This is a story about having fun...

If you need to prove that you're good at drinking and taking long holidays, university is an excellent choice. If you have wealthy middle-class parents, don't know what you want to do with the rest of your life except avoid working (you're right - work is boring and shit) then why not take a gap-yah or two and spend as long as you can in full-time education? Study now. Pay later.

Did you select your A-levels based on the degree course that you wanted to study? Did you make sure you have as many languages and extracurricular activities on your university application as possible? Did you make sure you've got some volunteering or Duke of Edinburgh award, or some other bollocks to make you look like more of a model student?

Next question: did you pick your degree based on the job you wanted at the end of your studies?

There are a limited number of professions that require undergraduate or postgraduate qualifications. To enter into law, medicine, accountancy, teaching, dentistry, veterinary surgery and a handful of other fields, you cannot legally practice without membership of a professional body, who usually mandate that you have followed a proscribed educational path.

In short: you only really need to go to university if a degree is absolutely necessary in order to get the job you want, right?

Wrong.

What about fun? What about staying with like-minded peers. While those who are not academically gifted (read: thick as pig shit) go on to have fulfilling lives in prison, on remand, on probation and tending their many illegitimate children, the brightest bunch will get into thousands of pounds of debt while having an extended infancy. Who wouldn't enjoy spending their student loan on beer and drugs?

Have I missed something?

Yes.

While I fumbled my way through my career, hamstrung by the fact that I was 3 to 5 years younger than my peers on British Aerospace's graduate trainee program, I had missed out on living in a dog-shit untidy flat with a load of selfish arseholes, having some lovely girlfriends and making lifelong friends, while growing up amongst a peer group of likeminded individuals in ostensibly the same circumstances. My first few years after college fucking sucked. Yes, I had money, but I was fucking lonely and miserable.

After a couple of years I became fucked off with the ageism and went in search of a company that would give me a proper opportunity to prove myself. With another job as a stepping stone, I got into IT contracting by the age of 20. I was earning £34 an hour, plus VAT. It was a king's ransom and I started to use money to fill the hole that would ordinarily have been filled with tales of happy 'student days'.

By the time Y2K came around I was working at Harbour Exchange, on the backbone of the Internet. I was doing some software development for Lloyds TSB on their telephone exchange (PABX) software. My Docklands Light Railway journey to work each day took me past two enormous holes in the ground: the foundations of the HSBC and Citibank towers that flank 1 Canada Square: the UK's tallest building. Career-wise, I had won. I was earning 6-figures at the tender age of 21. Fuck you, graduates.

When did I ask myself "what do I really want to do with my life?" or "what do I enjoy doing?"

Never.

Who can afford to dream?

If you've got somebody underwriting your risk; if you've got a loving family; if you have wealth... sure, go ahead, dare to dream. If you haven't, you'd better be pragmatic. We saw what happened to me when I slipped. Was anybody there to catch me? No fucking way. I was homeless, destitute. Neither my family nor the state intervened. There's no safety net for me. Failure means failure. Complete and utter failure, destruction and destitution.

And so, I don't choose to do what I want, work where I want, consider what I want. I take the job that pays and I get on and I do it. I'm cynical and I moan about it, but what's the alternative? Flipping burgers for minimum wage? A shop doorway that smells of piss and sneering government employees begrudging me a pittance of a support allowance... not enough to escape poverty.

I'm almost incensed by people who suggest I should retrain, or at least choose work that I hate a little less. That's madness, for me. I just don't have anybody underwriting my risk. I'm already leveraged to the max: all-in, bollocks on the chopping block.

The annoying thing is that it works.

I fucking hate the whole stupid fucking industry that I'm mixed up in. I'm doing the same shit I was doing when I was 21. Wouldn't you be, if the rewards were the same for you? Think about what you could do with all that money. Imagine having a 5-figure paycheque every month.

But it's not like that.

I'm so fucking serious.

Take that 6-figure job, but get rid of your lifelong friends. Get rid of those memories of meeting people on freshers week. Get rid of those memories of student halls, the NUS bar, living away from home for the first time, your proper girlfriend/boyfriend who you were mad about. You can kiss those 3+ years you spent discovering your adult identity goodbye. You'll be financially rich, but you'll be miserable, lonely and insecure. You won't have that piece of your identity that says you belong to some club: the town or city where you studied, the campus, the finals, the dissertations... the grade, the diploma, the graduation.

Take those happy memories, and instead replace them with being at least 3 years younger than your closest peer, and having to work several times harder to overcome the impression that you're less experienced, less developed, less able. Of course, I was inexperienced: I was living away from home for the first time. When I threw up on a night out, it wasn't with other students who were doing the same, but with work colleagues. At university it was a fun rite of passage shared with others who had done exactly the same thing. I really don't advise doing it as part of your career, although it's a somewhat unavoidable part of life that has to be done at some point. In my defence, I was tricked into eating a Dorset Naga chilli pepper.

Moan, moan, moan.

Anyway, I got my gap-yah. I had my 3 years of living in appalling conditions and getting fucked up on a non-stop rollercoaster of sex, drugs and drink, with few responsibilities. I had long holidays. I got a stupendous education that I certainly won't forget in a hurry. Bizarrely, I did even get a certificate at one point. I kid you not.

"University of life" is rather synonymous with people who the elites rather like to sneer at, but consider this: there are a lot of smart people who don't get to go to university, because they don't have wealthy middle-class parents underwriting their risk. The point that I missed - and I regret - is that it's better if you stick with the herd. My peer group went to university and I didn't, and for that reason I became even more isolated and lonely. My parents successfully sabotaged my childhood by moving me all over the fucking country, but I made the final mistake by not seeing the value in fucking about for 3+ years with likeminded individuals, as far away from my c**tish parents as I could get.

I've come back to bitching and whining, full of bitterness and regret, but isn't it apt? Here I am, about to secure another contract doing the same old thing, the same old way. Sure, I can do it, but can I fondly reminisce about the journey that brought me to this point? Do I share the journey onwards with lifelong adulthood friends?

No.

My life was fractured in my childhood. I'm on a different path from my peer group. Having fun and having friends is not for me: I've been told that from a very early age.

Tags: #childhood #parents #career #university

This is a story about real life, far from the Internet...

Are you familiar with the acronym "IRL"? By some definitions, it stands for: In Real Life. Many people believe IRL is a synonym for any human interaction that occurs face-to-face. Did you also notice that I always capitalise the word Internet? Ever wonder why I do that?

If I speak to somebody on the phone, is that real life? If I send them a handwritten letter, is that real life?

The distinction between 'real' life, and the life we live with technology mediating our interactions with each other, has become rather pointless. I'm no great fan of video chat, but it's certainly an advancement on the telephone. All telephone calls are routed through digital exchanges, and the same infrastructure that carries your voice also carries the data of your Internet connection. There's nothing much more real about having a face to face conversation, shouting through a wall at your neighbour, making a Skype call (who does that anymore anyway?) or phoning somebody on their mobile.

The Internet is a real place, hence the noun. People can meet there, trade goods, gossip. "But you can't physically interact" I hear you wail. "What about touch, smell, taste?" Yeah yeah yeah. Are you saying that the phone-calls you used to make on that old rotary-dial telephone weren't real life?

This is the beginning of a piece I've been wanting to write for ages. I made a note on my smartphone of the title, but I'd already been mulling the topic since a friend - who I've seen in real life only twice since childhood - made the very good point about the Internet being a real place. I was thinking about writing this well before a different friend - who I hadn't seen in real life for nearly 20 years - posted an article on this topic on Facebook. The timing is too perfect.

I've lived 'online' since I saved up my money from my job washing up in a hotel kitchen in order to buy a modem. When I bought my modem, the Internet wasn't yet a big thing. Instead, I used to get magazines that had loads of phone numbers in them of dial-up bulletin boards. Using technology that predated the Internet in the guise we know it today, I used to be text-chatting online, electronically mailing people and playing online computer games, via bulletin board systems (BBSs).

Then, I took to Internet newsgroups which were a popular fore-runner to the forums and social media pages we have today. I even met a rock climbing partner on a newsgroup. If you don't think that putting your life in the hands of a random stranger off the Internet is real life then I don't know what is.

I spent thousands of hours reading and contributing to three kitesurfing forums. People who I first met online had countless evenings spent drinking, weekends away and holidays to exotic locations together. All of which occurred away from keyboard but it was very much real life. It was real when we were all talking to each other on the Internet all week long, during our dull office hours, waiting for the next time we could go to the ocean together.

This is where things get super blurry. I have so many friends I've made through social media (newsgroups, forums) and a lot of old friends I'm able to still remain in some kind of contact with because we are connected via Facebook. Would I have been able to pick up an old friendship with school/college friends who I hadn't seen for circa 20 years, if there hadn't been some real and somehow tangible tie together, even if it was mediated by binary ones and zeros in the ether of the 'cloud'?

The dust has been gathering on my keyboard since I completed the first draft of my novel. I haven't been blogging regularly for a while. I miss writing and I miss having an open dialogue with everybody and anybody on the Internet. The Internet has brought me friends and fortune. I've never regretted the investment of time I've made in channelling my creative energies into a public space that creates nothing tangible per se. What is software? What does it mean to publish a blog or a book online? If you can't hold it, sniff it, lick it... if it doesn't gather dust, does it really exist?

There was one slightly embarrassing moment in my recent adventures Away From Keyboard.

I was out for dinner with another friend. You could say I know him in real life because the first time I met him was face to face... or you could say I know him through the Internet, because he was introduced to me by somebody I know from an Internet discussion forum. Either way, it's immaterial to the embarrassing story.

Over dinner, my friend expressed his incredulity at the fact that the value of all the coal bought and sold is a tiny fraction of the total value of all the financial contracts (securities) that are created off the back of the physical commodity. So many more coal futures and options contracts are bought and sold by speculators, hoping to profit from a movement in the price of the commodity, versus anybody who actually wants the real coal. The dirty black lumps of carbon are almost unimportant... the 'value' in the financial markets dwarfs the heavy industry that mines coal out of the ground and ships it to power stations and for people to heat their homes.

The embarrassing thing was that I went to speak and then I realised that I had nothing to add. I was left speechless. I've written at length on my blog about the staggering 'value' of the derivatives contracts versus the real economy. Is it me who's splitting hairs, expecting us to care about food and housing and water and healthcare and transport? Is it me who's the luddite, saying that the global financial markets are utter horse shit because it's all just digital money in the Fintech 'cloud'?

Maybe the real embarrassment is that I'd had that conversation before, with a hedge fund manager and a director of an investment bank. We were on our way home from the airport, having been kitesurfing in real life with 20 people from an Internet discussion forum. I was just about to start work for JPMorgan, dealing with Credit Default Swaps. We thought that the financial markets were overleveraged and that there was going to be a crash. That was 2005.

Did I put my money where my mouth was? Yes. I bought dollars at nearly $2 for every £1 I paid, and bought gold at $550/oz. One ounce of gold cost £225 back then. One ounce of gold is worth £920 today.

The point is not to be a doom-monger or gloat in a "told you so" kind of way, but to try and express how tired I am by everything. Being Cassandra is shit. Churning out my thoughts into the ether has allowed me to say everything that needed to be said, but it left me kind of breathlessly shocked to encounter anybody who'd arrived at the same rational and reasonable analysis of a ridiculous situation. That's one thing you don't get when you're lecturing the Internet: any kind of feedback that anybody agrees with you.

So, what's my closing conclusion? I'm back blogging, because I love writing, but aside from setting out my position clearly for posterity, some time away from keyboard is pretty handy to remind oneself that there are a lot of people out there in the real world who share my values and concerns.

Tags: #socialmedia #writing #computing #banking #capitalism

Contents

Chapter 1: The Caravan

Chapter 2: Invisible Illness

Chapter 3: The Forest

Chapter 4: Prosaic

Chapter 5: The Van

Chapter 6: Into the Unknown

Chapter 7: The Journey

Chapter 8: Infamy

Chapter 9: The Villages

Chapter 10: Waiting Room

Chapter 11: The Shadow People

Chapter 12: Enough Rope

Chapter 13: The Post Offices

Chapter 14: Unsuitable Friends

Chapter 15: The Chase

Chapter 16: Self Inflicted

Chapter 17: The Holiday

Chapter 18: Psychosis, Madness, Insanity and Lunacy

Chapter 19: The Hospitals

Chapter 20: Segmentation

Chapter 21: The Cell

Chapter 22: Wells of Silence

Chapter 23: The Box

Chapter 24: Jailbird

Chapter 25: The Scales

Chapter 26: Descent

Chapter 27: The Syringe

Chapter 28: Anonymity

Chapter 29: The Imposter

Chapter 30: Wish You Were Here

8. Infamy

The eldest brother could do no wrong in his mother's eyes. He was quiet and studious. The teachers at school said that he was destined for great things - provided he tried his best - which echoed his parents' long-held hopes for their first-born child. Despite being unpopular, bullied and having few friends, academic achievement was the only thing that seemed to matter in his life, or so he was told by the adults he came into contact with. Wanting to please those anxious faces that looked on, scrutinising every piece of schoolwork, exam grade and report from teachers, he had allowed himself to be moulded into the 'perfect' son. Dressed by his mother and developing no independent identity of his own, his impeccable manners and good behaviour had other parents clucking with jealousy, as their own children were defiant, argumentative and seemed intent on ruining their futures.

The youngest brother was infantalised; babied; mollycoddled. Adorably cute, he had a look in his eyes that could melt any heart and the entire family delighted in showering this child with physical affection and encouraging childish traits that were seen as funny and part of his delightful young character. The words he mispronounced were adopted, so that grandfather became "Gaduda" and a favourite uncle became "Cunigu". The babbling of a baby created an entire new and impenetrable lexicon that only the family knew and understood.

The middle sister held her place in the family as a gender-stereotyped girl. Dressed in pink and floral outfits, she had been showered with traditional toys like dolls, plastic ponies and role-playing sets for obedient housewives. She seemed to be developing normally, playing nicely with her soft toys - having make-believe tea parties for all her bears - as well as thriving socially at playgroup and school.

After puberty, the girl had grown into a young woman more quickly than any adult was able to comprehend or adjust to. When they looked at her they could not see beyond the image of a child that had cemented itself in their minds. Clearly, at the age of 13 or 14 she was still very much a child, but there was a kind of denial amongst family and teachers that this girl was maturing much more rapidly than her peers in a way that denied her a place as either adult or child.

At school, only the children could see what was happening to Lara.

Becoming quiet and withdrawn, Lara fell out of favour with her friends. She wasn't fun anymore. She didn't want to laugh and giggle and gossip and exchange misinformation. Talking about who had started their periods and what bra size they were having to buy, some confusing changes were slowly slotting into place, as the adult world careened into their carefree childhood existence.

The family were distracted. Lara's eldest brother was being coached for important exams and groomed for a top university place, even though his education had many more years until its completion. Lara's youngest brother had a streak of star-like quality now, and it was being considered whether the family would try to get him into a school with better drama and music facilities. A future in the performing arts seemed to beckon for Lara's little brother. The family indulged him as he sang, danced and generally entertained them, captivating every available bit of their attention.

Under the auspices of furthering her studies, Lara had started to travel into the city centre to visit the main public library. Without adult supervision, she had been free to peruse the shelves and select whichever books she wanted. Peeking at older girls and young women who she thought dressed nicely, she imagined that they could be the role models or peers that she seemed to be missing in her life. Listening in to snippets of conversation and looking at the books they chose, Lara came upon a cache of literature that was 'age inappropriate'. The elderly librarians didn't know much about the books that they stamped for Lara to take home.

Magazines provided a trickle-down of information through the girls in school. Well-thumbed copies of Just Seventeen were mostly read by giggling groups of 13 and 14 year olds, who pored over the agony aunt sections and articles about boyfriends. The children mostly came from reasonably wealthy and well-to-do families where they had led sheltered lives, but there were many who had been involved in fumbling trysts and could combine their first-hand knowledge with the information gleaned from the pages of teen magazines.

Lara drifted further from her original childhood friends who covered their bedroom walls with posters of boy bands and listened to saccharine-sweet pop music.

Print media slowly sexualised the schoolgirls, with magazines that were supposedly pitched at adults being more commonly read by 14, 15 and 16 year olds. These magazines - such as Cosmopolitan - featured sex positions and even blow-job techniques under titles like "How to Please Your Man". Fashion magazines were boring by comparison and Lara found Vogue pretentious.

There was a disjoint, a gap, between magazine articles that were light on any real detail, and what was shared between the braver and more adventurous girls who had experimented and fooled around with their first boyfriends. There was no romance in being roughly fingered by an overexcited 14 year old boy on a cold park bench, both tipsy from swigs of cheap cider straight from the bottle. The experiences were confusing, unpleasant even.

Lara had filled the gap with romantic and erotic novels, and the detail of not only the mechanics of the acts but also the feelings of love and lust filled out a much fuller picture of what boyfriends and sexual activities were all about. Lara started to feel contempt for the spotty horny boys at her school and the gaggle of catty girls who circulated vicious rumours about each other as well as boasting of experiences that were missing the caring caress and vital connection that Lara now desired in a boy who was as mature as she was.

By broadening her sphere of knowledge through reading, as well as careful observation of the mannerisms of young women rather than her peer group, Lara began to take on an aura of being quietly self-confident, knowing. As the school year wore on, she started to appear dark and brooding in a way that had a sultry kind of attractiveness. Lara wasn't becoming a goth but there was an intensity in her eyes that was extremely intimidating to other girls, as well as to her teachers. More and more boys started to take an interest in Lara. She was becoming more and more removed and aloof from day-to-day school life, making her seem unattainable. Rumours circulated that she had an older boyfriend who rode a motorbike.

The children elevated Lara to a status normally reserved for 'cool' adults. To treat Lara like an ordinary pupil brought anarchy to the classroom, as if the teachers had started calling each other names in front of the children. To her teachers, Lara was now untouchable, in the interests of preserving some authority. Lara wasn't interested in making trouble, so an uneasy truce came to pass. Lara would not show any disrespect for her teachers or contempt for her schoolwork, but no teacher dared to ridicule and belittle her for fear that they themselves would be laughed out of their class.

Nothing was especially wrong that warranted Lara's parents being contacted, but Lara was becoming feared and revered at school. The girls knew that their boyfriends' eyes were drawn to her and Lara could feel herself attracting an increasing number of staring faces. She started to become comfortable with male attention and would even delight in returning a boy's gaze in order to make him blush, caught looking. A kind of unspoken reputation made her unapproachable. No boy from her school was bold enough to try and speak to her anymore. The legend of the older boyfriend became cemented as fact, even though Lara by now had started to feel a little disappointed that the older boys seemed somehow immature. Refining her style, her sense of dress, in a subtle way that she copied from young women who seemed confident and happy, she started to draw attention from young men, some of it unwanted. These men were crass and crude, and harassed her. They had nothing cosmopolitan, cultured or urbane about them. They were likely lads who fancied themselves as a hit with the ladies. Lara was repelled by these ugly creatures who dressed in sportswear, had gold chains, earrings and wore far too much aftershave. These young men were only ever brave enough to make an approach when accompanied by a group of their friends, watching with a slack-jawed smile as the sullen Lara silently dismissed them with crushing indifference.

Lara imagined that when she left school for university she would find a completely different set of people. Young men who were more mature and romantic, she imagined a boyfriend who could be her equal; somebody she could respect. It wasn't that she was saving herself for true love, but more that she hadn't yet met anybody who measured up to her expectations. The more she read, the more she developed a better sense of the kind of guy she wanted to date, which included a kind of worldly-wiseness, experience and a self-assured manner that was lacking in schoolboys and men who hung around near schools trying to pick up teenage girls.

Age 15, with a mature body and the comportment of somebody older, Lara started to draw the attention of more predatory and silken-tongued men who attempted to woo her with more subtlety. Hanging around on the fringes of school social events and struggling to find a group where she belonged, several well dressed young men struck up casual conversations with her. At first, she felt as though she was beginning to make new friends and would perhaps soon have a new gang to hang out with. Brutally, she found that it was a ruse and these men would try and kiss and grope her after some perfunctory chat. Lara became despondent, beginning to lose hope that there was anybody out there for her who didn't want to just get in her knickers.

At weekends during a mild late September, she had taken to reading a book in the park on a favourite bench that was partly shaded, but still had enough sunlight that she was pleasantly dappled with warming rays. Today, there was a young man sat on one end of the bench who was ghostly pale, wearing a winter coat but still shivering. His coat was pulled up to cover the bottom half of his face, but his eyes were shining brightly, with dark rings underneath. He looked as though he was suffering with a fever and his forehead was a little sweaty.

Lara hesitated before sitting down, but she decided that the man's body language suggested he was trying to make himself as small and inconspicuous as possible. He seemed non-threatening and he was sat right at the other end of the bench. Lara took her usual seat and began reading, somewhat distractedly.

She imagined that the man would get himself up and off home to bed soon, but as the afternoon wore on, he was still sat there. Lara was hardly getting any reading done, but she had a stubborn temperament and was determined that she would attempt to read for as long as she normally would, even though her thoughts were filled with concern about the wellbeing of her companion on the bench.

Eventually, her patience ran out and Lara stood up to walk home.

"Are you OK?" she asked the young man.

The man lifted his eyes slowly to meet hers. There was pain behind them. Not physical pain, but something else. His expression of discomfort softened with her question, but he seemed shocked that anybody had addressed him or even acknowledged his existence. It was as though he thought he was invisible up to that point. There was something incredibly vulnerable and raw about this man; not just the sickness that he seemed to be suffering with. Lara felt a surprising protective instinct for this slim and pale young man who had a haunting gaze.

"I'll be alright" he said.

Lara started to leave and then she stopped.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Sam"

"Do you have somewhere to go? You don't look well" Lara said.

"Yeah. I'm waiting for somebody. I had to get out of the flat. I was going crazy at home, waiting" Sam replied.

"Do you have a number for them? Do you want me to help you try and contact them?" Lara asked, confused and concerned.

"No. No. They'll turn up. Sometimes they just make me wait. Feels like forever" Sam said.

Lara didn't understand and she couldn't think of anything else to say or ask.

"Oh, OK. Bye then" she said.

"Bye. And thanks" said Sam.

"Thanks for what?" asked Lara.

"Thanks for asking"

When she got home, Lara could still vividly picture Sam's face. He was pale and sick but he was clearly a good looking young man. She was intrigued and also worried about what was going to happen to him. Was he going to be OK? He hadn't asked her name. She wanted to know what he'd meant; why he couldn't wait at home.

Lara wanted to go back out that evening and see if Sam was still on the bench. What would she say if he was? What would she find out if he wasn't? She resisted the urge to go back to the park.

Next chapter...

Contents

Chapter 1: The Caravan

Chapter 2: Invisible Illness

Chapter 3: The Forest

Chapter 4: Prosaic

Chapter 5: The Van

Chapter 6: Into the Unknown

Chapter 7: The Journey

Chapter 8: Infamy

Chapter 9: The Villages

Chapter 10: Waiting Room

Chapter 11: The Shadow People

Chapter 12: Enough Rope

Chapter 13: The Post Offices

Chapter 14: Unsuitable Friends

Chapter 15: The Chase

Chapter 16: Self Inflicted

Chapter 17: The Holiday

Chapter 18: Psychosis, Madness, Insanity and Lunacy

Chapter 19: The Hospitals

Chapter 20: Segmentation

Chapter 21: The Cell

Chapter 22: Wells of Silence

Chapter 23: The Box

Chapter 24: Jailbird

Chapter 25: The Scales

Chapter 26: Descent

Chapter 27: The Syringe

Chapter 28: Anonymity

Chapter 29: The Imposter

Chapter 30: Wish You Were Here

2. Invisible Illness

The sense of dread and impotence had followed Lara around for her entire shift. Neil had showed no signs of improvement when she left him at home in bed, earlier that morning, to leave for work. She felt sure that he would still be in bed when she got home. He had turned his mobile phone off and she knew that he would let the landline ring until the answerphone picked up. There was no way of knowing how he was doing, but she had the sinking feeling that he wasn't improving. This was the fourth day in a row that he hadn't gone to work, and now she was starting to worry on his behalf about his job.

Lara had made a career switch to nursing, having previously worked as an office administrator. She was naturally caring and liked helping people. The office politics and limited scope to make a tangible difference in anybody's life had ground her down in the medium-sized company she used to work for, with its bloated management structure, endless bureaucracy and red tape. The National Health Service was no picnic, but working directly with patients and other front-line staff made the job far more rewarding than her previous career, where she had never met any of the company's actual customers.

Neil was a well respected and valued employee at the company he had worked for since leaving college. He was a CCTV and intruder alarm engineer, who travelled throughout the country, installing new systems, doing maintenance and repairs. Over the years, he had built up a lot of technical expertise and was now considered one of the most senior members of the team. He'd had the option to move into staff training or management, but he'd always preferred to remain "on the tools".

Most of Neil and Lara's circle of friends had originated from Neil's job, with Lara befriending the 'significant others' of Neil's male-dominated engineering friends. There had been a spate of weddings recently amongst the couples they knew and on Valentine's Day, Neil had proposed to Lara. They were engaged to be married some time the following year, although they had not yet started to plan the wedding.

Lara had received text messages from her female friends asking if Neil was OK, because their other halves hadn't seen him at work for a couple of days. What could she say? She knew it was unusual for Neil to be sick, but it wasn't at all clear what was wrong with him. He just seemed very fatigued and hadn't been able to face getting up or even phoning in sick. Lara had phoned his boss for him, while he buried his head under the duvet and pretended to be asleep.

It was easy to be sympathetic with Neil, because he was evidently going through a hard time due to something but the frustrating thing was that it was neither identifiable, nor would Neil go to the doctor to ask for a diagnosis. Through her own medical training, Lara knew there was nothing obviously wrong with Neil: no fever, no pain or discomfort, no nausea. In fact, no symptoms beyond the fact he looked tired, drained, stressed and somewhat afraid, in his facial expressions. She knew that he wasn't the type to complain about a bout of man flu.

The first couple of days that Neil was off work, she had attributed to the kind of duvet days when she herself would phone in sick, if she really couldn't face another boring day in the office. By the third day, she could hear her parents' derisory words about "yuppie flu" ringing in her ears, from her childhood in the 1980's.

The burden of having to phone Neil's boss each day had now escalated. He had politely but firmly reminded Lara that Neil now needed to go to the doctor and get a sick note, because he'd been away from work for more than three days. Neil knew this too, but hadn't acknowledged it. In fact, he'd made it subtly clear to her that he just wanted to be left alone. He didn't want her to open the curtains for him; he didn't want her to bring him food; he didn't want her to arrange for anybody to visit to make sure he was OK during the day. Little changed in his withdrawn demeanour from when she left in the morning for her 12 hour shift, to the moment he barely acknowledged her when she returned from work, except to say he was OK and he didn't need anything. The most animated that she'd seen him in four days was when she offered to phone in sick for him, which he said he'd be really grateful for if she did. She didn't seem to be able to do anything else to help. It was frustrating.

The drive home from work was very unpleasant for her. She knew the house would seem lifeless: no lights on. She knew that she would go upstairs to the bedroom in order to get out of her work clothes and see the motionless shape of Neil's body under the duvet, in much the same position as she'd left him in the morning. She'd know from the rhythm of his breathing that he was awake, but she would have to speak first. He would be polite, pleasant even, but somehow clipped and formal. The subtle cue was for her to leave the bedroom, turn off the light, and leave him with whatever he was struggling with. It cut her up to feel shut out, unable to help.

All of their normal rhythm and routine had suddenly disappeared, leaving a gaping hole in Lara's life. Their usual discussions about evening meals, cooking and eating together, watching videotaped television programmes or films, exchanging stories about their working day, planning the next social event, or talking about an upcoming holiday: all of this was suddenly gone, and Lara found herself eating on the sofa, alone, watching whatever was on TV at the time, but not really paying any attention to it.

The hardest thing was having nobody to talk to. Her parents had made their views about "work shy" people vociferously known and she didn't want to get into an argument, where she felt defensive about Neil having to take some time off sick. Most of their group of friends all knew each other, and she knew that by talking to even one friend, word would soon get around that something was wrong with Neil that was out of the ordinary. She dreaded to think what would be concluded in the speculative gossip at the dinner parties at each others' houses.

Lara started mentally preparing herself for friends dropping by the house to see if they were OK and if there was anything they could do. If there was nothing she could do, what could they possibly do? It would be easiest just to make excuses and try to shoo them away from the doorstep without even inviting them in. What would she say? How could she be polite and maintain the impression that their usual relaxed open house policy was in full swing, but at the same time swiftly get rid of any would-be visitors?

Despite a salary drop for Lara, the couple had still managed to get a large enough mortgage to purchase a modestly sized terraced house near the town centre that had plenty of space for entertaining guests. Under normal circumstances, Lara and Neil had a gregarious and welcoming nature and were given to spur-of-the-moment gatherings in their home with their friends. Several couples lived within walking distance, and impromptu cheese and wine, cards or board game nights were a common occurence.

The house had an attractive Victorian façade with a modern interior. The brick archway above the front door stated that the house was built in the 1870s. The previous owners had extensively renovated, building a bright open-plan kitchen diner extension at the back, and preserving a cosy but surprisingly spacious snug at the front of the house, with a cast iron fireplace and wooden fire surround. Furnished with carefully chosen second hand furniture that mixed shabby chic with pieces that could be mistaken for iconic vintage design, the house was punching above its weight for the meagre budget of Lara and Neil's income.

Decorating and furnishing their home had been a labour of love for Lara and Neil, and they were extremely house-proud and meticulous in how they had planned each room to accentuate the available space, light and few remaining period features. This hiccup in Neil's health was certainly no part of a master plan which had seemed to be going perfectly for the couple, up to that point.

Entertaining guests held a certain amount of desire for their friends to see their home improvements, and to show off their excellent taste in interior design and home-making. It was showy without being unpleasantly in-your-face. It was hard to dislike Lara and Neil as they weren't a couple obsessed with status symbols and oneupmanship.

Behind closed doors, the relationship was far from perfect. Neil's reluctance to turn down overtime and work fewer hours had led to Lara's desire to find a more rewarding career of her own. Financial pressures and resentment over each other's strong desire to satisfy their own needs and find fulfilment at work, had overspilled into many unpleasant arguments. Most of their friends chose to accept the happy, smiling, front that Lara and Neil presented at face value. Those who were closest to the couple could see the mask occasionally slip. The occasional unpleasant jibe; the twist of the knife; the obvious hints at an unresolved argument. There were issues that were festering, unresolved.

Nobody could say that they weren't a fully committed couple. They had been together a long time and had managed to come through a rather tempestuous and fiery initial period, before reaching a kind of uneasy truce. When in the company of friends, they were in fine spirits - and this was no act - but too much time spent alone with each other and trouble would inevitably erupt.

Neil was not self-indulgent in his convalescence, but he was completely unaware how isolated this left Lara, given the interconnected web of friends and connections to Neil's work that existed. Neil had no idea how burdened Lara felt, defending Neil's spotless record as a dependable hard worker, and as a sunny upbeat happy-go-lucky likeable social character. The man under the duvet in the dark bedroom upstairs would not want anybody to see him like that, and Lara knew it.

Whatever regrettable words had been spoken before, it was water under the bridge. Lara would not betray Neil in his hour of need.

Next chapter...

This is a story about being objective...

If you want to compare two measurements you have to use the same yardstick. If you are comparing two subjective things then how can you possibly draw any concrete conclusions?

At times, I have kept a mood diary. I rate my mood from 1 for worst to 10 for best. Who's to say that if I rate myself as "1" during prolonged depression that's comparable to "1" on a bad day when otherwise I've been feeling mostly normal?

During a lengthy period of depression, where nothing seems to hold any pleasure or enjoyment: subjectively, life is terrible. I also have periods when I'm generally in a much better mood, but something really shitty will happen. The shitty thing might feel like the end of the world at the time, but I'm not going to kill myself over it: I'll quickly get over it and move on with my life... so can it really be a "1" even if it feels like it at the time?

If your mood slowly improves or declines, over the course of several weeks or months, can you spot the trend? If you're suffering a lengthy depression, does your yardstick change? You might have a day where you just feel normal, but now you rate that 10, because it's the best you've felt in as long as you can remember.

Do you even remember how you used to feel, before you got depressed?

This might be why I have a tendency to invite hypomania, because at least it's clearly some kind of polar opposite from depression, even if I don't exactly feel "happy".

Defining "happy" has started to get really hard.

Going in search of happiness has been a disappointing experience. Anhedonia means the loss of pleasure and enjoyment of things that you used to get a kick out of. Finding that you no longer love the things you've always loved to do, is terrifying, because it's further confirmation of the way that you feel: "everything is shit".

I ended up completely rebasing my whole idea about what made a happy day:

• "Got to work only an hour late"
• "Didn't quit my job"
• "Only drank one bottle of wine instead of two"
• "Survived another week without being sacked"
• "Got out of bed at the weekend before it went dark"
• "Went to the shops"

I know that I must be unwell, because I used to have happy days that were more like this:

• "Cooked a healthy dinner"
• "Went for a walk or a bike ride"
• "Took some cool photographs"
• "Went to an event"
• "Made a new friend"
• "Did some work I'm proud of"

Now, I could do those things, but I don't feel like it. Often when I try to force myself to do things, I get very stressed about it and I find it really exhausting. When I get home I feel wiped out and that I shouldn't have bothered. I find myself out taking a walk and nothing takes my interest enough to photograph it. That's weird. I used to live behind the lens.

So, I started to bring in more objective measurements: movement data, alcohol consumption, number of social engagements, number of words written.

When I analyse the data, I think the most reliable predictors of my subjective feelings of depression, are movement and alcohol. Looking at last year, I was averaging 12,000 steps a day, and although I had alcohol binges, my average consumption was reasonably low. This year, I'm averaging 7,000 steps a day and drinking excessively nearly every day.

Now, you might think "walk more, drink less" would be the solution, but this assumes a causal relationship. Perhaps I was more in the mood to walk more and drink less, last year. Perhaps the relationship is the other way around and my poor lifestyle 'choices' are actually due to depression.

We often tell people to eat healthier and exercise more, to improve their mood, but perhaps it's the people who have a happier mood who are the ones more likely to eat right and be active. In actual fact, healthy eating and being more energetic could be a good predictor of happier people.

The cause-effect relationship is not always clear. Psychologists had published a paper that appeared to show that smiling made you feel happier. However, when the experiments were repeated, the results could not be reproduced. If you can't reproduce the results of your experiment, it's not good science.

A friend made the following amusing observation:

"People who are dying of dehydration can't just mime drinking water to quench their thirst"

I think this hits the nail on the head perfectly. While depressed people can eat healthier and go to the gym, they're just going through the motions. They're not getting the benefits that their happy counterparts are getting, and in fact it could be pure torture for them.

There's an experiment where a pigeon is fed at a computer-controlled random interval. What the researchers found was that whatever the pigeons were doing the first time they got fed, they then decided they needed to do again, in order to get fed. Let's say the pigeon was cocking its head to the side when the food was released, the pigeon will then start repeatedly cocking its head, and believe that it is causing the food to be released, when in fact it's completely random. Essentially, the pigeons had become superstitious.

It seems relatively random - unpredictable - when a depression is going to lift. Let's say you were trying acupuncture or homeopathy at the time when your mood started to improve: you might assume a causal relationship between the alternative treatment and the lifting of your depression.

Even a double-blind placebo trial is not exactly fair. Psychiatric medications do make you feel noticeably different. I would be able to tell whether I was taking an inert placebo pill, or something psychoactive. I would know whether I was in the control group or not. Placebos don't work if you know you're taking a placebo, so this could explain some of the mood improvements seen with antidepressants. The antidepressant might look effective, when compared with the control group, but it's the placebo effect.

Antidepressant clinical trials generally only take place over 6 to 12 weeks. Many common antidepressants take 6 weeks before their effects can even be felt. There is no focus on long-term outcomes in these trials, only that the medication should perform better than placebo.

Many trials of longer duration have shown that being unmedicated might be more effective in the long-term, than taking antidepressants. Pharmaceutical companies are not concerned with long-term outcomes. In order for a medication to be sold to the public, it merely has to be safe and proven to be marginally better than placebo.

You would have thought that taking antidepressants would be a lot better than not taking them, right? In actual fact, there might only be a 15% chance of you feeling better, but there's a 15% chance of unpleasant side effects. The very process of going to your doctor, being listened to by somebody nonjudgemental, and then feeling something even if it's not actually better, might convince you that you're improving, when actually your depression could be lifting quite naturally anyway.

Culturally, we have developed a strong superstitious belief in the power of medicine. We believe there's a pill for every ill. We believe that a man in a white coat can wave a magic wand and we'll be cured of any ailment; discomfort.

You only have to go into any pharmacy during the winter, to see signs that say "we have no medication to treat your common cold". The fact that doctors and pharmacists have to tell people not to waste their time with an incurable virus that has unpleasant but non-life-threatening symptoms, shows how strongly we believe in the power of medical science to save us from even a runny nose.

There is a clear difference between "feeling a bit sad" and depression. Depression is life-threatening. Depression has a massive impact on people's quality of life. However, we are often medicalising a non-medical problem.

If somebody who's feeling down visits their doctor and receives some medication that's basically a placebo that makes them feel a bit different - drugged - then their pseudo-depression will lift, because it was going to anyway. The non-judgemental medical consultation will also have marginally assisted.

However, those who have prolonged severe depression - to the point of suicidal thoughts - may find that their quality of life is actually reduced by medication, because it gives no real mood improvement, but it does have unpleasant side effects. The longer-term studies seem to back this up.

Through extensive research, I found a number of medications that are very rarely prescribed, but have been used for treatment-resistent depression. These medications are dopaminergic not serotonergic.

There are a whole raft of medications used to treat Parkinson's disease, that have been shown to exhibit antidepressant effects and can successfully treat patients who had previously been treatment-resistent.

In the most severe cases of depression, deep-brain stimulation has been employed with remarkable efficacy. Deep-brain stimulation had previously only been used on patients suffering from Parkinson's disease, to stop their tremors.

The idea of having electrodes implanted into my brain does not sound immensely appealing. Rats who have had electrodes implanted in their lateral hypothalamus will starve themselves to death, in order to press a lever thousands of times an hour, to stimulate their brains. Do humans who have had the same procedure, just stay at home hitting the button as often as they can? We have wandered into the territory of the neurological basis for addiction.

This is how I arrived at my decision to use a medication that helps people to quit smoking.

My very first addiction was to nicotine. I had no choice in the matter. My parents forced me to breathe their second-hand smoke. Because I was a tiny child, the concentration of nicotine in my bloodstream would have been very high. Second-hand smoke was responsible for inflicting an addiction onto me in my infancy.

In the UK, nightclubs, bars and pubs used to be filled with smoke, until July 2007. My addiction was therefore maintained through passive smoking. The timing of the ban seems to correspond with my first episodes of depression.

The stop-smoking drug called Zyban is actually France's most popular antidepressant. The French have found that Bupropion - the active ingredient in Zyban - is also effective for treating alcoholism. The link between addiction and depression seems clear.

I have a theory that my brain is in mourning. I was subjected to second-hand smoke throughout my childhood, and I spent a lot of time in smoky clubs and pubs. Nicotine withdrawal was something I was used to experiencing again and again, but what I'd never been through was a prolonged period of withdrawal, because I would regularly get a hit of second-hand smoke. It wasn't until the age of 27 that I was finally able to escape nicotine, because of the smoking ban, even though I have never smoked in my life. You would expect that such a prolonged addiction would produce a profound psychological effect, when my brain realised it was never getting any nicotine ever again.

I then experienced a later period of addiction. Although there were periods of abstinence, these never exceeded 3 or 4 months, and the total amount of time that I struggled with addiction is close to 5 years. The addiction was extreme. The drugs I was using have a much more profound effect than cigarettes. Still today, after 6 months of total abstinence, I get shaky sweaty hands and feel sick with anticipation at even the merest thought that I might be able to obtain some drugs.

Although Bupropion is a poor substitute for the addiction I once had, it does at least slightly soothe the aching sense of loss... the mourning.

Thinking about this more now, it seems obvious that I should mourn the loss of the love of my life. My addiction was so obsessive, overwhelming, all-consuming. How on earth can you let something like that go, with just a 28-day detox, or a 13-week rehab, if it's been a huge part of your life for years?

It should be noted that my mental health problems, which predated my addiction, compound the problems. To give an official name to my ailment: it's called dual-diagnosis. That is to say, Bipolar II & substance abuse. Yes, substance abuse is a kind of mental illness. Take a look at the kind of self-harm that addicts are inflicting and tell me that's normal behaviour. That is why substance abuse is classified as a disease.

Bipolar II is a motherfucker, because it comprises both clinical depression and hypomania, which are both destructive. Therefore, I'm actually suffering with triple-diagnosis and trying to fix 3 illnesses... although the hypomania is something that most people with Bipolar II wouldn't give up, and substance abuse is hard to stop because of addiction.

I haven't had a hypomanic episode in almost a year, and I've been abstinent from drugs of abuse for 6 months, therefore the final nut to crack is this damn depression, which might turn out to simply be the fact that - subconsciously - I'm depressed that I can't take drugs anymore. It feels like the love of my life has died, hence why I'm describing it as mourning.

How long it will last, I have no idea, and I've lost patience... hence resorting to a mild form of substitute prescribing. I successfully beat addiction once before using Bupropion. I beat it using progressively weaker drugs, until I was weaned from my addiction.

You wouldn't ask a smoker to quit without nicotine patches. Why would you expect somebody with an addiction to harder drugs could quit with willpower alone? The only slightly unusual thing is that the stop-smoking drug seems to be just as effective for addictions to things other than nicotine.

Perhaps we will one day treat all addictions as compassionately as we treat nicotine addictions. Certainly, there doesn't seem to be a lot of appliance of science, when it comes to treating addiction to anything other than smoking.

Subjectively, cold-turkey & willpower is a fucking awful approach to beating addiction. We have the scientific data to show that smokers are 4 times as likely to successfully quit, with nicotine replacement therapy and smoking cessation medications like Zyban.

Of course, a relapse would be disastrous, but haven't I already relapsed back into depression?

I've been on medication for 5 days now, and Bupropion should start to be effective within a week, so perhaps I will feel an improvement in my mood any day now. Certainly, my suicidal thoughts seem to have stopped, but that could be psychosomatic and also because my horrible contract ended.

You see what I mean about how hard it is to control the variables? Human lives are messy and complex. It takes vast quantities of data to be gathered over many years, not a 6 to 12 week trial with 30 people.

Also, there's an argument to say that your subjective yardstick is altered by your experiences. Your perfect 10 can become unattainable, except through the use of powerful narcotics. Does that also mean that the best you can ever hope to feel is mildly depressed, now that the bar has been set so high? My only hope is that my brain "resets" itself over time. The brain can downregulate parts that are overactive, in order to maintain equilibrium, so it can also upregulate... eventually. The big concern is neurotoxicity: have I irreversibly "burnt out" the reward centres of my brain?

6 months isn't long though. I'm going to see what happens if I can make it to a year. Presumably, there might be marginal improvements that have happened already, but are too subtle for me to perceive. The data actually bodes well: instead of spiking back up into hypomania, things have plateaued during the last couple of months.

This unethical self-experimentation doesn't yield any results worth publishing but it does give clues as to what could be worth researching. A sample size of one is not statistically significant, but it's important to me, because my life depends on it.

Tags: #bipolar #depression #mentalhealth #addiction

This is a story about conformity...

Why would you ever consent to being graded? Isn't that extremely degrading to have somebody sit in judgement over you and decide where you fit in the pecking order?

We don't have an education system. We are not educating our children.

Instead, we have a system that's designed to give us the best grades we can possibly afford, so that we will have better employment opportunities. Schools are businesses, and they need pupils to get funding, so they can pay all those lovely salaries. Teachers are judged on their students' exam results. Schools are chosen based on their exam results. Universities will offer places to those students with the best exam grades, but universities are money making machines, taking at least £27,000 for an undergraduate degree, from every student. Finally, employers will select prospective employees who have the best grades.

Imagine you gave up your childhood and a few of the prime years of your young adulthood, in order to get "A" grades and a first class degree from a top university. You worked your little socks off from the age of 5 to the age of 21. That's 16 years of hard labour. It wasn't an education. It was an exercise in grading. Your teachers didn't teach you. Instead, you were trained how to pass exams. The whole balance of incentives is such that only the grades matter. You just want the piece of paper at the end of it, so you don't have to take a shitty minimum wage zero hours contract McJob.

So, what happens when you graduate, take a graduate job, and then find what you're doing is utterly pointless bullshit?

What happens when those 16 lost years of your life mean that you're saddled with debt and working some drastically underpaid job that won't even buy you a house anyway?

In the US, every man woman and child has a debt of $60,000, even if they don't even have a bank account and never personally borrowed any money. In the UK the figure is circa £30,000. This is money the government borrowed on your behalf. Even if you're financially prudent, and you don't spend money until you've earned it, that's certainly not what your government is doing.

In order to stand a chance of getting a half decent job, you reckon you need to go to college/university. In the US the average student loan debt is $35,000. In the UK you have to spend £27,000 on tuition alone, for a 3 year degree course. Of course, the UK figure doesn't include the money you need to live on. You can borrow a further £32,000 in order to pay your rent, food, transport and other costs of living at university. Basically, you're going to spunk the best part of £60,000 getting your degree.

So, you've spent 16 years of your life, having no life - your nose has been stuck in those books and you've been doing all your homework - and you're £90,000 in debt. Imagine you met the love of your life at university, you both graduated and you'd like to have a couple of kids. That means your household is going to be £240,000 in debt, before you even take out a mortgage. That's £60,000 of government debt for your two kids, £60,000 of government debt for you and your other half, and £120,000 for your two university degrees. God damn! You'd better get a job and start paying that debt off, because you haven't worked a day in your life at this point, even though you're now 22 years old.

Because you worked so damn hard to pass your 11+ exam, your grammar school entrance exam, or private school entrance exam, your GCSEs, your A-levels, your university entrance exam, your final year exams, your dissertation... you're pretty heavily invested now, aren't you? You gave up playing outside in the sunshine with your friends so you could do extra Latin and calculus. You gave up swigging cider in the park and shagging in a bush, so that you could be at home poring over your books. You gave up being debt free, so you could now have a £60,000 student loan like a millstone around your neck.

Guess what? Even having a good degree from a good university isn't enough. You probably need to become a lawyer or an accountant to set yourself apart from the McJob fodder. Lawyers in the US run up student debts in excess of $100,000. Here in the UK, you're going to have to pay an extra 2 years of tuition and living expenses, before you can even get a job in a law firm. You're going to pay the the law school £21,000 in tuition fees, plus you'll need another £20,000 for rent and living expenses, while you study. So, your student debt is now £100,000 before you even enter one of the professions.

Even a graduate with first-class honours from Oxford or Cambridge is not a professional. Having read classics does not seem immediately useful, given the lack of living people who speak Latin or Ancient Greek. While you have clearly marked yourself out as 'clever' in a rather abstract sense, you're not obviously employable because of your education. It is merely your grades that make you attractive to prospective employers.

Is it even very clever, to spend so much of your parents money on a private or public school education, squander your childhood on homework and piano recitals, saddle yourself with the best part of £100k of student debt, and then have the prospect of doing legal or accountancy work to help billionaires avoid paying tax.

The more you invest the more exposed you are. You're not going to take some lowly entry-level job, because you've got a goddam degree dontcha know? You're not going to question how absolutely dreadful the work is that you're doing, and how appalling the salary is, because it's a graduate job apparently. The job spec said "must have 2:1 degree from respected institution" so therefore it must be a good job, right?

Yeah, at least you're not flipping burgers for a living.

But, can you buy a house?

Nope.

You were conned. You studied hard for 16 long years. You stressed yourself to bits over every exam. Writing your dissertation was pure agony. You were so worried that you were going to fail. You could have failed at any moment. You could have failed to get into a good secondary school. You could have screwed up your GCSEs. You could have screwed up your A-levels. You could have screwed up your finals. You could have screwed up your dissertation.

You were so damn relieved on graduation day. Sure, it felt good to have your picture taken holding a scroll of parchment tied up with a red ribbon, wearing a black gown and a mortar board. Your mum has that picture of you up on the wall in the downstairs toilet. Every houseguest sees that photo of you, a fresh-faced 21 year old graduate, proudly clutching the bit of paper you worked hard for 16 years to get. They imagine that you must be terribly clever but little do they know that you're now working some dreadful office job, copying and pasting numbers in spreadsheets, like some kind of factory worker.

Maybe you were a bit smarter and you realised that everybody's got a damn degree these days. Perhaps you did a masters, a PGCE, went to law school, studied accountancy. Now you have a profession. You're a teacher, a lawyer, an accountant.

You studied the extra years. You did the training. You took the shitty entry-level salary. Now you're a qualified professional. You're a member of The Law Society, you're a chartered accountant, you've got Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). Guess what? You still can't buy a fucking house.

My suggestion is this: if your parents have money, don't fucking work your bollocks off and study hard. Get your parents to buy you a house and give you some money. You don't need to work. The world does not need any more corporate lawyers.

If you don't come from a wealthy family, for God's sake don't waste the prime years of your life following the same path as all the other drones. There's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. School, university, graduate jobs... it's all just a miserable path that leads to debt and misplaced gratitude for a 'better' quality job, which is actually nothing of the sort.

I'm financially incentivised to stay doing what I'm doing, because I can buy a house and afford to have my family live in considerable comfort. My earning potential is a function of how able I am to say "fuck your shit" and go and get a better contract elsewhere, because I'm not driven by fear: fear that I have invested 16+ years of my life in a pointless piece of paper; fear that I have £60k to £100k of student debt that needs to be paid back; fear that I've been measured, graded, and that I know my place.

I don't know my place, because I never allowed myself to be graded. If somebody is turning me into a commodity, then I change my role. I'm very hard to pigeon hole. I'm very hard to label. I'll brand myself up as whatever I need to be in order to get the job, instead of harking back to my most recent academic or professional qualification. I have no qualms at saying "this bullshit job just ain't worth the pittance you pay" because I don't have this fetish for "graduate" or "professional" work.

In some narrow niche, you'll find that there's somebody who wants it worse than you. You'll find that somebody is prepared to study harder, longer, put more effort in. If you enter into the arms race, you'll find yourself competing in a completely unnecessary battle for something that's been created with artificial scarcity. Grades are not a precious rare metal dug out of the ground. There's a finite amount of gold on the planet, but there is no shortage of "A" grades or bullshit jobs.

The professional bodies are there to limit the numbers of people becoming lawyers, accountants, doctors, teachers and a whole host of other jobs that are better paid than flipping burgers. The only reason why those professions pay more than minimum wage is because artificial scarcity is created, by limiting the number of people who can qualify and practice those trades.

I never let my schooling interfere with my education. I taught myself how to program a computer, with the help of a couple of schoolfriends. I don't advise becoming a programmer today, because it's a crowded market, but there'll be something better that your kids can be doing instead of their damn homework. There's something you can be doing better than saving up money to help get your kids through university: buy them a damn car and a house, because they're never going to be able to afford things on their own, with the way things are going.

The education system was there to break our will and our sense of individuality, and prepare us for the workhouses. The education system is used for societal control. Your government wants obedient debt-laden citizens, who are grateful for a shitty made-up job. The plutocrats who rule your life want cheap labour, even though you think you've got a prestigious well-paid job. In actual fact, you know your place, and you have no social mobility at all.

We're moving beyond the era of the CV with your exam grades and other qualifications on there. The idea of sifting and sorting everybody, like grains of sand, ending up with the very finest particles graded right up to the grittier stuff... this is a flawed model.

Take your average super indebted grad today. Could they rewire a house? Could they fix the plumbing? Can they cook a fine meal? Could they organise an event? Can they lead people? Can they mend a car? Can they dress a wound? What are they like on a mountain? What are they like out at sea? What are they like in a crisis?

We're churning out people who are only good for one thing: regurgitating established facts and ideas. Parroting answers they've learned but don't understand. Passing exams.

Our kids these days don't pass exams because they've reasoned the answers from their knowledge and experience. Our kids these days don't make theoretical deductions. We have an exam passing machine that teaches our children how to pass tests, as opposed to educating them.

Everything's going to hell in a handcart because original ideas and critical thinking have no place in our education system or the world of bullshit jobs. We spend at least 16 years brainwashing our 'best and brightest' to be exam passers, box tickers, compliant little drones who all think and act the same way. The homogeny of bland corporate wage-slaves, churned out by the cookie-cutter 'education' system is frightening.

When sufficient numbers of people realise that they've been conned into giving away their youth, in return for a soul-destroying desk job that's mind-numbingly boring, but yet they can't buy a house, there's going to be rioting that far exceeds the disruption we saw in 2011, when it was the disadvantaged youths who took to the streets to protest their lack of opportunities and general contempt that is held for the underclass.

Debt will not prop things up forever. Without a wirtschaftswunder - debt forgiveness - the capitalists will destroy everything by demanding their pound of flesh. Empires always fall when debts are not forgiven and the proletariat are crushed by the weight of the idle elites who live in decadent luxury, while ordinary people struggle.

Teach your kids practical things. Let them play. Don't make them do their homework. Don't force them to practice an instrument "because it will look good on their university application". A new world is coming, and moulding kids in the shape of every other underpaid, underemployed corporate drone is not going to do them any favours.

Tags: #childhood #education #capitalism #politics

This is a story about the schizophrenic spectrum...

"Does my bum look big in this?" sounds like an innocent enough question. Do you not have an adequate grip on reality to objectively judge yourself whether you look fat? Is it possible that you're feeling paranoid about other people's perception of you?

When you think about it, paranoia is rife.

Why do you close your curtains? Who would want to peer in at you? What's so interesting about you that anybody would want to watch you?

Why do you confess your true feelings when you're inebriated? What's so shameful about your innermost thoughts and feelings that you can't reveal them when you're sober? Why are you worried what people will think?

In the workplace, we feel inadequate. We feel underqualified. We feel like we're an imposter. We feel like we're just blagging, bluffing. We feel that our ruse could be exposed at any moment. Why do you stay in that crappy job that you're hopelessly overqualified for and you've completely mastered... is it because it's comfortable and you don't like the feeling that you're not good enough to do something more challenging?

When you're purchasing stuff, is it because you like the things that you're buying, or is it because you're thinking about how other people are going to judge you? Imagine you are supermarket shopping with your young children. When you are loading all your food onto the conveyor belt to be scanned by the checkout clerk, don't you feel that they're judging every purchase you're making? If you're buying crisps, chips, ready meals, chocolate, ice cream, sweets... isn't that supermarket employee going to be thinking "jeez, this person's a really bad parent for feeding their kid all this junk"?

Every time you share something on social media, is it because you're Facebragging, or do the sum total of your posts represent an accurate picture of your real life? Why are you sharing anyway? Why do you worry what other people think of you?

When you're at home, you sit around with stained jogging pants and a grubby T-shirt, swigging a beer and watching trashy TV. When you're out in the park, you're immaculately dressed, reading a pretentious novel. Why is that?

You're doing all these things almost without thinking. They're all driven by paranoia. You're paranoid that you won't be liked, won't be respected, won't be sexually attractive, won't be loved. You're paranoid that you'll be seen as a fool, a bad person, a bad parent, a bad employee. You're paranoid that you might get caught looking at your own reflection. You're paranoid that you might be accused of being a pervert for masturbating. You're paranoid that you might be laughed at for wanting a girlfriend or a boyfriend, but finding yourself rejected. You're paranoid that you're a bigot, a racist, sexist, stupid, ignorant, narcissistic, self-absorbed, selfish.

In actual fact, we all share exactly the same flaws.

Any child will be confused the first time they see the dyed green mohawk hair of a punk. A child reared in an exclusively white or black community will be confused the first time they meet somebody of the opposite skin tone. Any child will be confused the first time they are told they have to use the 'correct' bathroom.

We're built to pair up sexually, and we're bombarded with images of the most attractive people on the planet. We can't avoid comparing ourselves with others. Of course we are going to feel inadequate in the face of glossy magazines, TV personalities and movie stars. Pornography amplifies things still further: people are worried about the attractiveness of every inch of their bodies.

We are sometimes mocked for thinking that people are talking about us.

It's true. People do gossip. People are talking about you behind your back, all the time, especially if you're unwell. It's a vicious circle. The more paranoid and erratic your behaviour becomes, the more people will whisper about it, and then go silent and 'act normal' when you're in earshot. It's not unfounded paranoia. People like to gossip about anybody whose life appears less than perfect.

We like to label people. Crazy uncle Fred had a nervous breakdown, painted his torso with blue paint, adopted 50 rescue dogs and wandered around butt naked. Even though that was years ago and now crazy uncle Fred is back running his accountancy practice, he's still "crazy" uncle Fred in his family. His family have loose lips, and everybody in Fred's town now calls him crazy Fred. Fred's friends have loose lips, and now his clients know that he's a bit "crazy" even though they would never mention it in his presence.

Your doctor may protect your confidentiality, but your friends and family certainly won't. Your friends and family will broadcast every slip-up. Your friends and family will attempt amateur psychoanalysis, with their foghorn voices.

People might not say to your face "I think you've gone mad and you should be locked up in an asylum" but they'll certainly say that to other people behind your back. It's sad but true. There's no sense in denying it. People just like to gossip and spread rumours, half-truths and conjecture.

The fact of the matter is that you are quite interesting. Most people are very private and most people hide their true selves.

We are relieved to discover that other people are just as flawed and fucked up as we are, when somebody's mask slips. We then take that relief a stage further, and spread the juicy gossip. Everybody loves to hear embarassing tales of misfortune.

The massive popularity of soap operas, fly-on-the-wall documentaries and reality TV proves that humans have an insatiable appetite for voyeurism, invasion of privacy, gossiping about people. Think about the millions of armchair psychologists, analysing the behaviour of the Big Brother contestants.

Also, your government is spying on you. Your government reads your emails. Your government listens to your phonecalls. This isn't a conspiracy theory. The revelations of Edward Snowden have proven beyond reasonable doubt that your government is snooping on every ordinary citizen.

For those who have a fragile grasp on sanity, there are plenty of things that will tip them into fully-blown paranoia. Paranoia can build and build, until you believe there are hidden cameras watching you. Some paranoid schizophrenics can believe that their thoughts are being read. Clearly, this is at the extreme end of the mental health spectrum, but right now I have 3 microphones and 3 cameras potentially recording me: my laptop, my smartphone and my smartwatch.

I was digging around in the data that Google had gathered on me without my knowledge, and I found that there was an accurate GPS record of my position for everywhere I've been, as well as hundreds of sound recordings. Of course, there is also my Internet search history and the vast digital paper trail that I have inadvertently created.

Although I expect all my friends and family know that I got sick, because of the aforementioned gossip, I want to make things crystal clear: I was briefly "crazy" uncle Nick. That moniker still follows me around even though I'm a highly paid and well respected IT consultant. I pay my rent, bills, taxes and generally conduct myself in a way that any outside observer would struggle to categorise as "crazy". By any measure or test that you could conduct, I'm just as sane as you are.

However, there was paranoia about who knows? How much do people know? What falsehoods had been perpetrated against me? It was driving me crazy. I decided to take action.

By documenting my inner monologue, my darkest moments, my most closely guarded secrets, I'm taking the power away from those who gossip and whisper behind my back. I'm getting rid of the grey area. If you want to know who I really am and what really happened, it's documented right here in exquisite unflinching uncensored detail.

I know that I'm being judged all the time anyway, so you might as well judge me on the truth, rather than on the bullshit that my persecutors would have you believe. I offer you all the facts, so that you can make an informed judgement. I would rather you reached your own conclusions, rather than the conclusions that those with an unpleasant agenda would prefer you to make.

It is a bit of a warzone. I spent my childhood with the pressure and expectation that I would lie about my parents' drug taking, alcoholism and unwillingness to act like mature adults, responsible parents, get jobs that would support the family. My parents' focus was on keeping up appearances, rather than acting with integrity, and I was expected to play along with their bullshit. They decided to throw me under the bus rather than admit any kind of wrongdoing. This blog documents the truth, rather than the false image that they present.

I doubt any of my friends or work colleagues have an unpleasant agenda. However, my ex-wife campaigned very actively to demonise me, compromise my confidentiality, undermine my good name, discredit me. This document tells the side of the story that never got told, because I acted with integrity and presumed that she would too. I was exhausted and sick - how could I defend myself? I doubt she's ever told anybody how she abused me, beat me. I know with absolute certainty that she's told friends and work colleagues that I've struggled with mental health problems and addiction.

Of course, I have plenty of stuff that I've done wrong. It's all documented here in gory detail. I've made mistakes, but people have broadcast them in order to hurt and damage me. I'm being brave enough to re-tell those mistakes that were already loudly trumpeted by my persecutors. It's true that I'm also telling the things that were wrongly perpetrated against me, in a way that appears to be tit-for-tat, but it's actually just presenting a full and accurate picture.

I'm well known for my honesty. To present some "whiter than white" image of myself, to try and offset this demonic image that my parents and ex-wife paint of me, would be yet another falsehood. It serves no purpose, to simply hit back and point out the awful things that my persecutors have perpetrated against me.

I'm moving from a bad place to a much better place, in that I'm now pleased that people know things about me that are correct, even if they don't paint me in a flattering light. I'm less horrified that people know things that mean my confidence has been horribly betrayed by people who are supposed to care about me.

By all means, go ahead and talk about me all you like now. It's immensely liberating living life as an open book. It's a fantastic feeling, to be judged on balanced facts, rather than half-truths, falsehoods and bullshit "holier than thou" images that my persecutors have painted of themselves.

If it sounds a little paranoid, you're wrong. True friends have told me what's been said behind my back, and my persecutors have even admitted betraying my confidence on particularly private and sensitive things, that they absolutely should have treated with confidentiality.

I'm quickly approaching a time when I will be satisfied that the tale is told. I've presented all the information. I stand by my sins. I'm ready for judgement.

It is a bit of an alarming situation. I'm preparing to die, because I'm exhausted by the bullying and the mistreatment at the hands of my family, my ex-wife.

If you've heard anything bad about me, consider this: don't be surprised if the dog that you beat turns around and bites you one day.

Tags: #mentalhealth #suicide

This is a story about tiny fractions...

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. In theory, I'm 1/365th safer today than I am the rest of the year. By my calculations, 0.27% of the time, we are trying to prevent suicide. The other 99.73% of the time, we are not trying to prevent suicide.

There are various ways that we try and make suicidal people feel responsible, selfish and guilt tripped. "Nobody is responsible for your life except you" is something I often hear. This is plainly wrong.

Individualism has led to the collapse of local communities. Individualism has led to silent commuter trains, with everybody listening to their own music through their headphones. Individualism has led to unpleasant levels of competition, where we trample each other for the few jobs. We lie, cheat and steal, because we are all rodents in the rat race.

If we took collective responsibility for our suffering, then we could collectively bargain to improve our situation. With the power of the collective things can improve. As individuals, we are divided and ruled over by cruel elites who care nothing about the mental health epidemic and soaring suicide rates.

Suicide is everywhere.

Suicide is in our schools, where there is enormous pressure to achieve academically. Our exam grades will govern our future so we no longer have a childhood. Bullying is rampant, and it destroys the quality of life of children and drives them to self harm and suicide. Bullying is not getting better. Bullying is getting worse. Bullying was terrible when I was a kid, and unbearable. It must be unspeakably awful now. No wonder self harm, depression and anxiety affect so many children in school.

Suicide is in our workplace, where our jobs are insecure and hidden inflation means that our wages are shrinking in real terms. The steady increase in suicide rates, since the 2008 financial crisis, has now reached the point where it's the biggest killer of men under the age of 45 - 'breadwinners' in the prime of their life.

Suicide is in our homes, where thinking "at least I'm not a starving African" doesn't actually put food on the table and a roof over your head. Bills, debts, rent/mortgage and the many things that we need to live in Western society, are not going away with a few people saying "chin up" and "it can't be that bad... other people have it worse". We've been putting a brave face on everything for years, and some people reach breaking point.

To say that suicide is a selfish act is dumb. To say that suicide is running away from your responsibilities is dumb. To say that suicide is dumping a load of pain onto other people is dumb. In actual fact, a suicidal person has almost definitely been struggling with overwhelmingly awful and painfully intolerable feelings, for longer than you can even imagine. To ask them to continue to prop up the status quo any longer is selfish.

When a person reaches the point where they're attempting suicide, they've exhausted all avenues. When a person attempts suicide, they have taken responsibility for their own life. A person attempting suicide has tried everything that they have the means to change. They're out of ideas. They're out of energy. They've gone as far as they're able to go... on their own.

To make accusations that suicide is running away from problems, selfish, is why suicidal people feel so isolated and alone. Taking your own life is not something you do, surrounded by loving friends and family. Attempting suicide is done when you're all alone. Suicide is just you, and death.

You'd be surprised how people step back when you reach the point of considering the end of your own life. People don't want to be near you. People don't see you anymore. People shun you, like you're a leper, like you're a ticking time bomb.

You'd be surprised at how many days I've spent in hospital, all alone, no visitors. That hurts. That sends a message.

It's easy to put something on social media saying "you'd be missed if you died" but, seriously, how much does that really reconcile with that person's experiences? If you say you'd miss them, then when was the last time you actually took the time to see them? When was the last time you actually took advantage of the fact they're still alive?

It's a binary thing: people are either alive, or they're dead. There's no use saying "we didn't know what to do" when somebody's dead. There's a spectacular lack of discussion and action around improving the lives of people who are suicidal. Instead, there is an endless stream of trite platitudes, that you've heard over and over again.

Believe me, I've got plenty of perspective. All that "it isn't so bad" bullshit, and the "other people have it worse" bullying is the reason why we arrived at this state where suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45. Suicide kills 3 times as many men as it does women. Believe me when I say that I want to go to Africa and distribute food and clean water. Believe me when I say I want to pull Syrian children out of the rubble.

Aren't you all just being total dicks though, if you expect our most suicidally depressed people to be the ones acting charitably? Why should the mentally ill be doing good work, while everybody else just keeps making bombs to drop on Syria, and working jobs that economically enslave the developing world?

I've got plenty of perspective, and what I see is a selfish society. What I see is collective insanity, where we are working bullshit jobs. We're working jobs that actually destroy lives. What I see is a bunch of people whose mental health and will to live are being badly damaged, and a bunch more people who want things to stay the same or get even worse.

How bad does it have to get? Does it have to be your son or daughter who takes their own life before you get it?

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about quotations...

I live a fairly isolated existence. Work, sleep & eat. None of my friends live very nearby, and I'm in a strange part of London that you'd probably only visit if you were working in Canary Wharf.

Of course, I'm not short of ideas for what I could do with my leisure time - if I had any - in order to get a bit of a social life going again. If I had the time and the money, I could be having plenty of fun. It's just that it's hard to do that when I'm so drained from working a full time job that's utter bullshit. Most of the time I can't even handle speaking to people on the telephone. I just want to be left alone to compose my thoughts and try to unwind, in the few waking hours where I'm not trapped at my desk.

On a Wednesday night, I go to the pub with a friend. We have 3 pints of weak continental lager and put the world to rights, sitting in the beer garden. It's lovely.

Every so often, a friend will chat to me on Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp. That is also nice. I stayed up chatting until 3am on Friday night / Saturday morning.

From these chats, I often take away lovely things that were said, to treasure.

A psychiatrist once said to me "we can only play the cards that we are dealt" and when I was struggling with accusations that I was weak and that I was making up mental health problems, attention seeking and all kinds of horrible blame and stuff being thrown at me, it was a lovely nonjudgemental thing to hear.

Having been labelled as some kind of devil child by my parents, or subjected to relentless abuse by my ex-wife, it's been such a relief to have some kinder points of view at long last.

"Anybody who has a second kid after a 10 year gap is just looking for a free babysitter"

I love my sister to bits, but I could never understand why we couldn't be siblings. Why did I have to be so mature? Why was I - a child - chided for being childish? So fucking ridiculous.

My friend who pointed out how ridiculous it is to have such a big age gap between kids, also pointed out that it's healthy to have your kids play together, keep each other company. It's really boring and lonely playing on your own while your parents are getting drunk and taking drugs. Sure, I can entertain myself. Sure, I have a good imagination. Sure, I can sit down and work on a project in total isolation from all social stimulation. However, those first 10 years of my life shaped me into somebody who assumes that I never get to keep any friends, because my parents kept yanking me out of school to go traipsing all over the fucking place. Parents, I assumed, were just people who sat around lazily - off their fucking heads - and never wanted to play with me.

I ingratiated myself with other families, and spent far more time immersed in their family life than my non-existant own. I knew that something was inherently wrong at home. I could see the differences in our home lives. I could see how things were supposed to be: brothers and sisters playing together, being kids, but I was always just a visitor in those lives.

There's a lot of important social development that goes on in the first 7 years of a child's life. It's hardly like I'm selfish and never learned how to share or play nice with others, but I certainly don't feel any security in relationships. I'm completely mistrustful of all friendships. I assume that everything is just transitory, fleeting, superficial.

"[Your parents] have to protect their own self image. No way will they say [they] fucked up.

[Your mother] will occasionally drunkenly exclaim "oh it's all my fault!"

But it's attention seeking and the response sought is "of course it isn't".

They just get so entrenched in their own self serving view of what happened"

It's exhausting, being expected to prop up your parents bullshit view of the world. I wondered why I would feel so drained from a visit to see my parents, or a phonecall, and it's because they've not been working to raise a healthy happy child. They've been working to try and cover up and bury their guilt for being drugged up alkie fuckups.

I've been expected to work so hard on keeping up appearances. It's bullshit. It's ground me down. I've had enough. Hence this blog, and the full disclosure of the bullshit I've put up with.

It is remarkable how many people have gotten in contact to say their mothers are/were functional alcoholics too. It's remarkable how many parents there are out there who think they're some kind of aristocracy who get to palm their kids off on the hired help, and then swan off doing their high society bullshit. Except that they don't have any hired help so in fact the kids simply get palmed off on the state schools and other families that are more loving and welcoming.

Sure, you could accuse me of being a manchild. An overgrown baby.

I refuse to just bottle this shit up. Sure, it might be a case of arrested development. It might be a case of a bunch of stuff that supposedly I could just get over. How? How am I supposed to move forward?

I got to today, and to some outward appearances it looks like I've got my shit together, but clearly all that happened is that I did grow up, man the fuck up, put a brave face on stuff and generally just get on with it. However, it doesn't seem to have taken away the need to actually feel loved and cherished for a little bit. Maybe this is a bit spoiled princessy, I don't know. I'm just trying to purge these feelings and get to a point where I want to go on living.

It was super nice when a lovely family in Ireland took me in for some desperately needed shelter from the disintegration of my life. Just being in a loving family home - even if it wasn't my own - has kept me going.

Actually, thinking about it recently, I thought how much it would upset that lovely Irish family, to know that they helped me and that I ended up taking my own life anyway. Even if it was only a few weeks that I spent in their home, I'm still acutely aware that they deserve better than any implied ingratitude for their help.

But, I'm still missing enough regular social contact. What I get is great, and I'm super grateful to those friends who drop by, suggest meeting up, email me and contact me on messenger. It does keep me limping along.

My hope is, that as I start to get on top of the debts I ran up just staying alive, I will loosen the purse strings and start to take a risk in thinking about some work that might be more rewarding. There's no way that I can dare to dream at the moment, because I simply have to knuckle down and put money in the bank, even though it's soul-destroying and I hate it.

To reach November sounds like no time at all, but I think that only takes me to zero. It'll be the depths of winter. Perhaps my work contract won't be renewed. I'll have 11 months left on a 12 month rent contract, with my flatmate already 4 months in rent arrears and not having paid any bills for as long as I can remember. It's quite a lot of pressure.

I'm setting myself these little goals and breaking up the blocks of time. It was friends who encouraged me to take some time off here and there, but it prolongs the suffering.

It's easy to dream up a million different things I might do when I reach breakeven, but it feels so far away, even if it isn't when you're happily just chugging through your healthy fulfilling and stimulating life.

I'm loathe to upset the apple cart. There are a couple of bridges that are worth leaving unburnt. I'm probably not even in debt enough to declare bankruptcy at the moment, but it doesn't take long for the circling vultures to put you in the shit again. You have to run just to stand still. I just can't stand the bullshit of the rat race. I just can't stand the relentless pressure to pay money just to be alive, breathing.

I'm trying to string together all the sporadic social contact I have, and use all the little messages of support, to limp myself along.

At some point, I can imagine that I will look back and laugh, while also cringing with embarrassment, about just how much I've moaned and complained. In retrospect, the pain and discomfort will be quickly forgotten, and I'll wonder why I was making such a big fuss. Either that, or I won't actually make it.

It has been a long time that I've been dealing with depression. It has been a long time that I've been dealing with suicidal thoughts. I'm grateful when my friends give me a reality check, but also, I do have to still go home at some point and face facts. It's great to talk about this or that amazing venture, but the fact is that bills still have to be paid, debts have to be serviced, people still want their pound of flesh.

It must be hard on my friends, because I have good physical health, skills that are in demand, no dependents and plenty of other advantages in life. I'm quite pleased that only a very small handful of my friends have trotted out the old adages of "be grateful you have a job" etc. etc.

I get quite a lot of "chin up" and "look on the bright side" which is OK because I know people mean well when they say it, and it's a common mistake to make. It's not even a mistake, because it does show that people care, which is nice and helpful.

Probably the most fruitful discussions I'm having at the moment have been around how it's OK to be upset about things. We try so hard to put a brave face on things and pretend that everything's OK, that we perhaps don't even admit to ourselves how close we are to snapping. "A right to be angry" is something I never explored before.

There's just all this societal pressure to be grateful. But that whole gratitude argument breaks down when your life becomes sheer depressed misery. What am I supposed to be grateful for, if life is miserable? Am I supposed to want more misery? Am I supposed to be excited to have another 30 or 40 years of misery to look forward to?

It's easy to extrapolate from my position, today, trapped into a horrible corner. But, what's the alternative? The 'dream' job that will lead me to financial problems and bankruptcy because I can't afford the cost of living and I can't repay my debts? Quitting the rat race, that will lead me to social exclusion and being spat on in the street by people who think I'm a worthless bum? A life on benefits where I'm despised by ignorant mean selfish shits, who tell me to "get a job" and think I'm a scrounger?

It's actually pretty hard and pretty scary, thinking about starting over again when you're not in the first flush of youth. It's pretty challenging, rebuilding your social life and getting the people around you again that give you enough love and support to make your life liveable again.

I know I need to try harder to reconnect with friends. I need to travel to see people. I need to put myself out there. I need to invite myself into people's lives.

Perhaps things will be different once I've broken through the psychological barrier of this work/debt problem that I'm suffering at the moment.

Tags: #friends #parents #childhood

This is a story about being homeless...

This first map shows everywhere I lived, as I was dragged around all over the place by my fucking parents. The stupid cunts then decided to move back to the village where I briefly first went to school. I went to 8 different schools. What a shower of shits. I cried and cried that we were leaving the sweet little village in the Cotswolds where my parents now live again. What a pointless waste of time & money, as well as being totally destructive of a stable and happy childhood.

This second map shows the 25+ places that I have attempted to make my home. From number 5 to number 25, this was all a consequence of my parents reneging on an insistent demand that they should be involved in 'helping' me, only to find that they then didn't honour their promise at all when I was in a vulnerable and precarious position. A stitch in time saves nine, as they say. Cunts.

I now live on the Isle of Dogs and my home is very nice. I'm reasonably settled and stable, but I am quite far away from any friends, and there isn't really much on the 'island'. I would much rather live in North London, where most of my friends are, and there is more going on that I'd be interested in getting involved in.

However, having had such a horrific time the past few years, I'm happy to just have some stability in where I'm living. Can you imagine how exhausting it is, moving between all those different places with all your worldly possessions? It's only because I had good training with the Dorset Expeditionary Society that I have been able to just about cope. I'd call it an adventure, but it's been more like a nightmare.

Anyway, perhaps this snapshot gives you some appreciation for the shit that people are going through in their private lives. We are quick to condemn people as not making smart life choices, or being deserving of the consequences of some decision they supposedly took with free will. The reality is that one small thing can create absolute chaos in somebody's life, and destroy them.

Much like the butterfly that flapped its wings in Japan, causing a hurricane in America, seemingly small insignificant things can have a big impact on the stability of a person's life. That's why it's important to keep your promises and honour your commitments. That's why it's important to act with integrity. That's why it's important to treat your kids with decency and respect, and not just be a drug addict drunkard waste of fucking space, fucking up their life in pursuit of your high.

As you can tell, I'm thoroughly exhausted by all the stress, and fucked off by the suggestion that it was in any way my free will that took my on this torturous path through life. Survival and stability is all I ask for.

Tags: #homeless #parents #childhood #london