leave the fancy school, not buy the nice things, maybe not have the same opportunities. "Of course" so the saying goes "we've still got each other" except it doesn't work like that. When the money dries up, everyone fucks off, and then the vultures move in to pick any remaining flesh off the carcass.

Yes, we really do have to acknowledge that we all become highly leveraged such that relatively small problems are life-destroying, and as such, they are life-ending.

We humans are optimists by nature. We always assume that the stock market is going to keep going up, the housing market is going to keep going up, our salary is going to keep going up: everything must always go up, according to our human proclivity for optimism. It's not that people are stupid, although of course they are that too, but there's a fundamental hard-wired kind of specific stupidity I'm talking about: the tendency towards optimism, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

If we were beasts of pure reason and logic, we'd kill ourselves as soon as we grasped our situation: a life of pain, depression, anxiety, suffering, hard work and other unpleasantness, met with an inevitable death at the end. Why put yourself through that? Our self-preservation instincts have evolved to counteract our higher brain functions, lest our species die out, but still... why bother? It's completely illogical to live your life hoping for anything: death is inevitable; illness, pain and suffering is almost inevitable. Almost nobody dies "peacefully" in their sleep: decades of slow, painful and uncomfortable dying await us all.

Obviously, we hope to achieve symbolic immortality through our genes, passed on to our children. Or rather, our genes hope to be replicated. We are, after all, just a vessel for genes to reproduce themselves, and it would be foolish - an anthropocentric arrogant delusion of grandeur - to try to convince ourselves otherwise.

In the eternally optimistic quest for a "better life" we strive to get a bigger salary, bigger house, more attractive partner, as many kids as we can realistically feed and clothe... then we move onto status symbols, like university degrees, professional qualifications/certification, fancy cars, luxury holidays... still we are not satiated.

At some point, pretty early on in our life, we become locked into a certain destiny. Pretty much, once you've got kids, you are locked-into a certain kind of life: although you might fantasise about selling your house and living in a camper van, you never will, because you are locked in, in so many ways. Even if you're wealthy and single, you're never going to sell everything you own and become a homeless nomad. You might have gone off on a gap year, you predictable tedious middle-class wanker, but you know that any more gaps on your CV wouldn't look good on your otherwise unblemished career track-record.

Those who are unlucky enough to suffer a misfortune most often go one of two ways: they're kicked out of mainstream life, and must accept their plight trapped in the underclass forevermore, or they commit suicide. There's no other line of retreat; there's no way back, for those who err or suffer a misfortune.

This might seem like a bleak outlook, but you know it's true.

Tags: #career #homeless #debt #work #capitalism #suicide

This is a story about value for money...

I watched a documentary about the manufacture of jeans, and I was surprised to learn that most of the jeans which we buy in our high-street shops come from a handful of factories, in Turkey, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Indeed, almost 80% of the jeans we buy come from nearly identical factories. The premium brand jeans are made in exactly the same factories, using exactly the same method, and by exactly the same machines and people. The only difference between £300 jeans and £30 jeans, is the label, and the style.

Of course, you might say, style is everything. For sure, I don't want my jeans to be too heavily faded, too baggy, too skinny... but also too plain. Having a bit of character is what makes a pair of jeans look good - fashionable - instead of being just a plain old pair of blue denim trousers.

You might think that, knowing the facts that I do, that I wouldn't be so foolish as to assume that my mid-priced jeans would last longer than a cheaper brand... but you'd be wrong.

The knee just tore on my premium brand jeans, which cost me about twice as much as I've ever spent on a pair of jeans in my life. I suppose I've owned these jeans for two years, and worn them almost every day, so in terms of value for money, we could say that they've cost me something like 18 pence per day... which sounds quite reasonable, to me.

The problem with "pre-distressed" jeans is that, although they look 'good' from the moment you put them on, they end up looking progressively more and more scruffy, until people just assume that you're so poor that you can't afford new clothes; until they cease to be fashionable and instead become part of a dishevelled look, which nobody finds particularly attractive.

Anyway, I've done something which I've never done before in my life, which is to purchase clothes without trying them on in a shop. I had a horrible retail experience on Sunday, where I had to queue in the rain to get into the shop, and then queue again to purchase the product I was buying. Also, given that my city is in a second lockdown, it seemed more civic minded to do my shopping online.

At least I don't have to be in the office anytime this year, so nobody at work will see me wandering around in jeans with a massive rip in the knee. I literally only ever own one pair of jeans which I love and wear all the time. I suppose I should buy several of certain items, when I find something I like, so that I have a like-for-like replacement when the item(s) eventually wear out. I've done that before, with a few things, and it's a good strategy for somebody like me, who has a very small wardrobe.

I'm sure you probably came here hoping to read something a little less mundane than a 500 word essay about my worn-out jeans. Sorry.

Tags: #money #clothes #fashion #economy #capitalism

This is a story about mixing work and pleasure...

My inbox is full of an ever-increasing number of requests for me to publish a guest blog. On closer inspection, these are really requests to pay me to put advertising on my website, or links to help other websites to improve their Google search rankings. Basically, I don't get genuine requests from people who legitimately want to share anything here... only online marketing and search engine optimisation people, trying to piggyback on my hard work.

What about that hard work?

Why would I do that hard work, if I'm not getting paid?

Well, although I have moaned about crippling debts for many years, I actually have enough money. Very nearly - once - I came within £23 of bankruptcy, but I've always managed to service my debts, pay my rent, pay my bills, buy food and otherwise pay my way in the world. I wouldn't say money has been plentiful but it has been adequate even though a lot of it has been borrowed in order to bridge the gap between the necessary expenditure to stay in the game, versus being cast out from mainstream society and trampled underfoot. I don't really need whatever pitiful sum of money I could get, by perverting my artwork into a commercial artefact.

Wut?

Yes, that's right. I prefer it that my folly - this monument to my madness and stupidity - is kept as something entirely non-commercial. That means no advertising. No selling data. No product placement. No backlinks. No quid quo pro. You can't offer me anything that I would accept in exchange for turning my idiotic endeavours into a money-making scheme. If I wanted to make money, I'd have done something else. I'm not in this for the money. I don't want to become yet another lifestyle blogger, influencer, social media expert, or other person in that particular area. I'm a writer, and I'm able to write and publish whatever I want, and reach thousands of readers every day, which surely is a writer's dream? I mean, sure, some writers have to eat but c'mon! There are so many easier ways to make money than writing! Surely nobody would be stupid enough to try to make writing into their main profession, when they could just as easily work a fraction of the time, and have the majority of their working week available - free - to pursue any writing project that a writer would want to pursue.

Okay, so I only managed to complete a single novel manuscript to an acceptable first-draft standard, in the 5+ years I've been writing 'full-time' but I also produced a couple of 80% complete manuscripts, plus a 1.3 million word blog with thousands of readers, which appears on the first page of Google for a whole bunch of things that people are searching for. I don't mean this as a boast, but merely to point out that if writing was my objective, I've managed to do plenty, without having to earn a writer's pittance of a salary.

Of course I would love to call myself, more legitimately, a writer. I wish I had the balls to give up my main profession, and pursue writing to combine passion, vocation and work into a single thing, but then, I think I would feel very insecure and touchy about my work. Anyone can tell me "your writing is shit" at the moment, and I'll know that they're wrong, but it's not professional grade either; it's a damn sight better than your average keyboard-mashing internet-dweller, so they can fuck off. If I called myself a writer by trade then I'd probably take it very personally, and get really upset. I've not been writing for long enough, nor had enough external validation, to fend off criticism of my writing, if I was doing it in a professional capacity.

So, if you're thinking of contacting me, asking if I can - basically - help you sell you or your client's product or service, don't expect to get a response back from me, other than an unpleasant one. I don't go out of my way to be unpleasant to people, but some of the people who email me are really aggressive and get unduly unpleasant when I ignore them, which is uncalled for. Also, it pisses me off when people want to use me and my artwork - my folly - to further their contemptible commercial endeavours.

You will never see any ads on this website, and I will never sell the data (what data would I even sell anyway?).

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #capitalism

This is a story about technocrats...

I wish I could tell you more about my day job, but I can't. I can't even tell you who my main client is, or generally what the project is that I'm working on. I mean, technically I could tell you the organisation and project, but then anybody searching for my name and that project or organisation would be brought right here, immediately, which wouldn't be helpful. I can't tell you any detail about my day, because it would probably breach code of conduct, and possibly some laws too, depending on what I told you.

Anyway.

I hate when people try to be super mysterious, and generally allude to the fact that what they do for a living is exciting; like they're James fucking Bond, or something. No, it's much more boring than that, as this quote that I love explains very well:

“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern." -- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

What I'm working on for the majority of my working week, is benign, most people would agree. A colleague reads my blog, openly, not secretly, and they said that they agree with me: the project, and indeed the work of the organisation is benign in their opinion too. It's hard to see how what we're doing is not benign, but we should explore the topic with a little more of an open mind.

Something which you might pay little heed to, but will be well aware of if you've ever been unwell, is that there is a vast mountain of administrative headache, which has to be ploughed through, simply for the privilege of being alive. Even though all my bills are paid via direct debit from my bank account, or auto-renewal straight from my debit card, or some other way of money disappearing constantly from my pocket, still that's not enough. The council will write to me demanding that I tell them who lives in my house, even though I already told them. The car insurance company demanding to see proof that I've never claimed on my policy, even though it is them who administers the policy. Somebody, somewhere, at all times, is expecting me to do something for them, on pain of fine, prosecution... prison even.

The United Kingdom is ostensibly a very difficult place to live, unmolested. If you were hoping to live here, simply paying your rent/mortgage and bills, and expecting that would be enough, you are very wrong: an endless stream of bureaucratic obligations will bombard you, every single day. There are reams of forms which need to be filled in in triplicate; numerous permits, licenses, notices and interminable obligations, which are met with extremely harsh penalties if these constant intrusions into your life are not dealt with immediately.

Each organisation which contacts you thinks that its demands are not onerous, which is true. Taken individually, each task is not particularly difficult or time-consuming. However, when all these small tasks are added together, the demand is huge: I really don't give a shit whether I'm doing my tax return or revising the electoral roll... both tasks are equally irksome; equally intruding into my time, effort and energy. For highly functional people, they perhaps don't notice this burden, but those who are sick - speaking from personal experience - will find it overwhelming, to the point of driving a person to suicide.

While it might seem ridiculous - improbable - that these 'easy' jobs might tip somebody over the edge, to the point that they'd end their own life, if you consider the harsh penalties which are attached to all of these things, they can all threaten to ruin your life. An unpaid parking ticket can lead to £15,000 of court costs and other expenses, which would bankrupt most people. Other minor administrative oversights, like failing to tell the council that your flatmate moved out, could lead to thousands of pounds of fines, and perhaps even a criminal conviction. Cumulatively, I'm sure that you could end up with a very big police criminal record, and be bankrupted many times, simply because you weren't able to open your mail for a few months, because you were sick.

The letters keep dropping on your doormat, and every single one is demanding money with menaces. Every single one of those letters is threatening to lock you up, take away your home, take away your livelihood, take away your children, take away your pets, take away your transport; threatening to bankrupt you, and wreck your chance of ever having a home ever again; having a job ever again. It's a pretty shitty state of affairs, that we can do that to people, who just want/need to be left alone.

Tags: #work #capitalism