This is a story about predictions...

Bookmakers and actuaries are extremely good at predicting the future. The profits of these well-established enterprises depend upon accurate predictions, based upon a vast amount of historical data. Better statistics lead to better predictions, which lead to accurate odds and sustained profitability. If it wasn't possible to predict the future in this way, there wouldn't be a business model for life insurance or gambling.

Unfortunately for individuals, generalised predictions are fairly accurate while individual predictions are not. It is no use asking an actuary when you will die, so that you can plan your life accordingly. The actuary will not be able to tell you whether you'll die of a heart attack age 45, or whether you'll die in your sleep age 95. Those extra 50 years present a considerable problem for the individual, but the actuary does not care, because they spread the risk of having to pay out on life insurance across a large group. On average, the insurer will win. However, none of us can know whether we're going to die prematurely or live unusually long.

It might seem prudent to avoid smoking, drinking and consumption of excessive calories. It might seem prudent to go to the gym every day. It might seem prudent to eat a balanced diet, containing a mixture of fruit and vegetables, full of amino acids, vitamins, minerals, trace elements and other chemical compounds your body needs to repair itself and stay healthy. However, while we can say for certain that smoking and obesity will lead to health complications, none of us can make choices to assure ourselves of a long life.

One day you might just drop dead.

The temptation to use statistical analysis to make predictions for an individual is overwhelming in a world where we have discovered the classical laws of physics. We presume that we are able to predict the future as easily as we can predict the trajectory of a missile. Unfortunately, individuals do not follow simple parabolic curves. While there are statistically significant correlations - good predictors - this does not mean that we can know the future life of a human, after gathering a few crummy data points.

All we have managed to unearth so far about the mysteries of human life is that we can understand risk not destiny. You might have genes which appear to doom you to a certain fate, but those genes are not always expressed in the way which we expect. The sequencing of the human genome has failed to provide the crystal ball that it was promised to deliver, but instead revealed the unimaginable complexity of epigenetics. No clear genes have been found for things such as diabetes and depression. There is no gene which hard-wires our life expectancy into every cell.

Who could have predicted that smoking would be banned in public buildings and the workplace, drinking culture would become diminished, supermarkets would import food from all over the globe, such that strawberries would be on their shelves all year round, and the workplace would become so safe and so sedentary? Who could have predicted that mental health problems would reach such epidemic proportions that the leading cause of death amongst 20 to 40 year old men would be suicide?

Ultimately, the biggest thing affecting my life expectancy appears to be a choice which I'm free to make.

I've never smoked and I quit drinking 4 months ago. I eat a balanced diet and I'm a healthy weight. These things are happy accidents. Every afternoon my anxiety builds to an increasingly intolerable level and every evening I feel suicidal. I live alone and have no friends or family nearby. I have no children, pets or partner.

My life is on a knife-edge.

If you were going to bet on the statistically probable outcome of my life, you'd have lost a lot of money already. I'm afraid to say that I'm an outlier and I have refused to conform to the predictions. I'm a single data point and as such I'm not statistically significant on my own, but the significance of my own life and its outcome is, unsurprisingly, important to me.

It's a hard life being an outlier. Literally, almost everyone is betting against you. It will be harder to get an education, get a job, get a home, borrow money, find a partner, get life insurance, get a pension... all of these things are thwarted by people who believe that they are able to predict my destiny. I'm continuously confronting people who believe I'm a lost cause, and therefore not worth taking a risk on.

We can see that this attempt at prediction becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When racial stereotypes become pervasive - for example - then we see that minorities are harshly and unfairly prejudiced, which harms their chance of success and reinforces the correlation between uncorrelated factors. Skin colour should not be a good predictor of socioeconomic outcome, but the data overwhelmingly shows that it is.

From the moment you enter the vast educational system, you are being sifted and sorted in a way which tests you and gathers data on you, in order to attempt to predict your future. Something as random as getting an illness will affect your school attendance data, which will be used against you as a predictor of supposed future failure. You are constantly at risk of flagging yourself as a "disaster waiting to happen" and suffering lifelong prejudice due to the systemic attempts to analyse individuals statistically.

I suppose I now revel in the fact that I'm a living contradiction. My problems with mental health, addiction, alcohol, hospitalisations, psych ward stays, trouble with the police and refusal to be sifted and sorted by the mainstream education system, are not in agreement with the predictions that I should end up bankrupt, in jail and/or dead, having lived a life with no useful contribution to society, and in fact having been a burden. I'm the guy your mother warned you about. I'm the one who isn't supposed to be allowed to freely roam the streets. I'm the one who all the gatekeepers have in mind - I'm the one they want to keep out, but yet I'm very much on the inside.

If those who think they can gaze into the future by studying my data had their way, I wouldn't have a job, a house, any money. The system has tried very hard to railroad me into certain outcomes, because it's what was expected and predicted.

I genuinely don't know whether I'm going to kill myself or if my depression is going to lift and life's going to become pleasant and bearable. I've lived with depression for long enough to know that my choices will have little effect on the outcome. No amount of prescription medication, therapy, yoga and other such things will have the intended effect. It has always been the least expected things in my life which have wrought the most important changes.

If I was betting on myself, I suppose I would bet that I'll die at my own hands. If I was betting on myself, I suppose I would bet that I won't be able to escape the debt trap. If I was betting on myself, I suppose I would bet that I will crumble and break, because that seems like the obvious thing I would do, from looking at the black marks against my name. If I was going to bet according to statistics, I would definitely bet against myself.

However, we know that fundamentally the universe does not obey classical physics, when we study the underlying laws, but instead there is inherent uncertainty. Outcomes are nondeterministic. Knowing my past does not allow anybody to know my future. There is a nonzero probability of every possible outcome, no matter how unlikely it may seem.

My day-to-day life is dominated by a single question - am I going to kill myself? - but despite being the best placed person to answer that, I do not know the answer. Events unfolding are as much a surprise to me as they are to you.

Tags: #suicide #depression

This is a story about creativity...

Those who are blessed with independent wealth - trust-fund kids - may groan at my unoriginal and clichéd ideas. Those who have been lucky enough to attend public or private school (confusingly similar things in the UK) have been educated to be discerning snobs who act as a kind of judicial panel, deciding collectively what is to be mocked and derided as worthless, because it has clearly originated from the lower echelons of society.

We may study a piece of text and detect traces of vocabulary, style and grammar use, which indicates the author did not have the benefit of an expensive education, and as such we decide that their words are meaningless. We presume that the author holds detestable values and baseless immature views which have not been properly forged in the crucible of a fine university's debating society. We discern a certain lack of intellect from any impression we form of a person of being from a more humble background than our own. We prefer to only read works by those who are posh and impeccably well-presented in their homogenised manner of written communication.

We can quickly tell if somebody does a lot of writing, or if their writing style is a clumsy attempt to put their spoken words down onto paper.

Who has enjoyed the privilege of being able to read a very great deal, write an enormous amount, and have somebody paid to pore over their words? English is part of the mandatory school education of every child in the UK, yet as a nation we manage to produce many millions of people who don't know the difference between homophones such as "your" and "you're", which the public and private schools would not tolerate.

While an expensive education might give every child who attends those fee-paying schools a posh accent, an extended vocabulary and better grammar, it does not assure an academic future. Many children will prefer art to the prescriptive subjects, where there are right and wrong answers.

The position of power, gifted by privilege, is to decide what the "wrong" answers are in an area where there is no such thing as a "right" answer. With no more qualification than a posh accent and some snobbery, one can embark upon a career as an art critic, quite unwittingly.

Art exists in late capitalism as another rich man's hobby, like yacht sailing, horse riding, game shooting, vintage motor car racing and skiing. While some of the hoi polloi might have adopted those leisure pursuits in imitation of the wealthiest segment of society, a number of mechanisms exist to ensure that the poor man's version is inferior in every way, and not to be mistaken for things which are reserved for the wealthiest families. As such, the act of patronage is contained within that small group of individuals who speak in the manner of their patrons.

Who can really afford to write or paint for long enough to master the craft, without making creative sacrifices in order to be commercially successful? How many brilliant artists have been forced to become draughtsmen or take dismal tasteless commissions from gauche clients? We might love our favourite comics and assume that the artists are living happy, authentic lives which are true to their beliefs, but those who have seen it as a purely artistic endeavour find unhappy outcomes if they ever need to monetise their talents.

I can afford to give away my words for free because I have another source of income, but it means that my writing will never be anything more than an open journal - a daily diary which is publicly accessible. I don't have the time and energy to plan, execute and promote a piece of serious art, and I am forced to sell the most productive years of my life in order to pay rent and bills. I like to think that I am developing my craft, but the skillset for creative writing is quite different from the stream-of-consciousness which I produce.

Innumerable photographers have captured an image of themselves every day for considerable lengths of time, and countless more writers have kept daily journals. What I do is neither imaginative nor original. It would be easy to say that my writing is not art, or it is bad art.

It angers me that I should be denied the opportunity to be an artist. It angers me that my considerable creative talents and boundless energy for artistic projects, is thwarted by economic factors. I need to pay rent and bills, so I must sell my labour, but if I were to attempt to combine my job with my desire to create art, then I would be creating products not art.

What is art?

For me, I want to turn an exceptional period of my life - addiction and near-death - into a piece of art. My experiences have been so extreme that few people who've shared similar experiences have survived with their sanity intact and enough of a grasp of the English language to express themselves clearly on a piece of paper. Many people are lost to religion and other capitulations of the mind, or simply embroiled in family life, such that the difficult task of creating a piece of art which conveys some of the suffering endured, is rarely completed.

We might assume that a particularly rousing motivational speech or an incredible painting resulted from some God-given talents, but that's complete hogwash. We are a product of the surrounding environment and things that has driven us to repeat behaviours until they are innate. Anybody who says "I can't draw" has not practiced enough. When we look more closely at child prodigies, we see that their pushy parents are the reason why that child practiced a skill enough to become talented. There are no gifts - everything must be paid for.

My own so-called "gift" is a perseverance for tapping on keys in such a way which is mandated to be harmonious. A piano will happily play incorrect chords but if you press the wrong computer keys you will simply be told "command not found" or simply "error".

While I know that my writing doesn't get tested with the rigorous logic of boolean algebra, I feel confident that I can master writing as a lucrative craft, through practice and repetition, in exactly the same way that I taught myself how to program a computer as a child. I am certain that the skill of creating hundreds of thousands of lines of programming code which assemble together to make a functioning piece of complex computer software, is transferrable to the task of writing a few tens of thousands of words which produce a coherent story.

Few would disagree that music is an artform, but music is a piece of code executed on a machine - whether it's the notation on a piece of sheet music, or the laser-etched indentations on a compact disc, the creativity of the artist is coded and played through an instrument which adheres to strict rules. A grand piano only has 88 keys, while my keyboard has more than a hundred.

It's true that we've entered an era where almost anybody can call themselves a photographer or a writer, given the ubiquity of smartphones and the ease-of-use of apps which allow us to publish our photos and our words.

I offer up the photo at the beginning of this essay and these very words because I find both aesthetically pleasing and to have deep and profound meaning, beyond what you see at face value. In my text I offer up a glimpse of my inner turmoil, but I can never fully capture the full extent of every thought that races through my mind. My photo captures a moment that has immense meaning for me, but the viewer could never possibly know or guess correctly what that meaning is, which makes it a piece of art because it could only have been created by me, the artist.

"What even is it? I could take a photograph like that" I hear you say.

Yes, you could take a similar photograph, but it would have none of the meaning behind it, so therefore it would not be art.

"What are you even rambling about? I could write down my thoughts like you" I hear you say.

Yes, you could write down your thoughts, but they'd be quite different from mine and you wouldn't have the same motivations, so therefore it would just be yet another blog post from yet another blogger.

How can I claim to be creating art? In truth, I don't. I worry a lot that I'm wasting my time and creating a lot of meaningless noise. I worry that my creative energies are squandered on a pointless folly. However, this is still an impressive monument, whichever way you look at it. How many people have managed to write and publish more than a million words in a single document, with a consistent methodical approach, with regularity and with something interesting to say? How many people have catalogued their thoughts so thoroughly?

Not many.

Tags: #writing #art

This is a story about the less glamorous jobs...

Some very simple things in my life are surprisingly difficult to organise and cause a great deal of anxiety. The accumulation of things which most people would consider trivial, is a consequence of a phase of my life which I should not probably be living through.

Those who have stuck together with their peer group, going through school, further education, higher eduction, university and forays into academic realms beyond, have had a well-trodden path to follow, which has made it extremely easy to go along with the herd.

Society corrals us through life, into jobs, relationships, and the process of "settling" somewhere. We become attached to a place, either because it's where close family live, where we spent the bulk of our time studying, or perhaps because it was where we spent the bulk of our career.

The weight of expectation placed upon us by our families, friends and the media, pushes us towards marriage and children.

We're carried along by a rapidly flowing river, with the currents too strong for us to swim against. The bulk of our destiny is inevitable, not free will or choice, like we would like to believe.

My car needs servicing, I need a haircut, I need a new belt, there is administrative paperwork which must be submitted to a government agency, there are numerous annual insurance policies which require renewal. I am continually harried and harassed for my time and money, by an unending queue of people who won't leave me in peace.

I try to comply with the demands of so-called 'normal' society but I find that there are gatekeepers everywhere, intent on frustrating me, delaying me, or thwarting me altogether.

I attempt to do my job to the best of my abilities, and I feel guilty about doing non-work tasks during my working day. I attempt to invest time each day in relationships outside my workplace: friends and family. Once commuting time, meal preparation time, housework time, washing time, hygiene time and all the other mandatory deductions from my leisure time have been made, there are then the other tasks: The letters to open, which no doubt demand money with menaces, or require me to fill in some ridiculous form and mail it, so that a bureaucrat somewhere can justify their job.

My photo album contains a depressing number of photographs which are not of pleasant things I've observed, but do in fact contain details I need for the operation of a fairly simple and humble life. The picture above is of one of my tyres, so that I could find a place to fit my car with the correct ones.

My photo album contains numerous pictures of my passport, driving license, bank statements, utility bills, council tax bills and other official documents, which are regularly demanded as proof of my identity. I spend my life perpetually proving that I exist and satisfying other demands of gatekeepers, who would prefer to see me homeless, penniless and destitute.

I suppose I'm not alone in this farcical existence, but it gives me little comfort to know that many of us - those who don't have the security of a permanent job and the ownership of our home - are constantly asked to jump through so many hoops.

My perceptions might be warped, but I feel like I'm more time poor than ever, which isn't supposed to be the case for a childless man who has been working a full-time career for over two decades.

I'll stop moaning now and get back to my administrative tasks.

Tags: #admin #taxes #timepoor #timekeeping #leisure #work

This is a story about prejudice...

If somebody has decided they don't like you because something has invoked their prejudices, then almost anything you say or do will be twisted negatively. There's no way to win somebody over once you're seen in a bad light, because it's possible to create a monster out of a saint if your mind is that way inclined.

I photographed the exit from my office.

I shouldn't have done it.

I knew it was wrong.

Nobody's told me off yet. Nobody's caught me. My wrongdoing has been entirely unnoticed by the universe.

This. Does. Not. Matter.

I'm not supposed to put photographs of an entrance into a secure building up on the public internet. In fact I'm probably expressly forbidden from doing such a thing depending on the interpretation of deliberately nebulous bullshit.

Provided I'm the golden boy and I'm making myself valuable around the place, nobody really gives a damn who I am and what I do. I could write about the specifics of what I do for a day job - which is all public anyway - and I wouldn't suffer any consequences, so long as I retain the aura of a person who's desirable to have around; so long as I'm wanted.

The moment that the sands shift and I'm viewed as an undesirable scumbag then I'll suddenly come under much closer scrutiny. Those who are looking for reasons to reject me are sure to find many things which they can twist to their advantage.

"Aha!" they will exclaim. "We've rumbled you!"

Of course, the joke is on those who seek to act with prejudice, because this identity existed all along. Everything has been on open public display. I was welcomed in with open arms when you wanted something from me and you thought you were getting the better end of the deal.

"You mean to say I hired a junkie alcoholic homeless bankrupt tramp with mental health problems!" they exclaim.

The indignation is palpable.

The prejudiced are always unreasonably angry and upset to discover that their trusted and valued colleague who has successfully delivered their large and complex IT project is nothing more than a low-life loser.

"I could have paid you peanuts!" seems to be the thing that's most upsetting to these people who'd think nothing of kicking a homeless person to death and urinating on the corpse.

It's not true.

You cannot pay me peanuts.

I cut my day rate by over 50% when I was utterly desperate last year, and I was taken advantage of worse than I've ever been in my 21 year career. I was treated disgustingly. I will never do that again.

Do you think you're getting a bargain every time you beat somebody down on the price they've quoted you? Do you think you're succeeding when you ask somebody to do more work for less money?

Wrong.

Pay less. Get less.

Do you think you're making the world a better place by refusing to work with vast swathes of society? Do you think you're more likely to succeed if you surround yourself with people who are just like you: A-grade achieving, 2:1 degree holding, compliant and conformant worker-bee drones who've got manicured CVs?

I should not be allowed onto the hallowed turf.

My face does not fit.

I'm an intruder.

I'm an interloper.

However, I'm not a fraud.

Stuff comes out of my mouth and even I'm surprised. People wander over to my desk and they want to talk to me. They want to ask me questions. Somehow I know the answers. Believe me... I'm more surprised than anybody.

I'm acutely aware that when people are having a tough time and living in a precarious situation they are more inclined to accept less money. People who are going through economic difficulties are easier to bully and exploit. It's relatively straightforward to fuck the poor.

In a poker game you have to have your chips on the table. Everyone can see the size of your stack.

I seem to have gained a somewhat posh accent, although I'm not entirely sure where I got it from because my parents are Northern and I was born in Wales. My cut-glass accent is apparently a close enough approximation to that of a privately educated and privileged member of the set who are destined for greatness, such that I haven't had to suffer the indignity of being offered insultingly low wages by the exploitative rentier class. They assume I'm one of them.

I'm racked with guilt that I enjoy privileges conferred by social status - when the people who I interact with in a work environment mistakenly think I've had a fine and expensive education - but yet I've rubbed shoulders with enough rough sleepers, junkies and alcoholics on the streets of London to know that intellect doesn't magically happen to restrict itself to upper-middle-class white families in the Home Counties.

Nobody knows that I should be stacking shelves in a supermarket for minimum wage. That's my so-called place in society, and I should be grateful to lick the boots of the capitalist pigs. (Caveat: I know that our supermarket shelves need stacking - it's a vital role - and I'm grateful to those who do the job).

I'm careening towards a collision with those who believe it's their rôle in life to police the social strata. They will find this document interesting reading. There is much ammunition here to construct a fabricated reason for my dismissal, on the flimsy and patently absurd basis that I might be exposing the country to terrorist attack by publicising confidential details about the entrance to our impregnable fortress. Perhaps I'm bringing my profession into disrepute and otherwise stepping out of line; conducting myself in a manner unbecoming of my position of responsibility. Bullshit.

Of course I might feel a pang of regret if I succeed in raising my profile sufficiently that the powers-that-be feel they have to take some action and eject me from the world I'm not supposed to belong to. "This isn't for the likes of you" they'll say as they boot me out of the door.

"What have I done?" I'll momentarily ask myself.

It seems two-faced to sit on the fence. It seems awful to take the big bucks and not impoverish myself as a charity worker. What the hell am I doing trying to change the world without first making myself poor and destitute?

Actually, I did make myself poor and destitute.

Am I now turning my back on the struggling masses?

I like to think that I'm doing the very opposite. I'm a bridge in-between two worlds which would never normally meet. There isn't much more I could do to challenge the prejudices of those who live in sheltered worlds, inaccessible to ordinary people and especially those who are tainted by the stench of poverty. I have specifically set out to become liked and respected, while also maintaining an open secret of my chequered past. My situation is no accident.

Three years ago I grew impatient. Three years ago my project was in its infancy and I was rushing things. Three years ago I was too tired, stressed and destabilised by the traumatic experiences I'd been through. Three years ago I had a plan but I was too unwell to execute it with any finesse. Three years ago I tried to force things to happen, which was "contrived" to put it in the words of the BBC journalist I was dating. She was right.

What I'm doing right now is still somewhat contrived, but it's not easy.

You'll find plenty of writers who'll have spent a single night sleeping rough, or perhaps in a psychiatric institution, in order to provide material for them to write about.

You won't find many people on the right side of the tracks who can write with any depth of experience and knowledge about the afflictions of modern life.

Life is a one-way street.

I feel quite unique in having been able to resume a life to which my entry should be completely barred. A great deal of effort goes into stopping people just like me from being able to enter the realm in which I inhabit. A vast system exists to thoroughly exclude ordinary mortals from getting anywhere near the restricted areas where I tread.

Instead of thanking my lucky stars and being wowed by the privilege, such that I become afraid of being ejected, I try to keep doing the brave thing of being honest and open. I refuse to hide my true identity.

For the avoidance of doubt, I'm careful to blur portions of images which show things which are confidential. I'm careful to never mention anything which is sensitive or classified. I never say where exactly I work and who I work for. I never divulge any details which realistically could be ever used for nefarious purposes, or expose anything which should be secure.

Of couse... my real name and my face are public property.

But.

How would you go about blackmailing or otherwise manipulating me, if I've already made everything about me fully public?

What do you think I'd say if you said you knew my boss' name and were going to send them the link to my blog?

You're failing to appreciate the value of living an open life.

You're failing to see that secrecy and privacy are illusional.

You're failing to accept that the pressure of maintaining your spotless CV and so-called reputation is an instrument of tyranny, which makes you easily manipulated and exploited by the capitalists.

The most rebellious thing you can do is to create a public identity you're proud of; refuse to sanitise and hide your true self and your mistakes.

Never hide.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #privacy #secrecy

This is a story about a lack of imagination...

There's global moral panic - hysteria - that screen time is rotting our children's minds. There's a widely-held belief that our kids are not getting enough wholesome 'playing in the dirt' outdoors growing up time as we nostalgically remember getting in our own childhoods. "All this used to be fields" we say, even though we grew up on a housing estate in a dismal suburb, and watched lots of TV, with our parents worrying that 4 or maybe even 5 whole channels of colour audiovisual entertainment would warp our fragile young minds and leave us as dribbling morons.

I was dragged around museums, art galleries, stately homes, ancient ruins, churches, cathedrals, mosques, cobbled streets and other sites of historical and cultural interest, in the hope that some of those educational experiences would rub off on me and undo some of the dumb. Never was there an opportunity missed for extreme panic that I was enjoying my childhood too much, and I should be forced to endure some interminable excruciating lecture from an insufferable bore about their particular academic fetish.

I suppose it's a parenting strategy, to provide your children as a captive audience for people who're so lacking in charisma and life skills that they're unable to cope in the real world - roundly ignored by people their own age - while meanwhile the parents can get drunk, smoke and take drugs, and otherwise leave the bothersome business of raising offspring to a state or charity funded organisation masquerading as an educational establishment.

Why the obsession with constant education and cultural experiences anyway?

Oh, you're taking little Hugo to the museum are you? How wonderful of you. How original. Slow clap.

[I stole that line from a poster on the London Underground, mocking sharp-elbowed ambitious middle-class mothers, eager to cram their children's heads full of stuff that'll make 'em sound smart at a university interview, in the hope of barging to the front of the queue; getting a so-called head start in life]

You should read about Asian tiger parenting if you want to get a chilling glimpse into the kind of future we're headed into. Instead of worrying that iPhones and iPads are rotting your children's minds, you should be more concerned that exam result league tables, homework, extracurricular activities and the obsession with your children's academic achievements, is psychologically destroying your precious little darlings. The anxious, withdrawn, introverted adults who prefer to communicate almost exclusively via memes shared via the internet, aren't a product of the internet and modern technology, but actually the very predictable and unfortunate result of placing an excessively heavy burden of expectation on little kids.

"They'll thank me for it later in life" /  "If I don't give them a head start in life they'll end up working in McDonalds"

Wrong.

I do empathise with the fears of parents, of course, but I must point out the consequences of the collective insanity of believing your precious little darling is special and different, and they need to be pushed to the limit during every waking hour in order to realise their full potential.

Both childhood and parenthood look to me - as an outside observer - like an unpleasant pressure cooker for all involved, producing a plethora of psychiatric problems. There's an obsession over school catchment areas, 11-plus examinations, grammar schools and a set of metrics, which measure children's academic abilities at an ever-earlier age.

Children are somewhat cursed with filial obedience - they naturally want to please their parents. What's a kid got to these days to get their parents off their back. Seemingly, they need to completely eschew iPhones, iPads, video game consoles, television, and bury their heads in scrolls of parchment (novels would rot their fragile brains, of course).

Culturally, we seem to celebrate abstinence at the moment. We loudly boast about how little sugar we're eating. Every month seems to have a catchy name - like Stoptober - related to giving something up like alcohol or tobacco. Low-fat, low-carb, low-fun, low-stimulation, low-enjoyment seems to be the name of the game. It's as if we're seeing the rebirth of the puritans. Should we all thrash ourselves with nettles too?

I feel guilty for spending a week at a Disney-esque resort, with rollercoaster rides, water slides and other low-brow entertainment, with no historical or cultural authenticity at all - everything's brand new and made of modern materials. I feel guilty for enjoying things which were created to entertain, not to educate. I feel guilty for having a good time instead of expanding my mind. That guilt has its origins in upbringing; in a childhood dominated by my parents' panic about my mind melting and me forgetting everything I'd learned, if I stopped being educated for a single second and just got to sit and watch cartoons with my bad influence friends.

I see no evidence that technology, entertainment, games and screen-time in general, is creating a generation who are less imaginative, less creative, less academically gifted, less talented, less well-informed and less knowledgeable. If anything, the evidence seems to point in the opposite direction. Give a child access to YouTube and Wikipedia and they will willingly and eagerly embark upon a self-directed learning journey, which will deliver far more valuable facts for your precious darling to regurgitate, into their brainbox, than an unlimited amount of nagging, arguments, tears, tantrums, private tutors, private schools and trips to sites of historical and cultural significance.

What do I know though? I'm an idiot who likes mindless entertainment.

Tags: #childhood #parents

This is a story about romantic aspirations in the provinces...

It would unforgivable of me to kiss and tell but I feel the urge to share with you - dear reader - the trials and tribulations of an urbane metrosexual man's attempts to find love outside the capital city, in places which might politely be described as: the arse-end of nowhere.

The first thing that becomes immediately apparent, when venturing onto the dating scene in the provinces. is the priority which young adults have placed upon having rampant quantities of unprotected sex and producing as many unfortunate single-parent children as possible, with no economic means to pay for them. Did these people never receive any sex education? Have they never heard of condoms, the pill, the rhythm method, anal sex, oral sex or simply pulling out and ejaculating in any direction away from the the birth canal? What the fuck were they thinking?

Accidents don't "happen". We aren't organisms with pea-sized brains. We have birth control, the morning-after pill AND abortions. Why the big hurry to bring an innocent child who didn't ask to be born, into a world where you can't afford to pay for its upbringing? Idiocy.

So, there needs to be a certain amount of sifting through all the cretinous idiots who are no more intelligent than a herd of humping beasts, spawning offspring without any restraint, planning or any semblance of rational thought.

Relationships can break down irreparably, I accept that. Despite 8 long hard years banging my head against a brick wall, my own longest relationship was broken beyond repair and I got divorced. My ex-wife and I didn't have any children, which was my choice because I wanted to stabilise my mental health before making an irreversible life-changing decision to procreate. However, I can imagine that some perfectly decent nice intelligent people have had children, only to later find out that they're met with irreconcilable differences and their relationship cannot be salvaged, even for the sake of the children.

I was unquestionably influenced by my parents' relationship, which was toxic and abusive. I use the word "abuse" with a little caution, because it means a lot of things to a lot of different people, but what I mean is that my parents were absolute assholes to each other and everyone around them. They were co-dependent alcoholic druggies; selfish cunts. They stayed together, perhaps correctly sensing that mean-spirited selfish self-centred people who drink and take drugs, and have failed at life, are not highly in-demand people. They clung together because they were the only people who'd support each others' lies and fantasies, justifying their obnoxious treatment of everyone around them.

I grew up believing that a person should be loyal and work at a relationship no matter how toxic it is; to put up with any amount of abuse.

I guess that's why I ended up in an abusive relationship myself.

This is how I remember things progressed:

1. Date one: She liked me lots; I was full of confidence. She wanted more. I held back because I had serious feelings about her.
2. Date two: She thought I was great. She 'accidentally' invited herself into my place.
3. Date three: I treated her like a princess
4. Date four: She left me waiting for 30 minutes outside her place. I told myself I was going to leave after an hour, because it was a shitty thing to stand me up. She turned up after 45 minutes. I said I was going to go because it was no way to treat somebody. She begged me to stay.
5. Some dates later: she got in a strange mood when we were out with friends. When we got back home to her place she told me to leave. I asked her why. She wouldn't tell me. She threatened to call the police, which I said was unnecessary, I just didn't understand... could she explain? She flew into a rage, destroyed some curtains and slammed some doors. Then she calmed down and said she was glad I stayed. She thanked me for being loyal and patient We made love and everything seemed OK.
6. We went on holiday together. I casually suggested living together and she was enthusiastic. She openly said she was swept off her feet by my open-hearted romanticism.
7. I gave up my apartment paid for by JPMorgan to be closer to her workplace. She was angry and aggressive a lot. I cried a lot. One time when I was crying, she punched me in the face several times.
8. When she got angry, I sliced my wrist open with a knife. She briefly got more angry, but it temporarily stopped her rage in its tracks.
9. When she got angry, I smashed a mirror; a bed.
10. I asked her dad permission to marry her. I bought her the engagement ring of her dreams.
11. Two of my best friends came to visit. She flew into an inexplicable rage. I threw her engagement ring out of the window.
12. She raged with anger about everything in my life I held dear: kitesurfing, my friends from London and all over the UK. Nothing I could do would make her happy. I isolated myself. I gave up everything. I became a prisoner of her unpredictable rage.
13. We fought. She'd had her three strikes. She'd broken my nose, given me black eyes. I'd lied to my work colleagues about my black eyes. I'd lied to her parents about my black eyes. I'd lied to our friends about my black eyes. Now we fought. Two of us, fighting. We beat the shit out of each other.
14. I went back to self-harming; smashing stuff. I was suicidal. She cheated on me.
15. I caught her cheating. She was nice to me. I forgave her. It was nice that she was being nice to me.
16. She was strong and I was weak. I needed to get out of that toxic relationship before I died. She said "I'd rather be a widow than divorced". She knew I had 2 grams of potassium cyanide. She knew she stood to gain a vast sum of money from my life insurance and the value of my house. She marked my suicide note in red pen and told me if I went to hospital she'd leave me.
17. I went to hospital. We separated. We divorced.

That's my long-term relationship experience.

My first girlfriend was the nicest person in the world - which was an on-off relationship spanning a couple of years. I remember my second girlfriend fondly - a relationship lasting about 18 months. Then, there was 8 years of hell, which I feel completely equally responsible for: I should have walked away. Subsequent girlfriends were all relatively short-lived, but they were all wonderful. My longest relationship since my wife was with the love of my life, which lasted 9 blissful months, ending in calamity when I was driven insane by sleep deprivation and a toxic cocktail of prescription medications and other things, such that I temporarily believed that she didn't care about me and I decided to break up with her in a very regrettably - and irreparably - public manner, given the fact we both have Twitter accounts with reasonably large numbers of followers (although, many work colleagues are followers of her, causing the unforgivable reputational damage).

"What the fuck are you doing with that madman?" her colleagues must have asked.

She would have defended me.

She was loyal.

I loved her. She loved me.

But I was stubbornly ridiculous. At the time, my brain said to me "I'll never end up in another abusive relationship" but my thoughts were horribly twisted and corrupted; unreliable. To say anything bad about my poor ex-girlfriend would do her a terrible disservice. My amazing ex-girlfriend was incredibly attentively and at my bedside constantly for weeks when my kidneys failed. She was faultless, always.

Presently I've been consigned to the provinces, where I'm punished; cursed to suffer for my foolishness. Wimmin, wimmin, everywhere, and if none of them seem to meet my exacting standards then it's only because of the awful way I've treated - particularly - my last serious girlfriend. My ex cared for me so much, loved me and and demonstrated the loyalty I so desperately craved, but I threw it away during a hyper-complex period of joblessness, debt, mental health issues and drug abuse relapse, when I felt like an complete-and-utter failure. Insecurity destroyed me, despite her making me feel great about myself and working really hard to make sure I was OK. She looked after me. She put so much effort into looking after me.

So, now, today, I'm a 39-year-old man who's gotten badly out of shape and carries a whole heap of baggage.

"What car do you drive?"

"What job do you do?"

"Do you own your own house?"

"Show me your bank balance"

"What's your net worth?"

"Do you think you could afford to provide a life of idle luxury for me and my fatherless children?"

These are the questions which I face in the provincial dating game.

When I'm not looking my wallet is slipped from my pocket and felt for its fatness.

I'm not-so-silently judged as the sucker who's gonna pick up the tab for all that badly thought through unprotected sex and all those irrational decisions to not terminate unaffordable pregnancies.

This is my penance for not walking away from an abusive relationship - and admittedly becoming a so-called consensual partner in co-dependency - and also for throwing away relationships with some amazing women. This is my penance for my wrongdoing: to be somewhat trapped in the provinces, where every woman's dating profile picture has a Snapchat filter applied to her face, sending barely-literate messages saying: "If you're ex-girlfriends we're so great then how come there no longer wiv U? Their a bunch of snooty bitches wot kno grammar innit. Your fucking up youself U posh twat. They're's the truth layed out for you bear."

They do not mean "bear" in a cute cuddly way.

Tags: #dating #sex #relationships #divorce

This is a story about a narcissist's paranoid and delusional beliefs....

Nobody really gives a fuck whether you live or die. Nobody gives a fuck what you say, what you think and what you write. Nobody gives a fuck about what you do. You are not important. You're nothing. You're nobody. You're an insignificant speck in the universe, and in the blink of an eye, everybody you ever met in your life will be dead, along with anybody who might remember you. Every trace of everything you ever did will be erased. You are destined to be forgotten. You are destined to be obliterated so completely, that it will be as if you never actually existed in the first place: a universe which had you in it and a universe which didn't have you in it are indistinguishable.

As your feeble human mind tries to ascribe some anthropocentric meaning to the unimaginably vast and godless universe - where there is no meaning - the narcissists believe that they have a special role, purpose, job title, gift, or that they are making a meaningful and important contribution. The narcissists believe that they have set themselves apart from the 7 billion other souls crawling all over the surface of this tiny rock, by telling themselves "I'm special and different".

Civilised society is very good at handing out meaningless medals, with more categories to compete in than there are members of the human race, such that everyone's a winner. Because some amount of effort was put into an activity, such as running on a sports field with an egg balanced on a spoon, or reading a book and regurgitating its contents, when a medal is awarded it feels as if it was earned; it feels as if it's some form of proof of superiority over one's peers. It's addictive. The trick is repeated ad nauseam, until those with the most severe pathological narcissism have amassed far more meaningless medals than anybody in their right mind would bother to waste their time doing: they truly are king of the idiots.

Having obtained one of the rarest - but equally meaningless - medals, the narcissists pause to reflect on their so-called achievements, which leads to imposter syndrome. "What am I going to do with all these meaningless medals?" becomes a persistent and intrusive question in the mind of the narcissist, who is no longer consumed by the pathological pursuit of those medals; those badges of honour. The narcissist now feels like a guy who was taking a delightful sunset stroll on the beach in tropical paradise with his beautiful girlfriend, only to realise he has been dragging an inflatable sex doll around a supermarket car park at 4am, when the LSD wears off. This reality check brutally deflates the delusion that the narcissist is special and different. The only way to prop up the narcissit's fragile self-esteem is by putting other people down, denying opportunities to other people, surrounding themselves with an air of mystique, surrounding themselves with a clique of sycophants, cloaking their knowledge in jargon, protecting themselves with gatekeepers and otherwise perpetuating widely-held misconceptions and myths about how difficult it is to run with an egg on a spoon, or read a book and regurgitate its contents.

Hence the need for anonymity.

If anybody is brave enough to step out of line and say "anybody is capable of doing what I do and knowing what I know" then there are severe consequences meted out by the professional bodies, which exist for the sole purpose of maintaining artificial scarcity. Anybody can very easily do the work of a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant or any other professional, but if we were all allowed to practice those professions then the narcissists would no longer feel special and different. There is an enormous vested interest amongst those who are members of a professional body, to keep the numbers down and maintain the illusion that they're a cut above the rest.

The Magic Circle is a perfect example, where its magician members agree not to share the secrets of their illusions with the general public. If we consider why the classics are still taught - and are particularly fetishised by public schoolboys and Oxbridge - it is because those dead languages have always been used to obfuscate academic knowledge from those who have not had the benefit of a privileged education. In short, doctors are a bunch of cunts who don't want you to realise that what they know is just common sense, by using a lof of words with Ancient Greek or Latin origin to sound fucking fancy and make you think they're smart.

Why say renal or even nephrological when what you're really fucking talking about is KIDNEY related? At least hepatic is more or less the same in both Greek and Latin, but what you really fucking mean to say is LIVER related. Does it really take a lot longer to say "inflammation" than to add "itis" as a suffix to the Greek or Latin name of the anatomical part which you're fucking talking about, or "ectomy" as a suffix to the bit you want to cut out... et cetera, et cetera (sic.).

The fear that we and our whole revered profession might be unmasked as a crock of shit - perfectly comprehendible by even those who think of themselves as academically challenged - drives the desire for secrecy and anonymity. We must live lives of quiet desperation, lest our secrets be exposed and society ceases to worship us for our so-called achievements, qualifications, professional job title and specialist knowledge.

The narcissists want to be worshipped. The narcissists enjoy being worshipped. The narcissists enjoy the special place which society has allocated them, but they know in their heart-of-hearts that they do not deserve to be put on a pedestal; they know they're not special and different, but they hope that nobody ever finds out the truth.

An enormous amount of effort goes into protecting our so-called 'reputation' because we are paranoid that we will be ejected from professions, which confer a privileged position in society. That paranoia is not misplaced, because the privilege only exists because of the conspiracy of the members of elite groups, who seek to maintain the illusion of being a cut above the rest.

This culture of secrecy and anonymity is destroying people's mental health, because of the paranoia that it breeds, and the way that it prevents us from talking about our true thoughts and feelings. Anonymity stops us from being socially connected and instead creates elitist cliques who treat outsiders and any non-conformists with inhumane brutality, while at the same time becoming increasingly arrogant and delusional. Those who think they're the top dogs really do believe that they are manyfold better - more valuable human beings - than the struggling masses.

Anonymity is the wrong approach. Unless we speak in plain English and speak the truth, publicly, then we perpetuate the myth that there's a so-called 'natural' pecking order. The elitist establishment believes the vast majority of humanity deserves to starve in squalor, because they are genetically inferior, which can be empirically demonstrated to be untrue.

I write to you, fully aware that there might be very severe consequences for speaking the unspeakable. To not write this would make me a co-conspirator in the greatest evil ever perpetrated against humanity; the most despicable act of brutal mass-murder, torture, slavery and inhumane treatment of billions of people, on the grounds that a handful of narcissists think they're better than everybody else. Cunts.

I am not anonymous. I've got as much to lose as anybody else, but I bravely choose to act against my selfish vested interests, in defiance of the establishment and those who willingly and eagerly fatten themselves, while knowing that they do so at the expense of the rest of humanity, because they want to feel special and different.

Tags: #privacy #socialmedia

This is a story about marketing yourself...

The image I present of myself online is thoroughly incompatible with my professional life and my aspirations to meet a girl and start a relationship. I speak my mind and I'm very honest about some things I've experienced which are taboos. It's not very common in our society to talk about our failures and other unflattering things which might paint us in an unfavourable light. I would attract a lot of stigma and prejudice if I was up-front about unpalatable things from my past.

Half-naked photos of yourself and presenting yourself as an all-round faultless great guy - a real man's man - is not a particularly successful strategy. I include the image above ironically. Unsolicited dick pics don't work either, but there are a lot of men who seem to think that they do.

For a brief time I had included the fact that I'm a writer on my online dating bio, but I realised that my blog doesn't exist in a particularly sanitised form and I would hate to be writing with hesitancy, thinking about how my words would be received by an online love interest who's just getting to know me. I'm very exposed in a way that most people usually aren't. You almost never have the opportunity to peer deep into somebody's psyche and read about all their deepest darkest secrets.

Earlier in the year I tried dating with my blog offered as part of the package of information presented. Usually the information we have when dating is a name, age, a few photos, a very short bio, then after some discussion we know what a person does for a living, whether they have kids, whether they have pets, where they studied, where they've travelled and a few other details which actually tell us very little about that person's character. It's not a lot to make a decision about whether it's promising enough to warrant an actual in-person date, but we have the writing style - from text message chat - to gauge whether a person is intellectually stimulating and easy to converse with or not. Subtle language cues tell us whether we're of a socioeconomically similar group, which is important not least for reasons of insecurity and feelings that we were hard-done-by in some way. Nobody likes feeling poor in the company of somebody who's enjoyed wealth and privilege, or feeling stupid in the company of somebody who's been lucky enough to enjoy a great education.

The problem with having my blog as part of the information bundle, is that there's an almost unlimited amount to be consumed and processed, which is available anywhere, anytime. It's tempting for almost anybody with even a casual interest in other people's lives, to dig and dig, and it raises troublesome questions which would normally never come about in the course of a relationship, because we don't usually have access to the inside of somebody's mind.

I'm quite comfortable with friends and the general public having access to the entirety of the dark recesses of my mind, because I've found that most people are sympathetic and kind, and they've used the information for purposes which have been very beneficial to me. I get messages of support. I make connections with people, and that feels good. I feel that people care about me.

When somebody who I have a romantic interest in starts to read my blog, however, it can make me somewhat paranoid about being judged negatively. Indeed, many people have a very negative view of those who do online dating, believing the online world to be a hotbed of murderers, rapists, sadists, perverts, pedophiles and other unsavoury characters. If you're looking to find out something bad about me, and you're hoping for your worst fears to be confirmed, then there's a lot of material here which can be twisted by the mind of a sad, miserable, negative and mistrusting person, who has no ability to perceive their own flaws and less-than-perfect personality. I make a leap of faith every day by choosing to expose myself and make myself vulnerable, sharing my innermost thoughts and feelings as honestly and candidly as I can. To abuse my trust by twisting my words and turning me into a monster is not very nice, but it's what a lot of people do, because they're looking for reasons to reject, not reasons to connect.

Similarly, prospective employers are looking for reasons to reject, and this is the reason why my blog is not at all compatible with my professional life. There's an unwritten rule in the corporate world, which is that you never talk about your flaws and failures. It would be career-ending if I was to include a link to this blog on my CV or LinkedIn. The contents of this blog is gold dust to the gatekeepers who very much want to see me penniless and destitute; unemployable.

I need companionship and intimacy. I need a job. I have to play by the unwritten rules of society, so that means keeping certain parts of my life under wraps. It would be too much for your average small-minded square to process, and it's almost too much for even the most kind and compassionate, to get beyond the usual knee-jerk reaction which is to reject anybody atypical.

There's nothing I need to tell anybody per se. I don't have any secrets particularly. I'm not trying to cover up a drug habit or pretending to be something I'm not. I'm not trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes. I'm not withholding important or relevant information.

To mistreat people by treating them with suspicion and mistrust is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think somebody's going to let you down or do something bad, you're increasing the likelihood of that happening, because you're ostracising and persecuting that person, just like so many others do too. If you're expecting bad things to happen and you're withholding trust and commitment - refusing to take a leap of faith - there can only be one outcome, ultimately.

I think the decision to have this open document is the right one, but I still need to get laid every now and again.

Tags: #dating #sex #socialmedia #writing #privacy

This is a story about late capitalism...

Having been part of the JPMorgan team who built a system to process more than a quadrillion dollars of credit default swaps per annum, and also the system to find out who was holding the pass-the-parcel when the music stopped, only to discover it was full of dog shit, I feel pretty responsible for the credit crunch and financial crisis, which has plunged us into a global recession many times worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s. I'm pretty disillusioned with capitalism.

I've had front-row seats for most of the insanity of the past 25 years - dot com, Y2K, 9/11, credit crunch, financial crisis of 2007/8, Bitcoin etc. etc. - and I was a fully paid-up subscribing member of the 2% profiting handsomely from others' misfortune with my snout deep in the trough.

By 2008 I was sickened by the way I'd turned a blind eye and ignored my moral compass, because I enjoyed the wealth and privilege. I was able to buy a house, a yacht, a speedboat, sportscars and go on enough luxury holidays to help me set aside my misgivings about what the investment banks were doing to the global economy, by creating fabricated securities such as derivatives, which were somehow valued at a vastly greater sum of money than the aggregate value of all the precious metals, gems, land, property, cattle, food, commodities, industrial plant, machinery, companies and cash that exists on the whole planet. I was shackled with golden handcuffs - who in their right mind would give up their trophy wife and pull their kids out of private school, to slum it with the hoi polloi?

I decided that I was sickened by the bullshit synthetic world of digital securities and digital bank balances, and the global computer network with all its software and data, which actually doesn't create anything real or tangible. It seemed like the infamous tulip speculation bubble in the Netherlands during the 1600s. It seemed like utter insanity to place so much importance on a bunch of binary ones and zeros which exist nowhere but as a tiny magnetic bump on a disk platter, an electron in a memory chip or a photon in a fibre optic cable. The entire weight of the internet is estimated to be about the same as a golf ball, if you add up all the electrons. It's madness to think that any of our digital scorekeeping - i.e. your bank balance - will matter at all when global warming really starts to bite.

I quit my investment banking IT job at JPMorgan and I retrained as an electrician. I wanted to build real and tangible things with my hands. I wanted to learn a trade which couldn't be outsourced or automated. I wanted to escape the virtual realm of high finance and software and into a field which could make a real difference in people's lives. Try living for a day without your lighting, heating, hot water, power shower, cooker, dishwasher, washing machine, tumble dryer, kettle, toaster, fridge, freezer and the myriad other electrical appliances which you don't even notice are there in your life, saving you untold time and physical labour.

It turns out, we don't value tradesmen as much as we value bankers.

I could've scraped a living, but it was hard work with little reward. The work was dangerous and dirty and the general public expected to get everything for virtually nothing. I didn't much fancy working my whole life with the threat of bankruptcy and my home being repossessed, never having enough spare money to enjoy what little leisure time I had. Economically, it wasn't viable to be a tradesman, except as a kind of break-even hobby. It made no economic sense to use 100% of my brains and brawn, but receive so little reward.

Subsequently, I've returned to making software systems for banks, doing so as a consultant and getting paid even more. I've been a leech on a leech, and the cash has poured in.

Throughout this journey my priorities have completely changed. Instead of aspiring to acquire and accumulate vastly more than I would ever need, and fantasising about buying bigger and better houses, yachts and other material possessions, my fantasies have taken on a completely different guise.

I've been fantasising about quitting the rat race, and having secure housing. I've been fantasising about having enough money to read books and write. I've been fantasising about having time and being free from the tyranny of the alarm clock and bullshit jobs.

I'd live in a Soviet-style apartment and have beige products - no consumer choice - if I could be intellectually free. I'd travel on the bus and give up exotic foreign holidays if I no longer had to play along with the charade of late-capitalism, where we are all commuting too far, working too many hours, and living under constant threat of losing our jobs, losing our homes and subsequently being made destitute. Given the choice, I choose equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity.

It seems pretty obvious that the equal opportunities experiment has run its course and it would be inhumane to continue. Free markets are efficient, but they are only efficient at stripping away people's security, happiness, dignity and any hope of ever feeling content or satisfied. Capitalism is - by its very nature - a force which will price gouge humanity for the basic essentials, such as food, housing, transport, healthcare, medicine and to some extent education.

Our poorest 50% struggle to afford the basics, while even the very rich are miserably struggling to attain the academic qualifications which will allow them to compete, lest they be trampled by the struggling masses, desperate to realise their opportunities. The competitive element of capitalism has turned us into slaves. Our lives our wretched and appalling.

I desperately want to drop out of the rat race, but to do so would see me persecuted. I wouldn't even be allowed to sleep rough and beg for food without being arrested and locked up. Society offers me no ability to house, feed and clothe myself, with any degree of security or quality of life. Working a zero-hours contract McJob is not going to earn me enough to pay rent and bills, buy food, travel to work and have any kind of life worth living. The theft of our time and freedom is an awful crime perpetrated against most of society. The chance to stop and smell the roses is denied to us when we do not have secure food and housing.

The only viable solution that I can see is universal basic income (UBI). I just don't see how else we're going to be able to stop the terrible decline in living standards and save humanity from the tyranny of exploitation by the capitalists. It seems like we're at breaking point when even the middle class children are becoming slaves to the capitalists, with enormous loans for their education, which might win them a low-paid job in a completely unrelated field from their university degree if they're lucky - the unlucky ones end up unemployed.

It's a sad state of affairs when our fantasies revolve around basic needs, such as secure housing.

It's not my idea of a good time, sitting at home smoking cannabis and playing computer games, but I don't see any reason why it's not morally acceptable or right to allow people to do that, and not threaten them with homelessness and starvation if they don't get a bullshit McJob and otherwise comply with the tyranny of late-capitalism.

The idea that we live in a land of opportunity and that hard work will bring rewards has been proven to be a lie, and ever more-so during each passing year. It's time to let people live lives of quiet dignity, rather than frantic futile desperation.

It's time to just give everybody enough money to live in peace.

Tags: #economics #banking #computing #politics #debt #capitalism

This is a story about a dawning realisation...

Moments of clarity elude me. My life consists of a long string of crises, with each moment demanding my full and undivided attention, such that I'm unable to reflect upon the bigger picture and see the error of my ways. Very occasionally I am able to contemplate the way I've behaved in the past with some objectivity; some insight. As I emerge from a fog of alcohol, tranquillisers, sedatives, sleeping pills and mind-numbing painkillers, I'm assaulted with an onslaught of memories from the years of instability which I've lived through recently. My flashbacks and dawning realisation about the things I've said and done while in the grips of insanity, cause me to wince and gasp aloud. I yell at myself: "what the hell were you thinking?". I cringe in embarrassment.

To say that I'm thinking more clearly today would be unwise, unless I've learned nothing from the mistakes of the past. Every time I think I'm regaining my grip on sanity, it seems that I'm mistaken. All I can do is keep my mouth shut and try to remain humble. I seem highly prone to overconfidence; delusions of grandeur. The world has fought hard to subdue me and keep me in my place; to grind me under its heel. The world has won. I'm not going to make any significant contribution to humanity. I'm nothing; a nobody.

"You've done more in one day than X did the whole time they were here" a colleague said to me yesterday. It's hard to not take that grain of salt and get carried away. It's hard not to believe that I've pulled off another amazing feat of resurrection from the ashes. It's hard to reconcile the journey I've been on and the things which should have dealt me a death-blow with my recovery. It's hard to be humble and ordinary when I know that I'm unique amongst my peers in having been through things which are not only career-ending, but also life-ending too in many cases. It's hard to not believe my own bullshit, when I successfully blag my way back into my old life and seemingly pick up where I left off, except I know I've done it against the odds - with significant additional adversity. All the fuel for the fire of delusions of grandeur is there aplenty.

What happened to my peers? Of those who didn't descend into the depths of mental illness, addiction, homelessness, destitution, bankruptcy and other life-destroying things, have they fared any better than I have?

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree and, as expected, the outcome of our lives was very much dictated by the pre-existing socioeconomic conditions we were born into. Briefly I joined the ranks of a group destined for greatness, but as soon as the storm clouds gathered it seemed obvious that I would be driven to run for cover. I've ended up with ostensibly the same outcome as my school-friends. Arguably, it's all the more remarkable that I've been able to maintain a high standard of living and remain highly employable, despite the incredibly averse events of my recent life, but it's no reason to believe I'm special or different.

When I think about the setbacks I've inflicted upon myself, I'm saddened. How much have I damaged my brain? How badly have my future prospects been harmed by my years in the wilderness? How can an old dog be expected to learn new tricks, when that old dog is also sick and senile?

I've started to become racked with self doubt.

I see that friends have been consistent throughout their lives in the furtherment of their education and pursuit of knowledge. I see that friends have stayed abreast of current affairs and are well-read; well-schooled in matters of relevance to today's society. On the other hand I have large gaps in my life when I was subdued by mental illness, acrimonious divorce, addiction, homelessness and near-bankruptcy. Entire years of my life have been written off and I have few experiences and memories which would be relevant and useful in civilised society. My considerable head-start in life has been swapped for a considerable disadvantage.

I struggle to remember that I'm no longer 3 or 4 years younger than any of my colleagues who've reached a similar point in their career. I struggle to remember that I'm no longer an exceptional rising young talent. I struggle to remember that I've squandered all those years of advantage and I'm now playing catch-up.

If I shut my mouth and just listen my day-to-day existence is quite a lot more enjoyable than it was when I was a younger man. When I was younger I was frustratingly held back by dimwitted dinosaurs. Now it's me who is the dimwitted dinosaur playing catch up. It's fun to be learning, of course, which is making this period of my career much more enjoyable and much less frustrating, but I forget that I'm no longer a young prodigious talent - instead I'm out of date and out of touch. I have nothing particularly valuable to offer anymore.

I'm very fortunate that I'm working with some super-smart people. I'm now feeling the benefits of being older, which I always begrudged those who were given more power and authority simply because of their age. People defer to me when they really shouldn't, because my years of experience don't tell the whole story - nobody knows that for the best part of 5 years I was no use to anybody.

5 years!

Yes, I need to acknowledge how long it's been that I've been going backwards, not forwards.

Of course, I'm wily enough to have made sure that I do enough work for prestigious organisations every year that my spotless CV is kept immaculate, but in reality I completely stalled and ceased all personal development. Of course I gained a great deal of knowledge and experience in the areas of mental health, addiction, financial problems, homelessness and suchlike, but those things are not useful in civilised middle-class wealthy society. Everything I've learned in my many off-piste years has been at the expense of the prime opportunity to transform myself from an ambitious young man into a very successful rich person. My momentum has been enough to carry me through events which would destroy most people, but that's the only thing that's presently exceptional about me; I'm otherwise completely average and humdrum now.

Perhaps I was always destined for mediocrity, but we'll never know. What we can say for certain is that I've done significant damage to my physical and mental health with a lifestyle that completely threw caution to the wind; an utter refusal to compromise or comply. I've taken things to the very most extreme point of survivability, and it should be unsurprising that there has been some irreversible damage.

Talking about the irreversible damage to my brain is the subject for another blog post, and not something I'm delving into right now, suffice to say that traumatic brain injuries are not 100% recoverable and cause permanent personality changes and suchlike. The brain is an incredible organ and its plasticity means that a person can re-learn how to function in ways that are an excellent imitation of who and what they used to be, but damage has been done and it would be foolish to think that it'd be possible to return to how things were before.

I rely a very great deal on what can only be described as 'muscle memory' for my survival. When I attempt to make quick judgements and shoot from the hip I'm very successful in areas which were my bread and butter for my whole career, but my judgement and decisions are terrible when I wander into new and unfamiliar areas. Working in an office full of developers on a huge software project, I'm in my element and nobody would think that I'm out of place; nobody would suspect that I've had a chequered recent past. However, when I'm put into an environment where there's an element of bluffing and blagging, I'm no longer credible or able to be convincing in the same way as when I was a younger man - I veer worryingly towards stupid and outlandish thoughts, actions and statements, which I cringe with embarrassment about later when the pressure is off and I'm able to reflect objectively.

I always used to pride myself on my ability to blag and bluff, but now my overconfidence is way beyond my abilities to pull it off. I'm pleased that I'm still able to learn new things and get up to speed very quickly, but I'm also upset that I'm behind and I'll never catch up, and my bluffs and blags just make me look stupid and ignorant. I used to pride myself on proving myself capable of proving the snickering, sneering and doubting critics wrong. Now I'm full of nothing but embarrassment and shame from all the moments when I've said something which later turned out to be stupid.

If you want to think of me as a stupid man you could examine the recent years of insanity with the benefit of hindsight and re-imagine that period as if I was making a series of well-considered decisions, without bias or the influence of circumstances, and conclude that it could only be due to stupidity that I ended up in the dire situations that I did.

It's kinda hard to defend myself from anybody who wants to label me as stupid.

It strikes me that there are a lot of people who're queuing up to take turns calling me stupi. There are very many who would like to see me flipping burgers or stacking supermarket shelves. Those jobs are important, of course, but I don't understand the appeal of underestimating the useful function of a person; diminishing their utility and value in society. Why are some so-called friends so keen to label me as stupid and useless; worthless?

Naturally, I've expelled toxic people from my life, but I do need to be aware that the truth probably lies somewhere in-between the extremes. As I've said, I'm very very good at doing the kind of work I've been doing for 21+ years as my full-time career, despite a few years hiatus, but I must admit that I struggle in areas which haven't been my daily bread and butter - I can be a fish out of water, at times. Is it stupidity? It's certainly stupidity if I'm not self-aware and able to have the insight to see that I'm very flawed and damaged in some areas.

I function effectively with a highly simplified life, but I feel very stupid in arenas where most others flourish. Most others flounder where I flourish though, so at least I have an anchor point - I can point to a successful career where I'm thriving and functioning seemingly without consequences for my off-piste years.

Of course I want to have a social life and a relationship with a girl. Of course I want to have friends and do normal stuff, but at the moment I'm just doing the things which keep me in the game: working and earning money. Later when I'm rich again, I can be as eccentric and weird as I like. For now, I have to hide my eccentricity by keeping my mouth shut.

I'm sure I've been made a bit stupid by my brain-melting activities of recent years, but I'm not sure it's wholly accurate to characterise me as completely stupid and dimwitted. It's probably a dumb idea to write me off as stupid, because I've made a lifelong habit of proving people wrong.

It's useful to think of myself as stupid as an antidote to overconfidence and delusions of grandeur, which are quite naturally stoked by my remarkable recovery. Perhaps it's even useful to force myself to think of my recovery as unremarkable, despite evidence to the contrary. I should definitely be as humble as possible, especially during the fragile period when I'm getting back on my feet.

For every remarkable achievement and person we revere, we have to ask ourselves how did they cross over from mediocrity and ordinary averageness, to becoming notable? One has to ask, do many of our airhead celebrities even know how stupid they are? It seems like ignorance of our own stupidity is a prerequisite for success.

I write as if I'm already famous. I can't see any point in behaving differently. Yes, I might die as a ridiculed nobody whose writing goes unnoticed and death is unwept. So what? Fine... a stupid egotistical nobody wrote and published a million words... so what?

I have no idea how I'm going to reflect on things in years to come, but that I'm able to reflect at all hints at the fact that my moments of madness are not characteristic of complete and utter stupidity. Perhaps I'm protesting too much. Only time will tell.

Tags: #writing #homeless #career #brain #bipolar #fame #infamy #socialmedia