london – Page 3 – Nick Grant

Nick Grant

Tag: london

  • It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better

    This is a story about nonlinear progression…

    Barricade

    There’s my bedroom door. As you can see, you can bolt it closed, which is a security feature I added myself. Later, I decided to slide a knife behind the wooden surround and screw that into the wood that surrounds the door. Then I decided that a second knife was probably needed, in case the first one snapped as the blade flexed. Then I decided that I needed something else and finally arrived at the decision to dismantle one of my crutches and part of my bed, so that I had a wooden slat and an aluminium tube, which in theory provided some kind of extra security…. I don’t know. I’d been doing this for hours by this point, completely exhausted.

    What you’re really looking at is the mind, after losing five or six nights of sleep, skipping fifteen to eighteen meals, and being confined to one room, with all the windows obscured.

    Who would want to come and do me any harm? Well, when you attempt to balance a crutch and a bed slat on a door handle at 4am – in total darkness – I imagine anybody within earshot would probably want to see me lynched.

    I used to go and hide in the bathroom, because it had a proper lock, but then my flatmate unlocked it from outside with a butter knife. Luckily I was right by the door so I locked it again. He was only checking if I was alive, but it’s strange how nobody talks to you when you descend into one of these periods of isolation.

    In my mind, the lock on my balcony door had been picked. Then, the large glass patio door had been noiselessly slid open, and men clad in black wearing stealth shoes had been able to cross my wooden floor without alerting me to their presence. Meanwhile, more men clad in black, had entered my spare bedroom through a window. These men removed the ‘security’ features from my front door – for example, a hammer that falls on the floor if the door is opened, which is a kind of improvised intruder alarm – allowing more of their team to enter my flat and prepare to batter down my bedroom door.

    Hiding in bathrooms is awful. The floor is freezing tiles and that’s about it. There’s plenty to drink and you can answer the call of nature, but other than that, it’s just cold and boring. I spend half my time barricading the bathroom door and the other half looking through the crack under the door, to see if I can see the men in black in my bedroom. It’s a really narrow crack and you can hardly see anything, so you start to imagine that you’ve seen things. This is why I’ve stopped hiding in bathrooms.

    I have a bed that lifts up so you can store stuff underneath it. If you didn’t know, you’d just think it was regular Ikea bed. I actually slept under there for 8 hours or so. It’s fucking roasting and I’m sure there’s inadequate air recirculation, but I seemed to survive.

    Every time I get so hungry or thirsty or just fed up with the bullshit of it all, I take down the barricades and say “come on then, men in black, do your worst!”. Then I usually just collapse in bed and sleep for hours and hours. Nothing bad has happened in my home, ever. The police have kicked the bedroom door in a couple of times at my parents’, which is what triggered this whole paranoia. That’s my parents for you: they’d rather have a door smashed off its hinges than talk to their son. I’ve tried the basics, like saying “use your words” but that’s obviously too much effort for them.

    That’s the thing about paranoia: it doesn’t come from nowhere. There are seeds and they grow into nightmares. Doesn’t it creep you out, the idea of some twisted sick voyeur watching you while you take a shit or even just sleeping peacefully in bed? Doesn’t it creep you out, the idea of your bedroom becoming a viewing gallery, where people come and go as they please, to watch whatever you’re up to?

    I haven’t written in a while, and that’s because I’d given up hope. I’d given up hope that my foot/ankle could be fixed and I could stop the massive doses of painkillers, that were making me so doped up I couldn’t work. I’d given up hope that I had enough runway left, to be able to get another IT contract, especially after HSBC lowered my overdraft limit by the best part of £2,000. None of the sums added up. None of the calculations could show that there was a way that I could make my money last until I got some more income.

    Then, a windfall from an investment I was managing on somebody else’s behalf. A gift from a kind and caring person. Some help getting my spare bedroom ready to rent out to a flatmate – it had been left in an awful state by the last guy, who owes me approximately £6,000 – which will bring deposit money and cut my burn rate by half. Finally, I managed to get a bridging loan, which is getting paid into my account today. Turns out my credit rating is pretty awesome. One of my non-HSBC credit cards just had its limit doubled, so I can live on that to some extent. My interest bill is awful, but put in the context of what I can earn as an IT contractor, it don’t mean shit.

    I’m crashing at my girlfriend’s so that I’m in a different environment. Also, because there are workmen replacing the planking on my balcony, but the amount of noise they’re making, you’d think they were demolishing the entire block of flats.

    The lounge/diner/kitchen massive room in my flat – with patio doors onto the balcony at one end and a dual-aspect panoramic view of the River Thames – is fucking awesome, but when I’m depressed I only go in there to get more unhealthy snacks, which I take back to my stinky bedroom, with the curtains drawn, to watch endless amounts of on-demand TV.

    I don’t like it when alcoholics describe themselves as ‘in recovery’ when they’ve been teetotal for years and years. I’m ‘in recovery’ in that I lost at least 14kg in body weight, since my peak (although that was somewhat skewed by fluid retention). I lost more sleep and skipped more meals than you’d ever believe. I need to recover. I need to catch up on sleep. I need nutrients and to allow my body to lay down a bit of fat. I need to have some time where I’m not worried about men in black kicking the door in, and where I can have sex with my girlfriend without worrying that some sicko voyeur is watching through a tiny gap in the curtains.

    Working so hard, with such enormous effort and stress, to get out of hospital and get to the first day of my new job, was one of the most difficult, challenging and against-the-odds things I’ve ever done. I did it. I fucking did it. Then, to have it snatched away was a cruelty that broke me. It broke me. It broke my will to live. It broke my will to keep trying. I had to hide from the world for an entire week, just in shock, unable to allow myself to think, because my thoughts would have turned straight to suicide. I had to get through a week without a single bit of thinking, otherwise I was dead; it hurt me that badly and left me in such a shitty situation.

    Since then, I’ve been careless with my life and everything in it. I’ve got an amazing girlfriend, but I risked losing her. I’ve got a super helpful friend who’s always there for me, but I risked pushing them away. I know people are monitoring the situation through this blog and social media, and would act if they were worried, perhaps to send the police round to find my corpse. It’d be a better idea to just reach out and ask if I’m OK and say you’re worried, using any of the tech communication channels we have – SMS, iMessage, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter DM… the list is endless.

    My long-suffering girlfriend ended up speaking with somebody I know through my blog and Facebook, because he was quite rightly concerned. I’m really touched when I find out about these little webs of people who are like a safety net. Nets have holes and I might fall through one – as I have fallen through many of the cracks in life – but it does feel like I have more to live for, knowing that people care enough to speak to each other; share information; discuss what to do.

    I’m now admiring my newly flat stomach (but seriously, don’t do the supercrack diet) and feeling a little bit more relaxed about having some runway to get back to work once my foot/ankle is fixed… although ironically, I stopped taking the painkillers, but I broke my wrist, so go figure.

    You’d seriously hate me if you knew everything about my charmed existence. I left my apartment which faces West – a view of almost every famous London landmark: Shard, London Eye, Tower Bridge, St Paul’s Cathedral, Walkie Talkie, Cheesegrater, Gherkin, BT Tower etc. etc. – and I’m now recovering in my girlfriend’s apartment which faces East, so I can look at the cable cars going over the Thames, the O2 Centre (a.k.a. the Millennium Dome), the Cutty Sark and Royal Naval College and other parts of beautiful old Greenwich.

    I’m off most of the meds now. Coming off a high dose of Tramadol, I wondered why I was itchy, nauseous and sweaty, and realised I was junk sick. Opiate withdrawal ain’t that bad really.

    I’ve had an MRI scan of my foot/ankle, and on Friday somebody is going to test the nerve wiring from my foot all the way up my leg, to check for any broken connections. Then, there’ll be another consultation and possibly an operation. Things are going quite quick because the NHS outsourced me to a private hospital.

    Just need to remember not to get too relaxed at the moment!

     

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  • Do You Feel Safe Now?

    This is a story about the right to bear arms…

    Police horse

    Defence budgets are soaring. The UK is spending £205 billion to upgrade the nuclear deterrent. The annual NHS budget is half that amount. We could give the NHS an extra £350 million per week, for over 11 years, instead of spending our money on weapons of mass destruction.

    There are two vans full of armed police parked outside Canary Wharf station, every single working day. I pass them on my way to work. Now, there are also mounted police.

    Our foreign policies are abhorrent. The rhetoric used by politicians and the media has whipped up a frenzy of nationalism, xenophobia, bigotry and racism. I used to be proud that Britain was a diverse and inclusive nation, but now I’m embarrassed to discover that there is a marginal majority who have this crazy idea about raising the drawbridge and lowering the portcullis: fortress England.

    I saw a meme the other day that asked what the hell is wrong with you if you’re so afraid of ISIS that you’re not prepared to grant asylum to women & children who are fleeing ISIS. It’s a damn good point well made.

    The great success that is hidden in the decline of the British empire, is that we managed to leave things in relatively good order. The partition of India and Pakistan was mostly successful, except for one stupid idiot who had no idea about the Kashmir region, but drew the border anyway. Britain is still on good terms with both India and Pakistan and I have no problem getting a visa to visit either country. I’ve been to India many times and they’ve embraced English as an official language. The railway system and a lot of other bureaucratic systems are run exactly as they were under British rule.

    Again, when Britain left the Middle East, Gulf States and North Africa, after World War II, it was a masterclass in diplomacy and how to divide and rule areas that would otherwise be torn apart by internecine strife. Yes, it’s true that dictators were installed. However, before the Gulf War, there was a thriving middle class and excellent infrastructure, not only in Iraq but throughout the whole Middle East. The standard of living in Libya was amazing. Bashar al-Assad brought the Internet to Syria in the mid-nineties, and Assad was somebody who the British had excellent diplomatic ties with: he was one of our best friends in the region.

    Britain’s policy had always been to rule through diplomacy and bureaucracy. Britain’s policy was not one of invasion, conquest, occupation, arms races and domination through sheer military might. The reason Britain had a huge empire is because we are a mercantile nation, who negotiated many trade deals and established much of the flow of goods over land and sea that we see today. Britain didn’t want war. Britain wanted to be friends with everybody, so they could trade with the world.

    Now, with the American ‘shock and awe’ tactics, with SCUD missiles raining down on innocent civilians from hundreds of miles away, with no warning, we’re fucking hated. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine not even hearing the approach of an aircraft, seeing the falling bomb and having a second to duck and cover? Can you imagine you’re sitting there watching TV, and the next thing you know your house is rubble and your whole family have been killed or maimed?

    The American occupation, or simply their military presence, in the Middle East was highly offensive and threatening. America likes to flex its military muscle. America likes to boast about its cutting-edge ‘defence’ technology… which we all know means offensive weapons.

    Where’s the fucking bravery of warfare, if you’re controlling a drone from some air-conditioned office type place, in a building in America, blowing up people in a country thousands of miles away? How that fuck is that being a brave soldier?

    And so, we saw the birth of asymmetrical and guerrilla warfare. What we call insurgency is simply the only way that the occupied nations stand any chance of fighting back against the invading forces. The people who we call insurgents are really freedom fighters: fighting for the freedom from invasion and occupation by the country with the world’s largest ‘defence’ budget – America.

    I’m going to keep putting ‘defence’ inside inverted commas like that, because it’s not fucking defence. Those weapons get used for offensive purposes far more than for defensive purposes.

    The top selling guns in America are hand guns. The top gun retailer is Walmart… we know them as ASDA supermarket in the UK. The top selling bullets are rounds that go in hand guns. What the actual fuck? Surely 1 bullet equals 1 dead person, if you’re using a hand gun. I can’t imagine that anybody goes hunting deer with a hand gun, can you?

    This culture of fetishising deadly weapons – brandishing them and carrying them on the public streets – has become ubiquitous. Giving guns to every ordinary policemen and women. Encouraging people to own a gun at home and introducing laws like stand-your-ground have caused a massive spike in the number of guns and bullets sold, and the number of people who are killed in shootings.

    My fear is that Britain moves closer and closer to the American model of foreign and domestic policy.

    I would hate it if our police were all armed with guns. No policeman should be judge, jury and executioner. I would hate it if private citizens were allowed to own handguns, which serve no purpose other than to shoot people. The self defence argument crumbles to dust if you can keep guns out of everybody’s hands. I would bet you that 99 out of 100 burglaries in the UK are committed by people who are not carrying guns.

    The more the rhetoric and the hate ramps up, and the more our strong historical positive diplomatic relationships with many leaders in the Middle East deteriorate, as well as the whole region descending into a chaotic power struggle, the more that Britain becomes a proxy target for the many many people who hate America, because America killed their children, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, parents, cousins, friends and countless other innocent victims of cowardly missile, bomb and drone strikes.

    “Don’t shoot until you can see the whites of their eyes” they used to say. Soldiers used to have to live with the horror of knowing they’d taken the life of another human being. Now, your drone controller hops in his car and drives home to his family, at the end of his shift. He has no idea what kind of carnage and destruction was unleashed in the aftermath of his drone strike. He has no idea whether the intelligence was correct, or if he just murdered a bunch of innocent people.

    The American way of doing things is not making me feel safe. Donald Trump does not make me feel safe. Border controls and slamming the door in the face of people fleeing persecution and war, does not make me feel safe. Dropping bombs on Syria does not make me feel safe. The ‘special relationship’ with America does not make me feel safe.

    We belong to Europe, and we owe it to our former colonies to maintain peace and stability. We are fucking up two of our greatest postwar achievements, and letting America ruin world peace.

    I don’t feel safe.

     

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  • Home Sweet Home

    This is a story about travelling…

    Tower of broken dreams

    Ah, back in the shadow of the towers of broken dreams, at long last. I was very well looked after over Christmas, but there’s nowhere quite like home, is there?

    I’ve fought hard to get back to London and make it work, so I’m somewhat superstitious about ever leaving the capital.

    There are a lot of dreamers and runaways who try to come to London and seek their fortune, but they fuck off home to Mum if it all goes tits up. London is my home and I have no backup option.

    I was made to feel very welcome in the home of my host, over Christmas, but we all need somewhere to call our own, don’t we?

    I never wanted to live near Canary Wharf, but I always wanted to live by water. Who wouldn’t? Central London can be lovely, quiet and beautiful. It’s the never-ending overcrowded suburbs that are the pits: zone 99 on the tube. Steer clear of the hoi polloi and tourist hordes and London has everything you could ever want.

    It was enjoyable to get out into the rural countryside, but it’s not sustainable is it? What the fuck would you do for work: to earn a living and pay the mortgage?

    And so, I’ve got life the right way round in my opinion: walk to work during the week and then drive to the countryside at the weekend. Relaxing in quiet villages, enjoying the rural idyll, and then back to reality on Monday morning. I can never understand why commuters subject themselves to such misery and exhaustion.

    Those village greens, cricket whites, country pubs, woodland walks, ancient oaks and British wildlife… they’re reserved for rich retired people and lottery winners. To try and have it all would only compromise you; spread you thin.

    For sure, it’d be good to have a huge detached house with acres of land, letting the kids play in the massive garden, having some dogs. But, the economy got fucked up by the baby boomers, who expect to retire in obscene luxury, while their kids and grandkids pay the price: job insecurity, low pay, overinflated house prices, long working hours, no respect, no prospects, fucked climate, over-competitive educational system and everything else that makes modern life miserable, depressing and anxiety-inducing.

    I’m pragmatic, so my solution is to stick close to where the jobs are, not waste my time and energy on stupid pipe dreams that only those with inherited wealth could ever hope to enjoy.

     

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  • Moral Bankruptcy

    This is a story about bad debt…

    Spilled soil

    When a person or an organisation defaults on their debts, it affects their credit rating. For a company, their bonds will be ‘junk’ and as such, they are not considered investment grade. It will be much harder and much more expensive to borrow money if you’ve defaulted on debts.

    Arguably, life would be much easier if we could all borrow money at close to 0% interest, directly from the central banks. We could go on a non-stop credit binge of epic proportions. Buy now, pay later.

    But what about It’s a Wonderful Life?

    In theory, a bank takes deposits from savers and lends out the money in the form of loans, overdrafts and mortgages. In theory, if you default on your loans, you’re risking people’s hard-earned life savings.

    Of course, the banks should hold enough reserves and do enough know your customer checks to make sure that they’re not lending to hopeless idiots, with no sense of a moral obligation to keep up the repayments on their loans. In practice, our demand for relentless growth and ever greater profits, means that the banks have done a shitty job of being able to withstand sudden spikes in distressed debt: people losing their jobs and businesses going bankrupt, for example.

    I’m sympathetic towards people who lose their jobs through no fault of their own. I’m sympathetic towards people who can’t work because of sickness or disability. I’m sympathetic towards people who are honest and hardworking. I’m sympathetic towards people who need a break.

    Banks have to put up with a certain amount of fraud and a number of reckless bankrupts. However, what about the idiots who shouldn’t even be in business, because they’re hopeless with cashflow; careless, unrealistic and dishonest? Well: it’s pretty hard to get a bank loan unless you’re a credible person with integrity.

    So, why borrow from me? I guess because I trust people and I expect them to act with common decency.

    Actually, the only thanks I’ve gotten for my trust & generosity is the pile of soil on my floor, things taken from my apartment and being ignored on Facebook by a couple of entitled moochers; bankrupts; parasites.

    This is my message of Christmas cheer. I’m in a financially precarious situation, not enjoying the festive season as much as I should be, because a couple of entitled parasitic people picked my pocket. They’ll go and stay with their mummies, in the bosom of the family home. I don’t have that option.

     

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  • Why I Will Never Take Antidepressants

    This is a story about homeostasis…

    Handful of pills

    Do I think I’m smarter than a doctor? Well, consider how much training in psychiatry a generalist has had. A general physician must be knowledgeable of heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, stomach, gall bladder, large intestine, small intestine, ears, nose, throat, eyes, bones, veins, arteries, muscles, tendons. A general physician must be familiar with viruses, bacterial infections and parasites. A general physician must be familiar with eczema, psoriasis, warts, bunions, corns, fungal infections and allergies. On top of all that, a general physician has a basic grounding in the most complex organ of all: the brain.

    “Would you take antibiotics if you got an infection?”

    This is good question. Antibiotics are a pretty blunt instrument. Antibiotics are very damaging to the health of the gut microbiome. There are “good” bacteria and there are “bad” bacteria, and killing both can be very bad for you. Widespread antibiotic use is also the reason why we have super resistant bacteria like MRSA. It’s quite possible that our heavy usage of antibiotics might be something that ends up causing huge numbers of people to die in a microbial infection epidemic.

    “Would you get your leg set in plaster cast if it was broken?”

    Yes, of course I would. Don’t be so stupid.

    “Would you take insulin if you were diabetic?”

    Yes, but I wouldn’t increase my risk of diabetes through bad diet.

    “So why don’t you take antidepressants to fix your broken brain chemistry?”

    Well, my brain chemistry isn’t broken. It’s not like there’s a broken bone. It’s not like I’ve got a malfunctioning pancreas. It’s not like I have an infection. My brain is doing what it’s supposed to do: it’s responding to environmental stimuli and telling me “WARNING: something is wrong!”.

    If you were feeling a sharp pain in your hand, you could take painkillers, or you could remove the sharp object that was hurting your hand. Pain is a feedback mechanism, telling your brain that something is damaging your body.

    My body is getting very damaged. I sit on my arse, bored out of my mind, getting fat and unfit. The environment I work in is completely unstimulating. The environment that I work in could not be more unnatural.

    Humans need natural light, exercise, social contact, stimulation, challenges, variation, goals. I have none of these things. I’m trapped inside a shitty office, mainly dealing with a computer. I don’t even need to get out of my chair all day long. The work that I do is mind-numbingly boring and easy. The only goal is to get old and die so I don’t have to go to work anymore.

    Obviously, my brain – as an organ – is a lot smarter than any amount of doctors and psychoanalysts. My brain is virtually unchanged from the one that evolved 2.5 million years ago. My brain kept me safe from sabre-tooth tigers and allowed me to kill wooly mammoths to have enough to eat. My brain told me to move when things got too hot, too cold, or when I was hungry, thirsty… whatever. My brain helped me survive. My brain knows when something is wrong.

    London’s daytime population is circa 11 million people, with millions of people travelling in from the surrounding areas to take part in the rat race. The rush hour tube is awful. There is no personal space. People are crammed together like sardines in a tin. You think that’s natural? You think that’s healthy?

    London’s roads are crammed with cyclists, mopeds, motorcycles, cars, vans, lorries, busses and trucks. Every road junction has traffic coming at you from all directions, and scurrying commuters trying to get across the road without being squashed.

    London’s buildings are packed to capacity. Any spare land is built upon, as high as the planning officers will allow. Every apartment is sublet and sublet, until many cheaper places have 5 people living in one room. Every office uses hotdesking to increase the capacity. Nobody has their own desk anymore.

    My brain screams out in agony at this assault on my senses. I have no car at the moment, so I can’t escape when it all gets too much. To escape would mean dragging my luggage on tubes and trains, along with the rest of the heaving masses of people.

    I have a little oasis of calm at home, where my apartment block is set back from the road in a gated community, and it overlooks the River Thames. At the back of the building, the sound of thousands of people, all shouting at one another, echoes around the courtyard off the hard surfaces of the buildings. Drunk people argue outside the pub. Road rage incidents occur between drivers. Teenagers squabble. Fraught mothers yell at their kids. Meathead fucknuggets yell at the top of their lungs to show off. At the front of the building, on the balcony, things are mostly calm, except for the riverboat cruises blaring out disco music at high volume, and the Thames speedboat thrill rides, zooming along at top speed.

    London is pure theatre, and I fear I might crumble to nothing without its stimulation, but the entertainment is purely monkeys at the zoo, squabbling, masturbating, copulating and screeching as loud as they can.

    It’s clear that I need to make environmental, lifestyle changes. The problem is not my brain chemistry. The problem is the shit that I’m forced to do. I need to be in London, because London’s where the jobs are. I need to work, because how else am I going to have a roof over my head and food on the table?

    An obvious quick fix for my mental health would be to escape to some more unspoiled wilderness, which isn’t so desperately overpopulated. I need to escape from dead-end boring jobs that I can do with my eyes closed, in shitty offices with artificial lighting, full of boring drones who I have no need or interest in talking to.

    It’s a shitty compromised situation, where I’m forced into yet more wage slavery until I reach a level of financial comfort where I can truly consider my health needs. It makes sense to earn a lot of money very quickly, so I can escape the rat race sooner. I need a financial safety net which I can use to find a job that doesn’t desperately depress me and stress me out.

    Life is fucking agony at the moment, but what choice do I have? Short term pain for long term gain, in theory.

    Work hard. Complain harder.

     

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  • London Runaways

    This is a story about being chewed up and spat out…

    Nicholas Lane

    London might only be the 17th most expensive city in the world to live in, but it’s still in the top 20. I call it home, and I have nowhere else I can saunter back to if things don’t work out. Where would I go?

    The work that I do demands that I have my bum on a seat in an office a stone’s throw away from the Bank of England, 5 days a week. It’s not like I’m one of those fabled tech workers who can just idly tap away on a keyboard from some remote location. I get paid to be in the same room as my colleagues, face to face. I need to be in London for my work. It’s not like I could just pop into town for meetings. I spend at least 40 hours a week immersed in my job.

    How bad do you want it?

    In order to remain in London, I’ve slept on night busses, in parks, on heathland, in squats and in hostels.

    Nobody is underwriting my risk. When things have gone wrong, it’s meant homelessness. I don’t mean the kind of homeless where you sleep on your friend’s couch. I mean the kind of homeless where you’re dirty and you’re getting robbed in a park, freezing cold, snatching some fitful sleep in a bush.

    Lots of petulant children will run away to London, get tired, hungry, dirty and find out that being homeless is pretty shit. They will slink off back to their families. I don’t have that option. Homeless means homeless, in my case.

    Sometimes being homeless means living in a dormitory with 15, 20 even 30 people, all snoring and farting. People come into the dorm and make a racket all night, and then they cause an almighty disturbance in the morning, as they fuck about with their luggage. Theft is a constant problem. People have taken my wallet out from under my pillow while I slept. None of your valuables are safe, even in the lockers, which are often prised open with crowbars. It’s exhausting, being in such close proximity to so many other human beings, night & day, 7 days a week. It’s relentless.

    Sleeping in the parks and on heathland is welcome relief from the stress of having to live in such close quarters with other people. The weather is a problem though: fine summer evenings are all well and good, but rain and cold weather are miserable. Muggings and thefts are a nightly occurence, as well as fights and generally being preyed upon by other homeless and vulnerable people. To keep clothed and clean is hard enough, let alone keeping a few possessions safe.

    When I was in the position where I knew that homelessness was a very real threat, I prepared. I would sit with homeless people and talk to them for hours, making notes on how to survive. I found out which night busses you could sleep on. I found out what the laws around squatting were. I learned how to spot overgrown back gardens of houses that were unoccupied, that could be used as campsites. I learned where the soup kitchens and Hare Krishna gave out free food. I learned how to spot friend from foe. I learned how to stay away from trouble. I learned where the cheapest hostels were. I learned how to stay reasonably clean and presentable, using showers in railway stations and such like.

    A friend stayed one night in a youth hostel, and asked me where you could get a shower when you were homeless. He was clearly considering the possibility of homelessness, as if it was some jolly adventure, a silly fun game, When the day of reckoning came, his parents paid for him to go home and stay with them rent free. He knew which side his bread was buttered. His risk was underwritten. He didn’t want to stay in London badly enough. He had backup options.

    My backup option is a tent and a sleeping bag.

    I’ve lived in doss houses, with 8 people in a room, all working black market jobs and spending all their money and spare time messed up on drugs. I’ve seen the grimmest possible working and living conditions. I’ve been bitten to death by bed bugs. I’ve experienced the cold and the damp of London’s shittest accommodation, where people just about eke out an existence.

    Now, I live in a lovely apartment, but it comes at a price. Not only is the rent extortionate, but I also have to drag myself into a job that I hate, 5 days a week. There are few words to describe just how incompatible my job is with my mental health. There is so little stimulation and challenge, that the hands of the clock seem almost stationary. I’m battling severe depression and ‘recovering’ from addiction. Do you think it’s a great idea to be so alone with my thoughts, with no distracting tasks to hurl myself into? Do you think it’s a great idea that I have to be a steady dependable worker, turning up on time and working all the hours, when my moods are unstable and I’m exhausted from all the stress and anxiety of getting myself off the streets and off the drugs?

    It’s a fucking miracle that I’m paying my rent, paying my bills, servicing my debts, working my job, pleasing my bosses, putting on my suit and looking like I’ve got my shit together.

    I really haven’t got my shit together, and I’m not taking passengers or carrying any dead wood, because I don’t have the spare capacity to do that. It wasn’t that long ago that I was hospitalised with the stress of it all. It’s still a pretty desperate situation, even if it doesn’t seem that way on the surface.

    What more do you want from me? What more can I give?

    Why don’t you get a job? Why don’t you try working full time? Why don’t you try taking responsibility and paying the rent, the bills and paying off your debts?

    It sickens me that anybody would suggest that I could be doing something more fun and in line with my values. It’s a joke that anybody suggests that I could take my foot off the gas, take some time out. How the fuck could I do that, when it’s me who’s the responsible one round here, holding down a job and paying the rent & bills.

    Yes, it’s OK if you can go back and live with your family. It’s OK if somebody’s there to pick up the pieces of your failed idle fantasies, when they don’t work out. But a fuck up for me means homelessness and destitution. Nobody underwrites my risk.

    It’s not that hard though: get a fucking job and work it, or fuck off back to mummy. Don’t hang around in my fucking home town, mooching off people and talking about your grand plans, when really you’re just sponging off those who are genuinely working hard. I’m sick of the bullshitters.

    I know the difference between those who are genuinely industrious and hardworking, and those who expect to get paid for nothing. I know the difference between those who are genuinely facing homelessness and destitution if they don’t get off their backsides and work their way out of a bad position, and those who have a comfortable position to fall back on, if they hit [not very] hard times.

    My charity seems to have attracted more than a couple of idle wasters, but thankfully, I also have some other people who recognise that I’m vulnerable and can be taken advantage of. I’d go mad if I didn’t have the counsel of true friends, who can tell me the truth, when people are looking for a free ride at my expense.

    I don’t mind giving people a chance. I don’t mind taking a risk. I don’t tend to lend more than I can afford to lose. Everybody deserves a break.

    I would never ask anybody to work harder than I’m prepared to work myself.

    But, if you don’t share in the risk, you don’t share in the reward.

     

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  • 2 Maps: No Fixed Abode

    This is a story about being homeless…

    Map of my childhood

    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.

    Homeless in London map

    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.

     

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  • Blogging at Work

    This is a story about office life…

    Image within an image

    Look closely at the image above. It appears like I already wrote this blog post. It certainly feels like that. Haven’t we been here before? Deja vu?

    When you get stuck into a cycle, how do you break out of it? When the loudspeakers scream with feedback, because the sound that the microphone captures is being amplified and re-amplified, how do you reset, without cutting the power?

    My behaviour might look self-sabotaging, but I’m actually deliberately burning bridges so that I have no line of retreat back to the places that made me unhappy in the first place.

    When I worked in the City the first time around, I used to have 3 or 4 strong macchiato coffees every day. That’s 12 espresso shots. I used to get drunk most lunchtimes and after work. I needed 2/3rds of a bottle of red wine to get to sleep, after all that coffee.

    Uppers and downers, round and round. We rode the rollercoaster nonstop until we were sick. Every day, every week, every month, every year… they were the same.

    When I was in my early 20’s it wasn’t such a big deal. We used to tank up on caffeine, churn out a load of code that would form the backbone of the world’s economy, and then go get drunk to try and calm down a bit. We thought we could carry on like that forever, with our uppers and downers.

    I saw colleagues get sick with stress, anxiety, depression, alcoholism. Some of my colleagues needed liver transplants. Some of my colleagues died. The system chewed us up and spat us out.

    By my mid 20s I’d owned a yacht, a speedboat, sportscars… for some reason no amount of material possessions and status symbols seemed to quench the massive insecurity and frustration with life. Take a socially awkward, unpopular geek, sprinkle in wealth and the illusion that you’re being ‘successful’ in life, and you wind up with a pretty confused adult.

    While my schoolfriends paired off with lifelong partners and started to have children, I would suddenly decide that a loving relationship would be my salvation. I moved to a Surrey commuter town with a girlfriend, and started to play golf and generally start to think & act like a middle-aged family man. That was a bit of strange thing to do for a 21 year old.

    Back in London after my first experiment into becoming a happy adult had failed, I satisfied myself with extreme sports, Internet discussion forums and lots of holidays and weekends away with nice big social clan. The London Kitesurfers ‘club’ was a lovely thing to be part of for several years. However, I still felt that I was missing that ‘love’ piece of the puzzle.

    Some nice scientist kitesurfer girl seemed to tick all the boxes, and I launched myself with great intensity at a long-distance relationship that was never going to work. Relocating to the South coast, I quickly got involved with a geek girl who was into adventure sports: she seemed ideal, on paper.

    I set about building the framework for a comfortable family life: the house, the steady job, the sensible car. However, I ignored the massive red flag: my girlfriend was a mean person.

    I’m not easily dissuaded from my goals. Whatever obstacles I encounter, I just go around them. I’m a completer-finisher. I try to fix, improve, change, rather than throw things away or start again.

    Anyway, I was flogging a dead horse. No matter how many times I painted a perfect picture postcard of how life could be, I’d found somebody who was stubbornly resistant to the idea of being nice and kind and supportive of the person who potentiated a 5-star luxury lifestyle for both of us. There was plenty of space for us both to shine, but sadly, she wanted me to be subdued and subserviant. She had gotten used to being showered with praise and being top of her class. She wasn’t used to sharing the stage. She wasn’t prepared for both of us to be happy.

    I abandoned that life. I lost my business, my reputation with the major employers in the local area, my house and a substantial chunk of my wealth. I was fighting for survival, so I didn’t have the time to go and carefully unpick the things that I had spent years building. I had no need of a house and shedful of things. What was I going to do with all that stuff? It was an unncessary millstone around my neck.

    Now I find myself following a tried-and-trusted formula for wealth and ‘success’. I’m rapidly putting together a lovely home again. I’m rapidly rebuilding my cash position. I’m rapidly rebuilding my reputation. However, I’ve seen it all and done it all before. I’m just going through the practiced motions.

    “How did you know that was going to happen?” my colleagues ask me, like I’m some kind of clairvoyant. My ability to ‘predict’ the future is nothing more than making educated guesses, because I’ve been seen it all before. It looks prescient, but it’s no more amazing than somebody who’s learned from their mistakes.

    That means my day job is pretty dull. I finish people’s sentences, and I take great delight in giving people things they need before they ask for them. I’m ahead of the game. In the oft-quoted words of Wayne Gretsky, I’m skating to where the hockey puck is going to be.

    I’m aware that this seems very arrogant. I’m not delusional. I know I’m not special or different. I know I’m no smarter than your average Joe.

    I’ve done a ‘gap’ analysis, of my unsatisfying, unfulfilling and depression-filled life, and it seems like I need a dog, a cat, some kids and a loving supportive partner. If you ask children to draw a picture, they’ll normally draw a house, the sun, some clouds, their parents and brothers & sisters, their pets. It seems like a pretty tried-and-trusted formula for life.

    However, I even feel guilty about my cat living with my parents because he comes from a broken home. My cat, Frankie, has had to move house once in his kitty life, and I feel bad about the disruption and stress I caused him. I would love it if Frankie could live with me, but it would be cruel to make him live in a 4th floor apartment in a busy city. Having Frankie adopted by my parents, with their generous garden and surrounding Cotswold countryside, was the least bad option, but I still feel guilty.

    Can you imagine how bad I’d feel if I had kids and they had a stressful home life? Can you imagine how guilty I’d feel if I knew that I selfishly chose to have children because they would give my life purpose and meaning, but I failed to adequately consider that the world I bequeathed to them is dying?

    I’m running in autopilot at work. My brain is on tickover, doing my job. This unfortunately leaves a lot of time to consider the plight of the world’s poor and struggling people. I have a lot of time to think about war and preventable diseases. I have a lot of time to think about inequalities and morality. I seem to be like a sponge, sucking up all the pain, suffering, cruelty, anger, hostility, selfishness, greed and immorality that seems to characterise the human race.

    I could cut myself off from reading the news, but what would I do all day while I’m bored at work?

    I can read the news, and if I get caught then nobody’s really that bothered because I’m on top of my work and performing well. If I write my blog and try to stay on top of these feelings that threaten to overwhelm me, then I’m always nervous that my mask is going to slip.

    I’m flirting with disaster anyway, wearing a semicolon tattoo just behind my ear, that advertises my struggle with depression, anxiety, addiction, self-harm and suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts.

    When you have a problem, you can try to solve the root cause, or you can find a workaround. I know what the workarounds are. I know what the root cause is. I’m just not really satisfied that I can either do much about human nature and a selfish race intent on destroying itself, and neither am I very happy to attempt to insulate myself from reality, using drugs and money to put myself into a protective bubble

    Begging is illegal in the City of London. Canary Wharf is a private estate, so undesirable members of society can actually be thrown out of the rich little enclave. You can kid yourself that there aren’t any problems in the world, because you don’t see them – out of sight out of mind – but that’s why we got in this mess in the first place.

    What happens next is as much a question of morality as it is a question of personal survival. Is it better to have lived life with some values and standards, rather than just saying “I was just doing what everybody else was doing” as if that’s some kind of defence.

    I know this is very lecturing, and once you’ve got skin in the game you have no choice but to try and do the best for your tiny tots, but I have a choice. I actually choose not to get a dog, because they’re polluting (dogs need to eat masses of meat) and I choose not to have a family, because I can’t make any guarantees that there’s going to be a liveable planet for them to grow up on.

    It doesn’t make me a morally superior person. It’s just the way I personally think. I know parents are racked with worry about the kind of world that their kids are going to inherit. I do empathise with the stress and challenges faced by families. Doesn’t mean that’s an excuse for me to join in though.

     

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  • Gold Rush

    This is a story about getting rich or dying trying…

    Irish Gold

    People come to London seeking their fortune. I went to Ireland seeking my salvation. In a way, I kinda found it.

    My life had fallen apart. I had lost a lucrative contract with Barclays through no fault of my own (the guy who terminated my contract was then sacked because of his stupid decision) as well as breaking up with my girlfriend, being evicted from my apartment in Swiss Cottage (again, through no fault of my own) and had once again found myself homeless and unemployed. Many friends took sides during my breakup, and I ended up suddenly alone.

    It was January, in the depths of a depressing British winter. No job, no money, no friends, no girlfriend, no nothing. I was fucked.

    A friend who I met in the summer, when I first became homeless, had returned to the emerald isle. He had generously made an open offer that I could go and stay with him and his family if I ever needed it, and oh boy did I need it. I was suicidally depressed and a big danger to myself. Camden council had been supremely unhelpful to a resident who they owed a legal duty of care, but they didn’t give a shit whether I lived or died.

    I guess a lot of unimaginative runaways go to London, and a huge proportion of them will end up in Camden Town. Camden is cool, undoubtably. Camden is full of wide-eyed young people, tourists, and huge amounts of recreational drugs, casual sex and music venues. It’s a great place to spend a summer on a shoestring, smoking strong cannabis and chatting up girls.

    I had made a couple of similarly Peter Pan-esque pals in Camden, in their mid thirties and working dead-end jobs on low pay, forced into living in hostels and dreadful squat-like houses with several people sleeping in every room. For me, it was a hugely novel experience, having been a wealthy IT consultant working in banking since I took my first big money contract at the age of 20, for Lloyds TSB in Canary Wharf. After 17 or so years of fabulous wealth, slumming it for a summer was almost fun.

    My girlfriend at the time was a waitress at an Italian restaurant. Despite having a degree in economics from the University of Bologna, she had rejected the rat race in favour of a minimum wage job and getting ridiculously stoned every day. She was fun and easy going, just so long as all you wanted to do was sit around while she chain-smoked joints, and have great sex of course.

    I wouldn’t say I outgrew my circle of friends, because I loved them dearly, but the stresses and demands of my contract at Barclays were not really compatible with the lifestyle of casual labour and the pursuit of recreational drugs. At some point, the worlds were going to collide.

    My girlfriend and most of my friends felt that I had arrogantly snubbed them, but in fact I was desperately dependent on our social circle for my wellbeing and happiness. When things all fell apart, I did too. I was devastated by the collapse of my social life, as well as losing the structure and routine of my employment.

    I ran away to Ireland, and my friend picked me up from Cork airport and took me back to the little village of Killavullen, that he and his family call home. Nestled in the hillside above the village, looking over the valley below and just at the edge of a vast forest, my friend’s family home is a peaceful idyll that is completely unlike the rat race of London.

    The timing was not ideal, and I arrived in the middle of various challenges facing the family, but they welcomed me and treated me with incredible warmth, kindness, care, despite the crises that they were dealing with. It’s not my place to be indiscreet about the family matters that I became aware of, but suffice to say the last thing they needed was some sick burnt out heartbroken citydweller suddenly thrust into the mix.

    My state of mind collapsed still further, as it became clear that there would be no reconciliation with my former friends: I was a pariah. There was nothing for me back in London, except a certain collapse in my will to live. My friend’s family insisted that I should stay with them until I felt fit and well enough to return home. I missed my return flight and didn’t book another.

    I tried to go along with the flow of family and village life, getting to know the people that my friend grew up with, and his family.

    My friend and I went panning for gold – I had bought him a kit while in England and had brought it over to Ireland for him – as well as climbing to the top of the ‘mountain’ that he lived on. We drove around the vast forest that covered the hillside, and explored the neighbouring villages, as well as nearby Cork city centre. Although I had visited Ireland twice before, I had missed the point about stopping to smell the shamrocks. I’m always in the mode of rush, rush, rush.

    We travelled to the huge cliffs at Old Head, and I stood there on the edge, having had a haircut, a shave, a bunch of hot meals and having slept in a warm comfortable bed in a welcoming family home for some time. Instead of wanting to jump off the edge of the cliff, I was actually happy to be alive.

     

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  • Destroying Your Reputation

    This is a story about self sabotage…

    Man on a mission

    What the hell am I doing, blogging about stuff that could get me fired, sued and make me unemployable? Why the hell am I burning so many bridges, and destroying my own reputation? Is this simply self-sabotaging behaviour?

    If we look at the wider context of my story, the rat race has made me unwell. The boring office jobs propping up the instruments of capitalism so that an idle wealthy elite can ride roughshod over the proletariat, has made me unhappy. Compromising on my moral, ethical position, five days a week is not healthy. Working in an unstimulating environment that is unchallenging and uninteresting is a fate worse than death.

    It’s very easy to keep doing what you do because you fear change and it’s the path of least resistance. I’ve been moulded into a certain career and industry sector. I’m the perfect guy to have join your massive corporation and quickly get up to speed with the bureaucracy, systems and processes. The bulk of the hard work in a big organisation is not the actual skilled thing that people are qualified to do, but just dealing with the crap that gets built up by a zillion little Hitlers all micromanaging their tiny empires they’re building and trying to justify their pathetic jobs.

    It’s interesting who I’m friends with on Facebook, and who follows me on Twitter. In fact, with very little digging you can even find this vast cache of dirt, on Google. This is not about how important and influential I am, because I’m not. This is about public exposure. I took a decision to lay my soul bare, and I stand by that decision. But, for a moment, let’s consider the kinds of people who I know or suspect have at one time dipped into my social media and online accessible over-sharing:

    • Ex colleagues from JPMorgan
    • Ex colleagues from HSBC
    • Cohorts from a technology startup accelerator
    • Two influential and well respected directors of startup accelerators
    • Mentors from startup accelerator
    • My accountant
    • People who are influential and well respected in the technology sector
    • Friends who work in tech and/or industry sectors that I work in

    I’ve stopped short of actually tying my LinkedIn profile back in this direction, towards my blog. I’ve stopped short of in any way linking my limited company back towards this new alter ego of mine, although I did briefly get myself in a muddle over some suicide watch startup idea that I had. That was on September 21st… right when I started this journey of deciding to go public with every struggle I faced when I finally lost my grip on my career, my company, my reputation, everything.

    For sure, I’m a nobody. However, people still talk. There is a rumour mill, no matter how small and insignificant you are. And people who work in offices are particularly interested in lurid tales of people who’re doing anything that is out of the ordinary, even if that’s losing your mind and ending up in the gutter.

    By now, my tale of the toxic combination of stress, abusive relationship, mental health problems, heavy drinking, drug abuse (in that order) leading to suicide attempts, hospitalisation, homelessness, destitution and even police involvement, is well documented.

    Well, I guess it’s not that well documented, but it’s out there in the public domain.

    I have no idea how much was known before I decided to embark upon a mission of full disclosure, but I know that my abusive ex-wife was particularly indiscreet and insensitive. I’m sure that my friends did their best to save my blushes and protect my reputation as much as they could, but people still knew that I was getting more and more unwell.

    Obviously, at times during my descent into melancholy and the infinite madness, I sabotaged my own reputation amongst my Facebook friends. I once shared a picture of some potassium cyanide that I had bought with the express intention of ending my life quickly and cleanly. The lethal dose is about 250 milligrams. I bought 2 grams of the toxic chemical: 8 times more than was strictly necessary.

    Depression now has less stigma associated with it. We pretty much all know somebody who suffers with depression, and takes anti-depressant medication to help them with their low mood. These things are no longer taboo to talk about, and many people are able to still continue to hold down good jobs and be in positions of responsibility. Suffering from clinical depression is not a death sentence, certainly as far as a person’s professional reputation is concerned.

    Bipolar disorder has almost become cool to have. There are a list of celebrities and politicians as long as your arm, who have come forward and declared that they are living with the condition. Obviously, the ability to turn your hypomanic episodes into hyper-energetic flurries of productive activity, means that you can get shit done. In a way, we celebrate the person who has these mood episodes, because they can produce the ‘overnight’ successes we so revere in society.

    Alcohol is everywhere, so unless you’re swigging from a bottle of vodka hidden in your desk and reeking of liquor fumes as you breathe on people, just about any amount of drinking is socially acceptable. It’s only if you declare yourself an alcoholic and have a stay in rehab that people start to stigmatise you. You can cover up your 28 days in The Priory, by saying that it was private hospital treatment for stress and anxiety.

    Drug abuse is the last taboo. You pretty much don’t want to put that one down on your CV. Cocaine use is widespread throughout London, and coffee gets stronger and stronger to the point where you’re practically swallowing amphetamines. A few cans of Red Bull is the socially acceptable equivalent to snorting a couple of lines of some stimulant. Students are increasingly using Modafinil, Ritalin and Adderall to improve their concentration span and fact retention, as well as to stay awake during long revision binges.

    If you think that these things feature in my daily life, you’re wrong. These issues are simply incompatible with day-to-day existence. Depression robs you of the energy to get out of bed and face the day. Bipolar hypomania robs you of the contents of your bank balance, as it all gets ploughed into crazy schemes. Alcoholism is hard to hide, not that I’ve ever been physically dependent on booze, thank God. Drug addiction is all-consuming: there’s no hiding it when you’ve lost the battle with addiction and it’s taking you on a white-knuckle ride to an early grave.

    So, if I’ve won the battles, why would I make it public knowledge that I fought them? Why would I take the time to declare, beyond all reasonable doubt, that I’m a flawed individual? Why would I spell it out, that I could relapse into any number of life-destroying illnesses at any moment?

    Well, we could all succumb to these things at any moment.

    I was 28 years young when I was knocked flat by clinical depression. I was 32 when addiction got its hooks in me. Just because I’d been a good student, a well behaved polite boy, a model employee, a career go-getter, and on the face of it I had a perfect little life, it doesn’t mean that I was immune from anything.

    But “it could never happen to me” right?

    We believe that smart life choices will keep us safe. We believe that we have free will, and that therefore we would never choose to do something stupid. We believe that past performance is indicative of future results, even if the disclaimers always tell us the opposite.

    There’s something ugly about academic and corporate life, where we put a black mark against people’s name if they fuck up even once. Screw up your school exams and you’ll never get a chance to go to university. Screw up in your career and you’ll be frozen out of the good jobs forevermore. Screw up in life and you’ll be a dirty leper who nobody will want to know or to help.

    This is the bleak outlook for so many people, who were simply unlucky or made a decision that was obviously regrettable, but life is continuously setting us traps and pitfalls. Why do consequences have to be so long lasting? Oh, you got in financial trouble? Here, let us help you by now charging you fines and punitive rates of interest, plus denying you opportunities and making the cost of living sky high because you have a poor credit rating.

    The punishment for not having any money is that you have to pay more money. The punishment for your crimes is the deprivation of your liberty and the destruction of your future opportunities.

    Apparently people are mocking those who have chosen to get a semicolon tattoo, but let’s think about this for a minute.

    I work in a big office and I see hundreds of people every day. In all likelihood they have seen that I have a semicolon tattooed behind my ear. If you were to Google “what does a semicolon tattoo mean?” then you will see that it’s mostly to do with struggles with depression, addiction, self-harm and suicide attempts. I wonder how many people are thinking “why the hell did we employ this guy?”.

    Semicolon tattoo

    When I did my interview, I sat so that my interviewers were on my right-hand side. The people who interviewed me never saw that tattoo, until soon after I started in my new job. I wonder if they’d have hired me if they had seen the tattoo.

    Tattoos are actually uncommon amongst investment banking IT consultants. Certainly visible tattoos are even declared as not permitted, in many banks dress codes. I even thought about putting a sticking plaster over the mark on my skin, for my interview.

    However, that’s all I ever did for years and years. That’s our whole approach to mental health and the problems that people face in their private lives: put a sticking plaster over it.

    I’ve written at length about how angry I am that our first line of defence for people who are stressed out and depressed by their shitty unfulfilling office jobs, is to give them powerful psychoactive medications that artificially alter their mood so they can continue to work their dreadful jobs.

    I’m angry that I’m so pressurised by wider society to cover up my problems, in order to retain a blemish-free reputation. I feel like the need to appear pristine and infallible to potential employers, fellow work colleagues and bosses, is largely to blame for why I had a massive breakdown and implosion, instead of things getting fixed before they got out of hand.

    We are brainwashed to believe that we can’t have any gaps on our CV that we can’t explain. We are brainwashed to believe that we can’t take our foot off the gas pedal for a single second. We are brainwashed to believe that a stain on our reputation will hang around for the rest of our careers.

    You know what the problem is? It’s our fucking careers. The treadmill. The rat race. It’s making so many people mentally unwell, as well as causing physical health damage due to the sedentary nature of the work. No amount of standing desks or free gym membership is going to compensate for the problem.

    I backslid into office employment because it was easy and I was desperate. My back was against the wall, and it made perfect financial sense to go and suffer another stretch of agonising misery back doing the shit that I’m most qualified and experienced to do, but it’s fucking killing me.

    It’s important to be values-aligned, but it’s also so easy to be tempted by ‘easy’ money. The cash rewards for doing the kind of mind-bogglingly boring work that I do are substantial. In theory, I only have to do this work for short bursts, and then I have spare time and cash to do whatever I need to do to balance the books, psychologically. However, in practice, all I’m doing is servicing debts that were built up just staying alive.

    The welfare state took a dim view on my situation. Why do I need help, when I can go and get a job that pays fabulously well? Well, guess what? I tried it. I tried getting one of these shitty desk jobs that kill me, while I was homeless living in a hostel. And guess what? Working one of those jobs that made you unwell in the first place while you are still unwell really fucks you up.

    This whole exercise of blowing my existence and private life wide open serves to document the ridiculousness of the mental health destroying lives that we are forced to live. If this whole experience ends up killing me, at least I’ve left the evidence: the smoking gun.

    Nobody really cares when white middle class, well educated men in good jobs kill themselves. Why would they? Well, look around you. Do you see people getting happier? Do you see mental illness declining? Do you see suicide rates declining? Do you feel secure, fulfilled? Do you feel like the human condition is improving?

    I look around and I see war and I see poverty. I see ordinary British people being forced into zero hours contract minimum wage McJobs, and still unable to afford basic amenities. I see loneliness and depression. I see a lack of real local community. I see families pulled apart by the need to go to large urban centres to seek your fortune. I see people locked into their own little world: headphones plugged in, eyes cast downwards at their smartphone, not talking to anybody face to face except to ask for their morning coffee.

    Is this just a London thing? Is my view tainted because I’m struggling with depression myself? Actually, London is the canary in the coal mine. The sensitive people who have their head up looking around, sensing for danger, are usually on to something. Everything is pretty shit and fucked up right now.

    And so, I am rejecting the conventional. I’m rejecting the sensible, rational and tried-and-tested. I’m burning the bridges that lead back to places I should never return to.

    Yes, I might be making a fool of myself. Yes, people might be sniggering at me, safe behind their computer screens. Yes, important people are judging me and they have the ability to thwart me because of their prejudice, and make my life hard and even impossible. I could find myself unemployable, but not know why, because nobody has to tell me. I’m giving away all the ammunition you need to destroy me, and people are eagerly taking it.

    But you know, who’s the real winner? If you take what I gave you and use it against me, how are you going to feel? We’re all doing that. We’re all exploiting weaknesses that we discover in each other, in order to get ahead in the rat race.

    How do you win a rigged contest? If everybody is cheating, do you cheat too?

    The other option is to martyr yourself. For sure, you’ll be hated and excluded. Nobody will thank you. But at least you can sleep at night, in the gutter.

    No more prisons

    Prisons can mean anywhere you feel trapped and your liberty is restricted

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