This is a story about imitation and flattery...

What's through that door? Well, probably my entire career and every golden opportunity that will ever be presented to me, throughout my adult life.

That North Oxford house, if I've identified it correctly, used to be the headquarters of Daily Information. It was here that on one midweek night, computer games ceased to be a solitary bedroom activity, and instead became an opportunity to socialise.

So important was this place in my childhood, that I can still remember the code for the door behind the front door, that would lead up to my friend's parents' office, which was above the offices of Daily Info.

The main office itself was a fascinating place. There were zillions of flyers and posters pinned up on the wall, as examples of the desktop publishing and reprographics business, which also produces a popular "What's On?" guide for the Oxford area. There were also instructions on how to operate the many pieces of equipment and notices for the staff who worked there. It was a complex ecosystem, so unlike a home stuffed full of static ornaments and pictures.

There were piles of photocopier paper, and cardboard sheets in all colours and sizes. Printer cartridges, ink ribbons, toner, and daisy-wheel heads were piled up on shelves, or stacked nearby the cream-plastic machines that they served. Half-finished print jobs lay on the tops of every available flat surface.

But, the main event, and the thing that a group of geeky and otherwise introverted kids, had gathered there for, were the many computers. There seemed to be screens and keyboards everywhere. There were PCs and there were Macs, and they all had mice and colour screens, which was a big deal back in the 1990's, when people still used to do word processing on green-screen terminals that couldn't play games.

Yes, it was the computer games that we were there for, and between my friend, his mum, and a few willing staff members, they had always managed to coerce all the computers into playing amazing computer games. It was like the most fantastic treasure trove of an amusement arcade, with unlimited tokens to play again and again.

There were single-player games, like Shufflepuck, where you had to play air-hockey against a whole host of fascinating characters of increasing difficulty and deviousness. This was an interesting use of the computer mouse, which mirrored your hand's movements with the on-screen mallet, to try and send an air-hockey puck sliding into your opponent's goal.

However, the thing that I enjoyed the most, was co-operating with other kids to try to solve puzzle games. These were mainly of the point-and-click variety, where you guided an animated character through a world that you could interact with, using a number of verbs, like "push", "pull", "open", "close", "pick up", "walk to" and "use". These delightful creations included such titles as The Secret of Money Island and several Indiana Jones inspired games.

We would would pair up, with one of us operating the mouse, while the other pressed keyboard shortcuts to choose the different operations, while you tried to figure out how to solve the puzzles, which generally involved walking around, opening doors and boxes, picking up items, and then figuring out what to use the items on, or how to combine them together to make some new kind of object.

I idolised this friend who ran the event on a midweek evening, and tried desperately to imitate all the things he seemed to do so effortlessly. I read the same books. I tried to write and contribute articles to a school magazine that he had founded. I tried to learn how to become a programmer, and to create music using a MIDI keyboard, plugged into a computer. I wanted to play all the computer games he liked, which were often the Lucasarts point-and-click adventures, rather than 'shoot-em-ups'.

The bitterness that is so evident at times in my writing, could have ended up repressed and perhaps revealing itself in even more ugly forms, had computing not become a social experience for me, as well as a creative outlet.

Writing has never been my strong suit. When I was about 13 years old, I wrote an article about a computer game that I'd never played, in a desktop publishing program that I was learning to get to grips with. It got horribly mangled as paragraphs got moved around. "Were you on drugs when you wrote that?" my friend asked me, having reviewed it with another friend of his who I never met, on account of him going to a different school. I was put in my place, although not maliciously.

Everything I ever did was a pale imitation of what my childhood friend did, however, it was still immensely fortuitous that I had this role model in my life.

By writing computer programs nearly every day throughout my teens, I gained enough experienced to get a job as a junior programmer, some 3 years ahead of my peers. A few years later, there was a skills shortage because of the Y2K millennium bug, and I was able to get a very lucrative contract. Having held a graduate position for a prestigious corporation, and also been an IT contractor before the age of 21, I was then able to break into financial services and banking, which is normally off-limits to anybody without a good degree from one of the top Universities.

It should be remembered that there are many talented geeks, plugging away at code in their bedrooms. The difference between those who are 'tame' and able to play nice with others, is whether they have had adequate social contact. I was certainly rather removed from healthy social bonds by too much screen time, spent in isolation in a darkened bedroom, hunched over a keyboard.

Through people like the friend I idolise, the joy of computing became a joy of using technology to have a shared experience, to use computers as a mechanism for social bonding. Even though I had to move away from Oxford because my parents relocated the family, I was able to reproduce a little of the magic I learned at Daily Information and the social group that clustered around this one charismatic friend.

I learned how to connect computers together using coaxial cable, and I used to have groups of friends get driven over to the family home, with their PCs. We used our paper rounds and washing-up jobs, in order to buy the equipment necessary to allow our computers to 'speak' to each other, and so we were able to play co-operative games, with each of us operating our own computer.

As a bunch of 14/15 year old spotty nerds, having these early "LAN" (network) parties was amazing, even if we were cooped up indoors for whole weekends, waging virtual warfare against each other. Games like Doom were popular with us, where we just attempted to kill each other, but the pecking order was soon established, and the one-on-one combat soon grew tiresome.

We moved onto games like Command and Conquer where we could have two teams, each in their own "war room" connected by an extra-long cable that I had bought for the specific purpose of separating us, so that we couldn't hear each other's tactical discussions. A game would last over 12 hours, with us playing right through the night.

Because of the inspiration to write and to publish, plus the few social skills I had developed and the exposure to the reprographics and 'typesetting' industry, as a teenager I was confidently able to get a Saturday job for a little company that was like a smaller version of Daily Information, in Lyme Regis, called Lymteligence (yes, it had one 'l' missing, which wasn't very intelligent).

I had used money from my washing-up job at a local hotel to purchase my first modem and get connected to the World Wide Web (Internet) after a rather crappy old modem had completely failed to give a connection to my friend back in Oxford, who I was desperate to stay in contact with. For hours, my friend had patiently allowed his phone line to be tied up, while I tried to coerce some antique piece of hardware that I had bought at a car boot sale, into connecting with my distant friend's computer, but alas, he finally convinced me to give up.

At Lymteligence I learned how to author websites, writing the code by hand. I created a website for The United Kingdom Men's Movement. I remember feeling ethically challenged, as I typed up some of the bitter words of men who had suffered painful divorces. Thinking about it now, I feel that I myself could have been driven into the arms of this movement, had I not had a healthy social outlet for my technological skills.

Although it's shameful to admit, and a little creepy, I would try to keep tabs on my friends I had left behind in Oxford, by being a bit of a lurker on the rapidly developing Internet. However, by doing this, in a way I was able to stay abreast of advancements and trends that would otherwise have passed me by.

"Social media" means Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, today, and perhaps Snapchat and Vine. In fact, there is probably a movement that's already begun that's going to kill these technology giants, that I'm not even aware of yet. I've always been a bit behind the curve.

However, back in the day, social media meant bulletin boards, forums and websites like Friends Reunited. I have no idea how I managed to maintain a toe-hold of social connection with old friends, throughout the disruption of moving away and then our adult lives, but the Internet always provided a way.

It used to be the case that the search engines, of which Google didn't feature prominently until surprisingly recently, used to be very good at digging out which particular corner of the Internet your friends were hiding in, provided they were using their real name, and that name is quite uncommon... and my role model friend is blessed with quite a unique name.

Now that we tend to do most of our Internet social activities on Facebook, you'd be surprised to learn that your privacy is actually very well protected, and you have a reasonable level of control over what people can and can not find out about what's going on in your world.

In 1999/2000 I was living in Winchester in Hampshire, UK. Things were going well with my career, but I was struggling socially. Through a housemate, we ended up in the NUS (student) bar at Winchester University. I was leaning up against the table football table, when somebody behind me challenged me to a game. I turned around and realised that it was one of my fellow Daily Information computer club friends, and a guy who I went to school with since about the age of 5.

Reconnecting with an old schoolfriend was great. I had been back to Oxford, in order to show off my company car and boast about how well my career was going, but it was crushing inadequacy and a sense of loneliness that had driven me to go back there. I had even been quite evil and immature, and had wanted to exclude certain friends and monopolise other friends' time, in order to try to salve my insecurity. I was still a deeply troubled, lonely person, expressing that in very unhealthy ways.

Shortly after that chance meeting, I picked up a local newspaper and read that somebody had been electrocuted, while trying to take a short-cut underneath some parked railroad carriages, in order to get back to his University halls of residence. It was our childhood friend. Killed, through a momentary lapse of judgement, while under the influence of alcohol and the excitement of a fun night out in town. Tragic.

This put me - the lurker - in a really strange position, in terms of grieving. I later discovered through the Internet that my friends were attending the funeral, but because of the sense of distance and the shame of admitting that I had been somewhat jealously following our old social group from afar, like a stalker, I didn't know what to do. I procrastinated until it was too late, and the funeral was over.

There used to be so much stigma associated with using the Internet as a means of human connection. Admitting that you met your partner through Internet dating was likely to instigate stifled sniggers and snide remarks about axe-murderers and weirdos. I guess I am a weirdo though.

I don't know whether it's a British thing, or perhaps a function of a lonely childhood and being a needy, oversensitive person, but I'm kinda always struggling to articulate my needs and ask for what I want. I don't even admit to myself, what my fears and unmet needs are.

Writing this blog has been a journey for me, but it's taken me further than I would have ever expected. One leg of the journey was 5,351 miles, and took me to the hometown of a bunch of my idols and role models.

Is it creepy, is it weird, is it an unpleasant amount of pressure, knowing that in some sense, a friend is looking to you for guidance and direction? It must be, a little. Why the hell do I never seem to have grown up and gotten over childhood infatuations?

For me and at least one other friend, our mutual friend has provided at least some of the inspiration for our careers. In a way, I at least owe this friend a debt of gratitude for my financial security and the fact that a lot of doors are open to me, for career opportunities. I know that he shared with me at least a twinge of regret for having perhaps nudged one of our friends down one particular technology path.

Who knows what are going to be the knock-on effects of the connections we make with one another. Who could have foreseen that I would have taken the wealth that I generated so effortlessly in the highly paid tech sector, and use it to implode so spectacularly in my mid-thirties.

Of course this is not about blame, but instead, I feel this great sense of responsibility. I feel that there are certain individuals who I am crippled with shame, to imagine reading my sorry tale and thinking "what kind of monster has this guy turned into". I imagine their disappointment, and it slays me.

Where do we look for guidance and inspiration from in the world? Our parents? Well what if your parents don't provide it? In fact, what if your parents provide a cautionary tale for how not to live your life? I don't want to go into the details again, of why I don't want to follow in the footsteps of either of my parents, but suffice to say, I've always been looking to people outside of my family, to provide feedback and inspiration in my life.

So, I'm fessing up. That's what this whole blog has been about. I'm playing up like a kid and wanting to test my boundaries. When is some parent-like figure going to stand up and say "stop that!" so that I know I've gone too far? When is some authority figure going to step in, and tell me that I'm out of line, and give me some guidance on how I should think, act, speak?

Being given stacks of cash, relatively few responsibilities and no social structure around you, to tell you when you're taking things too far, when you're getting yourself into trouble, when you're wandering too far from the flock, when your ideas are getting too outlandish, when unpleasantness is rearing its ugly head. You probably take it for granted, the checks and balances that exist around you.

So, I'm making an appeal, to people from every period in my life, from every stage in my development: from childhood to adulthood, from Oxford, to Dorset, to London, to Cambridge, to San Francisco, to Prague, to France, to Brazil, to New Zealand. I'll travel round the world a million times, if somebody can just reach out and give me some kind of reality check.

I'm pouring my heart and soul out into the chasm of the Internet, hoping to make a connection with people, hoping to trigger some kind of response. I have no idea how I'm received. I have no idea how I'm perceived.

Yes, it's needy and yes, it's kinda pressuring people to say something where it seems impolite to even ask for feedback. We have lots of phrases that kinda shame people into keeping their mouths shut, like "emotional blackmail" and "attention seeking". If somebody even came out and accused me of such things, at least I'd have something to reflect on.

Everytime I ask somebody a direct question, they seem to think that the kindest thing to do is to spare my blushes, but I don't know whether to trust my own instincts, or actual concrete feedback that I've received.

For example, I was living with some friends, and it was only over dinner one night, when I had moved out of their house, that my friend finally let me know what he really thought and felt. The fact that the truth was suddenly unleashed was brutal. There was real pent-up frustration and having it all released all at once was too much to bear.

I just contradicted myself, didn't I? What an awful, needy, demanding person. I want honest feedback, but I want it little and often. I'm asking for people to give me a reality check, but I'm also admitting that the last time that a close friend fired both barrels at me, I nearly committed suicide. Who wants that kind of responsibility?

But, you know, the takeaway from this is that I didn't commit suicide, and even though that friendship was really badly damaged, at least it moved things along. I was in limbo before... really unsure of what was real, what I'd overheard, what was being said behind my back. It's an impossible way to live, like that.

I'm adrift in a vast ocean, with no tether to any fixed objects. I have no point of reference. I couldn't tell you which direction is which, and where I'm travelling from or to. I'm rather lost.

A friend got in contact earlier in the week, and offered their impression of something I wrote - noting that I had become bitter again - as well as some advice. I can't stress enough how this was like gold dust to me.

I'm not sure you realise how disconnected from the world I've become. I don't have any normal healthy friendships anymore, or regularly see people who I've had a long-term relationship with, knowing me for years, so they can comment on how I've changed. So many people have become just another 'like' on Facebook.

As a friend who I chatted to via Facebook messenger today said, we know what all our Facebook friends position on Britain leaving the EU is, but we don't know what's going on in the lives of those who are not sharing anything personal, except political opinions. There's a vast difference between the occasional reminder that somebody is still alive, because they're active on social media, and actually looking somebody in the eye, when they give you the British knee-jerk reaction of "I'm fine" when you ask how they are.

I appreciate I've written a lot, and huge amounts of it is virtually unreadable. Also, long bitter rants are not exactly pleasant reading, nor do they paint myself in a particularly favourable light. Who wants to know that angry venomous twisted person, hunched over their keyboard, blindly firing resentful and blame-filled missives into the void.

If you've persevered this far, I'm ashamed of myself. I think about all the stuff you must've read, and what you must think about me, but of course this is conjecture. I admit, I am trying to cajole you into giving me some feedback.

You know, I often think about how immature and childish I am. I often think that everybody is in the same boat, and we're always going to be left wondering how other people perceive us, and what people really think about us, to some extent.

It's easy to dismiss a lot of what I'm wrestling with, as just a standard part of the human condition. I'm also reflexively programmed to offer up neutralising statements, as standard, such as "I don't think I'm special and different" and "I know that my life is no more stressful and turbulent than yours".

The engine that drives this verbal diarrhoea is the fact that I do feel insignificant and worthless. I'm driven to try to anchor myself back into the world of the living, given that I have been hospitalised so many times with suicidal and self-harming behaviour. In a lot of ways, I feel justified in telling people who want to guilt-trip me into suffering in silence to shove their "you're not special, shut up" statements up their arses.

How does one go about fixing the very real and practical things, such as figuring out how to live amongst your friends once again? Sure, I can reconnect with people, but if they don't like who I am and what I say, what hope is there of there being any lasting relationship?

Anyway, this stuff is always cringeworthy and difficult to read, so I'm going to leave it there, as an open letter to my friends and acquaintances. An appeal to human connection, and the feedback that is essential for social bonds.

It's mighty cold when you're out in the thin atmosphere of the outsider, frozen and clinging onto life.

Tags: #friends #childhood #oxford #career #computing #socialmedia #suicide #depression

This is a story about ingratitude...

Give me liberty, or give me death!

How do you like living in the free world? Freedom of speech, not that anybody's even listening and you'll never get into print. Freedom to work, if you can get a job, and you'll have to pay exorbitant taxes. Freedom to do what you want, if you're not dead and have any spare time and energy after working a job until you're nearly 70 years old. Freedom to buy what you want, except you probably can't afford it.

There: that's the ingratitude part out of the way. Do I actually think like that? Some people think I do. You'll have to read between the lines to see where I am being self-mocking, humorous, sarcastic and even a little farsical in the interests of courting controversy.

This talk of death and suicide sounds a little flippant, a little melodramatic, but in actual fact, it's shaped my mindset.

I was always impossible to manage, and fearless talking to people of all ranks and status. I refuse to be cowed by credentials and hierarchy. I refuse to know my place.

If you were to just dip into part of my story, and try to make a knee-jerk assumption about me, you might assume that I think I'm better than other people. You might think I'm an entitled snob, a spoiled little brat. You would have misjudged me, and instead you've failed to understand that I'm coming at things from a totally different end of the spectrum.

I'm not claiming that I'm hard done by and that I've made my own luck and worked my way up from the bottom. On closer examination, these claims always prove to be horse-shit. When we look at people who claim to be self-made success stories, the tale is always ridiculous. For starters, many of the ones I've encountered came from loving homes in middle-class families, with parents who had a profession, a job for life. There has been financial security and a good education, even if they paint themselves as some sort of working class hero.

My tale is slightly different. I'm judging things based on the experiences I had when I had nothing. No roof over my head, and no money. I'm judging life based on how close I came to death. I literally made a life-or-death decision... actually on a couple of occasions.

So, I write from a position of knowing how it feels to have nothing. I write from a position of knowing how it feels to have to choose to act to stay alive, or else inaction would lead to death.

Based on this standpoint, I judge things very differently. You might think I'm ungrateful to have a "good" job. You might think I'm ungrateful for my opportunities. In actual fact though, I'm just judging things relatively. I think to myself "am I more or less happy than when I had nothing" and "am I more or less inclined to die, than the time that I nearly died before".

There's a cold hard rational core within me, that could quite easily slice my veins open, in a sudden brutally decisive act, if I decided that the effort of maintaining myself in a state of perpetual unhappiness and struggle would be ridiculous.

As a subject of Her Majesty the Queen of England, I was indoctrinated in the state schools of the United Kingdom, to become a loyal wage-slave, contributing to stability, increase and ornament of British commerce. Does it give me any pleasure or pride to say that? No, not really.

My very first job was for a Ministry of Defence subcontractor, and I actively contributed to Great Britain's military capability, as a naval power, to further their imperialist ambitions. Should that give me a lump in my throat when I see the Union Jack and hear the national anthem? Actually, no, it makes me think about the high price that is paid by the nations we have subjugated, in order to pay for the lifestyle I enjoyed.

Do people enjoy their lifestyle? Huge numbers of ordinary working age people can't afford a house, a family, a wedding. Most ordinary working folks hate their shitty jobs and their long commutes. Most ordinary working folks fret about getting ahead in the work rat race, or getting their kids good exam grades so that they can die an early death due to stress-related illness. But the good news is that you're not going to have to die in poverty if you drop dead at your desk, given that the pensions are in a meltdown.

It looks so hypocritical. The Westeners sit there in their sedentary jobs, comfort-eating themselves to death through obesity-related illness and giving themselves repetitive strain injury from their mouse and keyboard, cataracts from their computer screen and a bad back from slouching in a chair all day. Our short life expectancy is a function of stress, depression and poor lifestyle 'choices'. Meanwhile, the developing world slaves away, with the dream of attaining a western-style lifestyle. Supposedly, the West is the model the world should follow.

However, maybe we got it wrong. In other cultures, the smartest member of the family gets sent away to study and work, so that they can send money back to their family to support them. Isn't that something to get out of bed in the morning? Being the breadwinner for your family.

Instead of the young, fit and active people being the economic providers, we have instead tipped our society on its head, where we worship the 'grey pound'. Since the pension funds became the biggest investors in all our companies, and all the wealth pooled in the accounts and property portfolios of the baby boomers, we now have an impoverished youth, who have a much lower quality of life than their mothers and fathers, and far fewer opportunities to provide for even themselves and their own offspring, let alone feathering the nest still further of their elderly relatives.

I went to the Southampton Boat Show last year, and instead of successful young businessmen treating themself to a toy, as a reward for their hard work, ambition and ingenuity, it was baby-boomers who were spending their kids and grandkids inheritance, as a reward for having created an asset bubble that has meant crashes in both the stock market and the housing market.

I know that all the pounds of economic output that I generate will simply disappear into a pensions black hole, to pay out final-salary schemes for a generation who have nothing but contempt for their kids and grandkids.

Would you toil and toil, if you had no prospect of ever being self sufficient? If you were simply working for ungrateful masters who called you lazy and stupid? If the wealth that you generated simply inflated asset prices further out of reach, concentrated in the hands of the idle coffin-dodgers who didn't work to create the very assets that they own?

Since when did it become a bad thing to be motivated to work? Why should we be so fearful of immigrants, who are young, fit and economically active? The very language smacks of greedy hoarders who are like a dog in a manger.

Every year we have more students than ever before achieving the top exam grades, yet we print headlines and stories asking if exams are getting easier. Homework and the pressure to succeed is driving ever increasing numbers of young people to suicide, but yet it isn't good enough.

The prospects for young people are awful. The minimum wage is lower, and they'll never be able to get married, have kids and buy a house like their parents did. Why do we label them as 'gangs', 'hoodlums' and 'thugs' and mock them for their materialistic attachments to modestly priced bling, like gold cellphones and other trinkets that cost a fraction of the homes and cars that their parents had as their status-symbols?

Why do we not see the link between demanding endless dividends on our shares and ever-increasing capital gains, and the need for corporations to suppress wage inflation, which impoverishes our working-age people?

There are many people who would say that I'm not entitled to ask these questions, given my six-figure income. There are many people who think I should just shut up and take the money, because it's there.

In actual fact, I'm going further than just asking difficult questions. I'm actually putting my job on the line.

I lost two big money contracts because I refuse to be bought. I refuse to stay my tongue, just because I'm being paid a lot of money. Is it unprofessional, arrogant, reckless, stupid? Actually, it's none of those things.

I struggled a lot with middle-class guilt, but predictably, I did very little about it. I used to wring my hands and say "but what can I do?" while reading the Observer and The Guardian newspapers, and having passionate discussions about putting the world to rights, while quaffing expensive wine in fine restaurants in North London. This was hypocrisy. The final straw would have been going on a sponsored run and doing some kind of gift-aid contribution out of my salary every month, to salve my conscience and give me some kind of sense of smug satisfaction that I'd played my part.

Instead, I went on a journey. I've been to the bottom and back again. You might think that my risk was underwritten by my middle-class family, but they actually turned their back on me, when I had apparently left my social rank and become 'untouchable'. I was disowned, disinherited.

I can never claim to know what it was like growing up in abject poverty. My parents might claim that they never had any money, what with my mum being a student and my dad working behind a bar in a caravan site, when I was born. However, my granddads were both professional men with good pension provisions, who were able to bail out my drug-addled hopeless parents whenever they really hit hard times. The same privilege was never extended to me. Perhaps I should have recklessly sowed my wild oats, and then pled poverty when there were extra mouths to feed, like they did.

A parent's relief that their child is alive and physically healthy has no bearing on whether a person feels grateful to be alive. I didn't choose to be born and I don't want to go on living, if life is just endless misery and suffering. If you expect your kids to love you unconditionally, you're just plain wrong. It totally depends on how you treat them, and there's a real generational problem.

Handing over a planet and an economy that's absolutely fucked, and then retiring, is pretty ridiculous if the generation who are going to have to clean up the mess, accept austerity measures and live a lifestyle that is unimaginably frugal, in order to allow pollution to return to safe levels. It's a bad deal, by anybody's reckoning.

It's in my nature to question everything and anything. There are no taboos for me. There is no 'respect your elders' bullshit, because the first question is "why?". Why should I respect the generation that proliferated nuclear armaments, caused global warming, deforestation, pollution of the water table, an asset bubble that's priced ordinary working people out of the market, an unprecedented increase in the rich:poor gap and widespread economic calamity and didn't think about how they were going to afford their retirement, except by mortgaging the future of their children and grandchildren.

Why do I work? I can't tell you, but I can tell you what damage working does to humanity.

The wealth that I generate goes to corporations, who pay it out in the form of dividends or use it to inflate asset prices, to generate growth for their majority shareholders, who are institutional investors - asset managers - whose job it is to generate yet more wealth for an idle elite who expect to receive final salary pensions and an amazing lifestyle, in return for having wrecked the world.

And you wonder why I struggle to get out of bed in the morning and get excited about going to work?

People that I've worked with throughout my career have read what I've written, and I'm slowly making myself unemployable. How could you employ me, knowing that I don't subscribe to the groupthink? How could you employ me, knowing that I speak my mind, and have no respect for the instruments of power? How could you employ me, knowing that I'm not cowed by fear and insecurity?

I'm impossible to control, using the millstone of debt and the threat of destitution. For me, destitution is freedom. Freedom from the oppression of working a job that only serves to line the pockets of an ungrateful elite who have no respect for the workers of the world, and are only interested in a comfortable retirement at the expense of over 50% of the world's people.

Obviously, I think to myself "I must take this down" or "I must cover this up" or "I must keep my mouth shut". There's a part of me that just wants to take the king's shilling and let him call the tune, no matter how maddened I am by degrading myself as the court jester.

There is so much false promise. Work today and be happy tomorrow. Fritter away my cash on good times to forget about the soul-less day-to-day existence and futility of it all, is what I could so easily do. I've done it before.

I sometimes laugh at myself, so full of middle-class angst, but there's a deep seriousness here. It's just bullying groupthink to call somebody a hypocrite or a champagne socialist. The fact of the matter is, somebody has to do something, because we're sleepwalking towards disaster. The middle classes are just about comfortable enough to write letters and furrow their brows with concern, but not enough to actually risk their jobs or their reputations and good social standing.

Every day I sit at my desk, unable to not think about the bigger picture, unable to put the futility of it all out of my mind. I think "what the hell am I doing here?" and even though I'm good at my job and I am perfectly capable of toeing the line and keeping my bosses happy, I inevitably start to rock the boat, just because I have so much barely concealed contempt for a system that so obviously fails to serve the bulk of humanity.

I've let a genie out of the bottle, by considering the wider questions that we face as a species. I've gone down a rabbit-hole of thought, and I can't stop chasing that rabbit, even though I'm throwing away golden opportunities that people would love to have themselves.

Please try not to get caught in the trap of thinking this is a simple case of ingratitude.

My values and my work are really not at all aligned, and it grates with me, to the point where I really don't give a shit if I lose my job, but I'm not stupid... I know that I only have to play by the rules for a short amount of time, and then I can let the world know what I really think and who I really am, before my horrified bosses get rid of me. Please just kill me.

Tags: #career #capitalism #banking #suicide #depression #parents #family #childhood

This is a story about my secret diary...

Now that my friends have responded so brilliantly to my distress, I feel quite bad. I feel like I've taken up people's time, worried them and been self-absorbed. However, I guess that's partly because I now see light at the end of the tunnel, so I feel less panicked and in danger of something pushing me over the edge, back into suicidal thoughts.

I was thinking to myself about my motivation for writing so much private and personal stuff. The fact is, I want people to like me. I want to feel understood, and that people can empathise with me.

Where do we draw the line between somebody with dangerously low self esteem, and somebody who is egotistical and self-centred? I centred in on one particular phrase:

"I think people like me"

Why should that be so controversial? Well, in lots of literature that deals with psychology, thinking of yourself as likeable is linked to pathological conditions, like narcissism. From things I've read, I'm actually supposed to think of myself as unlikeable, or else I'm a narcissist, I'm dangerously self centred and egotistical.

But, if you think you're unlikeable, worthless, not worth knowing, then this is the basis for low self-esteem, and suicidal thoughts. If you think that nobody likes you, then the world would be better off without you. We all consume a great deal of precious resources - food, energy - so why should I stick around wasting oxygen if I'm somehow unlikeable? This is how I arrive at the decision to kill myself.

Clearly there's a contradiction here. We're telling people not to like themselves and not to feel liked or loved, or else they're some kind of horribly self obsessed, preening egotistical narcissist. However, without feeling like you have some value in other people's lives, you think that you might as well be dead.

I look at the precocious children, the ones who were loved and popular, showered with praise from all quarters... the ones who had their egos polished every day... the ones whose parents told them that they were special, talented... the ones who felt loveable, and as if the world was interested in their talents and ideas. I look at those children, and instead of feeling envy, I simply see the glow, the smile, the cotton wool that surrounds them, and I think that it's a good thing.

Life is going to be brutal. How do we even know we're alive, unless there is sadness to help us appreciate the happiness? Without darkness, we could never appreciate the light. However, it makes no sense to me to add extra shit to the life of a child. Why tell them they're a bad person, worthless, selfish and stupid? The world is going to do that for their entire adult life. For god's sake let them have a childhood.

So, I've grown up with this ridiculous idea of 'original sin'. I've learned to feel guilty about feeling happy. I've learned to feel guilty when luck goes my way. I've learned to feel guilty when somebody shows me love or affection. I've learned to feel guilty for craving friendship, companionship. I've learned to feel guilty for wanting any kind of external validation that I'm alive. I've learned to feel guilty for wanting to feel that there's a reason for living.

Nothing crystallises the issue quite like selfies and Facebook/Instagram. Do you have friends who post endless pictures of themselves up on their social media accounts? What do you think about them?

For pretty girls, they must get an ego boost, putting on their selfie pout and photographing themselves, with lots of 'likes' from horny boys. But surely things can be a little more innocent than that, or even mask deep-seated psychological issues.

Parents like to see photos of their kids. Families like to see photos of their relatives. Friends like to see photos of their friends. With the collapse of local communities, the geographical scattering of families, the decline of villages, clans & tribes... we need photo and video services to have any social bonds over these unnatural distances. Human evolution hasn't caught up with the automobile, the train, the boat and the airplane yet.

Equally, we know that glossy magazines, advertising and hollywood, paint a picture of perfect glamour. The most attractive people on the planet are paraded in front of our eyes, throughout our waking hours. How can we avoid comparing them with ourselves, and feeling inadequate?

We just don't measure up, and we feel ugly. We dislike our mis-shapen noses, sticky out ears and unruly hair. We look in the mirror at our spots and birthmarks, our pockmarked skin, our crooked stained teeth, and we know we can never measure up to the airbrushed beauties who are shoved in our faces.

For me, selfie culture is like grass-roots activism. Publishing directly onto the web takes away all the power and control that the newspapers and book publishers have, and allows anybody to become a writer. Putting pictures of yourself onto Facebook and Instagram allows anybody to become a glamour model, a famous face. It's reclaiming your sense of self-worth, from powerful media forces that parade unrealistic body images in front of us.

I've obviously wrestled with the idea that only rich, famous and powerful people are allowed to publish memoirs and biographies. Who would want to read about the life of a thirtysomething white middle-class IT consultant who went to state school and doesn't know any celebrities? Who would want to read about the very ordinary trials and tribulations of trying not to run out of money, getting a job and finding a place to live?

Am I supposed to feel guilty about the fact that I've been clamouring for my friends, and strangers from the Internet, to engage with me and give me even the tiniest indications that I'm being heard? Should I feel bad, when I admit that it's had a profound psychological effect, having a flurry of people 'like' my content on Facebook and Twitter, and getting a load of comments on Reddit and in the comments section below?

I'm not coercing people to continue to read, and to give me more 'likes'. I kinda feel like writing this has achieved what I wanted, which was to feel noticed. When you're struggling with suicidal thoughts, a big component is that nobody seems to care whether you live or die. The more you wail in distress and get ignored, the more it reaffirms your belief that the world would be better off without you.

I had a big response when I told people I was in hospital, and that was super nice, but I've been wary of spamming Facebook. People are often accused of being attention seeking, when they share shocking stuff on Facebook. Is that fair, if they're genuinely in danger of committing suicide?

To be admitted to a psychiatric hospital in the UK is not easy. You don't just turn up and say you need to be 'committed'. The number of places in hospital are very limited, and "care in the community" is always the preferred option. I had 4 or 5 section assessments, but I've never been 'sectioned'. It's really rare to have your liberty taken away, and be put into a secure facility for the protection of yourself and others.

My point is, that if mental health professionals thought that it was safest if I was admitted to hospital, then my life was in very real danger, and I have independent confirmation that I'm not just an attention whore. Surely it's OK to reach out to the world and say "I don't feel good. I feel alone. I feel unloved, unliked. I don't feel like I have any value. I feel worthless" no matter how you do that?

Personally, I think we should be paying attention to the drama queens, attention whores and people who seem self-obsessed. In actual fact, they probably have very fragile mental health, and are desperately trying to connect with the world and feel that they have some self-worth.

I'm not going to feel guilty about posting the occasional selfie.

I drew a big cock & balls on the beach, and nobody told me to "stop showing off" but I did hear those words in my head.

Tags: #childhood #friends #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #socialmedia #writing

This is a story about friendship...

I had a truly awesome week - the best in a very long time - thanks to my friends. People have been scattered to all four corners of the globe, but through social media and the pull of the capital, we managed to reconnect. I can't stress enough how grateful I am to those people who've made the effort to stay in touch, and not to judge and disown me.

The week kicked off with a couple of friends making a last minute dash up to London. Doing touristy things with them really made me appreciate where I live. I can jump on the tube whenever I want and travel all over London very easily, but sometimes you don't appreciate your home town until you're seeing it through the eyes of visitors, and playing host.

The really cool thing about seeing my friends was having face-to-face conversations. We sat out on the bench in my garden, and we had a conversation that was way easier to have in person, having spent the day together. Chatting online is nice, but it's rarely more than checking in to make sure each other is OK, and just renewing that bond. I'm not complaining, but it was great to see some old friends, and for them to challenge me on some of the bitterness, regret and resentment that's been very unhealthy, as well as just having a really nice chat.

Chatting with my friend's wife, who is a social worker, she shared some really interesting stuff about the importance of a sibling relationship in the life of a child. The big hole in my life is my sister. I spent the first 10 years of my life as an only child, and they say the first 7 years of a child's life are the most formative. Obviously, I've tried hard to re-adjust, and I'm genuinely overjoyed to have a sister, but it's never good enough for my parents. They wanted me to tread a hard line: being both a mature parent figure to my sister, but at the same time I was still a kid and a sibling, not actually an unpaid babysitter. I wanted to play with my sister, not raise her.

If you think I'm a bit cold and brutal with people, a loner, unafraid to cut people off if they're taking the piss... you're right in a way. I was always taught not to bother forming close bonds with people. Being pulled out of so many schools and kept away from my friends, taught me that I would never be allowed to retain my friendships, my relationships. I learned to develop shallow friendships and remain emotionally detached. I learned to protect myself from the inevitable time when my parents would drag me off somewhere else, away from my friends.

In adult life, I've bonded with a new set of friends and found great happiness and comfort in having those friendships last more than a couple of years. Things slowly fell into disrepair with one set of friends, as I moved away from London and got sucked into an abusive relationship. Friendships were neglected during my descent into mental illness and addiction, which kinda poured cold water on another set of friends, and meant further declines in the quality of my older friendships.

However, quite a lot of people are still tentatively connected to me, and by co-incidence another friend was coming up to London for a visit. We met up in a pub on my last day as a free man, and played a card game, just like we used to do on a random midweek evening in the good old days. We then sat in his friend's back garden playing cards and drinking beer, under the watchful gaze of a zombie garden gnome, with the light fading to the point where we could no longer tell which cards were which.

I started a new job, and the guy who showed me the ropes turned out to know a guy who I met at my very first full-time job. He's a friendly fella and it certainly took away a lot of those first day nerves, plus the feeling of trepidation that builds and builds, the longer you have off work. Having taken 6 months out of the game, I was filled with self-doubt, so it was a big relief to meet somebody friendly.

Some friends from my homeless days came over to visit. It was nice to show them my flat, and a real point of pride for somebody who was really down on their luck only a year before. Entertaining and hosting are so good for my self-esteem. I know it's probably not healthy to pin my sense of wellbeing on wowing people with something so materialistic as a nice place to live, but it does make me feel good to say "look how far I've come". It was nice to chat to a couple of people who also keenly felt the sense of loss, as our little social group crumbled, when we all started to get jobs and places to live, and move on with our lives.

I went out for dinner with another friend. It was nice to feel like there was some reward for working. Social bonding over food & drink is the reason for living, for going to work, to me. I always valued the social time with people rather than the excuse, the 'sport' or 'hobby' or whatever it was that supposedly tied us all together.

It was a totally unexpected twist, that when I got into kitesurfing - which is not a team sport - that I would actually end up with one of the largest groups of friends I've ever had the fortune of having in my life. I felt truly cherished and blessed, during those golden years of the London Kitesurfers, when we jetted around the globe together and threw wild parties.

Friday, I scheduled a 'date' with my 'bro'. It was nice to arrange a phonecall with a very supportive friend, and have good news to report. He's a sensitive guy and has been particularly concerned about my wellbeing, especially during my very suicidal moments. It was nice to have a somewhat more positive phone conversation.

Technology and social media is priceless in my life, and I rounded off the week with a video-chat call with a friend in New Zealand. At one point, I was struck by just how amazing technology is. I was having a face-to-face conversation with a friend who I haven't seen for 5 months, and there we were having a chat... midnight in the UK on a Saturday night, and 11am on Sunday morning in Auckland. Truly a globe-shrinking experience, to think that I'd have to be on a plane for 24+ hours if I actually wanted to shake my friend's hand, but yet we were able to speak as if we were almost in the same room together.

I completed the week, 10 weeks clean from the drugs, 3 days of my new job without being sacked, having seen 8 or more friends and made an ally at work. Given that recovery is a function of a healthy life, not sobriety, this bodes well.

I expect that things will get harder before they get easier, and the last week was probably a blip. I'm slightly scared to say "I'm feeling a bit better" because I fear that friends who are looking out for me might back off, believing I'm fine. You know, every little message in chat apps, every like on facebook, every text, every email... they all add up to a cushion of support that keeps me afloat. This is not emotional blackmail. Please think of it as a Thank You.

I still need to put regular social contact, exercise and some kind of hobby or passion into the mix. I'd like to get my kites repaired and buy a new wetsuit so I can go kitesurfing at the weekends again, just like I used to.

Don't move, improve!

Look: I even got a new bed, thanks to my guardian angel driving me across London in a small car, overburdened with a massive piece of furniture. This reparation is a good metaphor for the damage repairs that my friends have enabled.

Tags: #friends #career #suicide #addiction

This is a story about being a contrarian...

I remember sitting down with a mortgage broker in 2007, and he said "just focus on the teaser rate, don't worry about the interest rate after the initial 2 year discount. When your 2 years is up, we'll get you another great deal!". I said to this guy "you do realise I work with Credit Default Swaps, don't you?". Naturally, I ignored his advice and went for a deal that I could afford if there was a credit crunch.

I didn't even want to buy a house anyway. I wanted to put all my money into gold, in 2005/6, and I had opened an account at a bullion vault and bought a small amount... at $550 a troy ounce. The dollar was also really weak so it was a cheap buy.

I thought the housing market looked massively dodgy and the amount of money I saw flying around at JPMorgan, in the credit markets, was ridiculous. Clearly, the bubble was about to burst and a store of wealth in a scarce commodity looked like the best bet. There were plenty of dumbasses around though.

In Cambridge in 2011, I read the original paper on Bitcoin. I thought it looked a damnsight more interesting than my startup. By the end of that year, I had started buying Bitcoins. I bought hundreds.

By the spring of 2012, I wanted to pump all of my wealth into Bitcoin. I was buying Bitcoins at $5 a pop. I was certain that there were big capital gains to be made in the emerging Cryptocurrency. Again, dumbassses didn't see the potential, but even I frittered away those first Bitcoins that I bought, rather than keeping them as an investment. Unless I was going to make a sizeable bet I wasn't interested.

Come the summer of 2013 I was running out of money. My solution: invest in Bitcoin miners and buy bitcoins at $100. I borrowed every penny I could lay my hands on and sank it all into Bitcoin. I offered to cut friends and family in on the potential rewards. Two friends let me manage an investment for them. My family wouldn't give me a cent, even to help me keep a roof over my head.

An idiot - my father - called me "lucky" when I sold my Bitcoins for well over 1,000% return, later that year. I sold my bitcoin miners for a profit. I made money for my friends.

At some point, you've been "lucky" so many times that it's statistically improbable that it's luck, and in actual fact, all the analysis and reading, and time spent thinking about the macroeconomic environment, somehow seems to beat "luck".

If I'd taken the advice of the idiots, I'd be working in a factory in the provinces for minimum wage, or I'd be dead, although the two things sounds pretty much the same to me. Is it "luck" that means I'm not? Well, I'm not arrogant enough to believe that it was smart choices or hard work that mean I am where I am. I know that I'm "lucky" to be alive, to have functioning kidneys, to have enough brain cells left to not be left as a vegetable.

How do you unpick luck from your story?

There's a snobbery that's coming across, and perhaps you even think I imagine myself as some kind of smarty pants. Well, it's pretty clear from this tale that I've taken some pretty dumb risks and done some staggeringly dumb stuff, lately.

I like to think of it as some kind of karma. If your family treat you like a worthless piece of shit and a know-nothing waste of space, then why shouldn't the wider world be a little kinder to you, and gift you the occasional lucky break when you really need one?

These are my fundamental rules for life:

• Be nice to your kids
• Invest in scarce commodities

That is all.

Tags: #banking #capitalism #parents #family

This is a story about channelling energy into something positive...

Buckminster Fuller was going to commit suicide, so that his family could benefit from his life insurance policy. After an epiphany, he found his purpose in life and went on to publish over 30 books.

In a month or two, I will have written the equivalent of 5 novels. Obviously, most of it is garbage, but I hope it serves as a warm-up. The point is to see if I have the discipline to sit down and write every day. Writing gives my life structure, routine.

I normally have 3 or 4 things I want to write about each day, and I struggle to keep under 1,000 words. Browsing statistics tell me that people read for between 3 and 4 minutes per day, on average... even when I've broken my rules and have written 6,000 words, which means that they're probably skim reading or getting bored and stopping reading before the end.

There has been real violence & venom in my words, as I've struggled with a sense of abandonment and real anger and frustration at being let down on promises at a really critical time, and when my life really hung in the balance.

My writing did nothing to sway the people who I targeted, to act with any decency, but now that I know they're no longer reading, I do feel satisfied that I have at least put my side of the story across.

In actual fact, I feel like I made myself look like quite a bitter and angry person, quite immature and unconstructive, negative. It might be well overdue, and the damage is already done to my image, my reputation, but now it's time to stop grinding the axe and start writing in a more positive way.

Behind every rant, every acerbic scalding word, was a lot of emotion, but it was all focussed & fixated on a few individuals. Not very healthy or productive. Unlikely to lead to pieces of writing that are interesting for people to read.

I've read a couple of posthumously published satires where the author's frustrations with the world are barely concealed. They are repetitive and almost cringeworthy to read, but the passion makes the books hard to put down. However, they are good works of literature, unlike me just slagging off my drug addict, alcoholic, loser parents and abusive ex-wife.

It's difficult to know how to act. My school days were dominated by bullying. My working years have been dominated by age discrimination and people who've been promoted to a position of incompetence, where they are completely useless and concentrate exclusively on stopping anybody else from getting ahead. My longest relationship was with an abusive bully. I've had relatively few good role models.

I've picked a few people who I like and respect, from around the world, and I've tried to learn what I can from them, and to emulate their life philosophies, some of their thoughts and teachings, to be interested in things they're interested in, to try and understand what is important in their lives, and how that makes them tick.

I'm a long way from where I'd like to be. I've made a poor account of myself, blathering on like a fool while in a messed up state. I've exposed my darker side: the rage and frustration has bubbled over and I've revealed human characteristics that are less than desirable.

It's good to connect with people but I've been very exposed. I fear that I've lost the respect of some people I really idolise, and others that I could learn a lot from. I fear that I have taken something that had a lot of potential to reach a broad spectrum of people I wanted to connect with, and I have corrupted it into a nasty weapon to try and beat up on just a few people, and that's kinda shameful.

You know what though? I don't have a healthy outlet, other than writing this, and nor did I learn any ways to deal with frustration and anger as a child and young adult. I was the one on the receiving end of other people's shit. I took the blame for my parents' shortcomings. I was the recipient of my ex-wife's viciousness. I was the victim of daily bullying and abuse.

I've soaked up all this shitty abuse for years and years and years and now it's all got to come out somehow. I'm fed up of being the punchbag. I'm fed up of being the scapegoat. I'm fed up of taking the blame for everything. I'm fed up of being the quiet keeper of secrets.

Yes, I've got to find a more positive way to channel this negative energy. Hitting back at the people who hurt me, in particular my parents and ex-wife, will never lead anywhere. The bullies and abusers never feel any remorse. They'll never back down. They'll never say sorry.

Retaliation & tit-for-tat... I know that it's a dark path to go down. I know that the secret is to rise above it all. It's hard to be the bigger person. It's hard to just let things go when you've been wronged, even if the hatred is destroying you from the inside.

Some of my friends' parents taught me to believe that two wrongs don't make a right. They're probably right, but the main problem is that retaliation is punished more harshly than bullying and abuse. We reward the bullies and the abusers and the bigger stronger people, and hand out trite platitudes to their victims.

But, it's true, I am the bigger person. I know the chain of violence and abuse has to be broken. An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.

I always thought that society would cleave itself in two, with the sensitive and intelligent beings creating a super-race that would have all the best technology, while the thick-skulled idiots would just slowly devolve into some more basic animal creature, which is quite well physically endowed but only uses its muscles to fight over food scraps and compete for other similarly dumb animal mates. These creatures would obviously very easy to herd and to keep separate from the elite.

When life was going well, I lost all the bitterness about my shitty childhood. At last, I was tasting the rewards for that abuse... I had risen above the herd of idiots. Sadly, as a horribly ironic twist, I ended up dating and then later marrying a bully, and she dragged me down to her level. It's taken me a long time to realise that I need to distance myself from such people as soon as I can, and to get myself back into safe space, away from the herd of idiots.

It's really hard to not be bitter & twisted, when you know you've got to rebuild so much. It's really hard not to be angry and resentful at people who have profited from your labour, your industriousness, your ingenuity, your trust, your kindness.

I'm remarkably close to either a breakthrough or capitulation, suicide. Things are on a knife-edge. I have the opportunity to earn 3 or even 4 times what I could have done, weighed down by the abusive numbskulls. With money comes opportunity. With opportunity comes the benefit of all those tough experiences.

Now, I'm so passionately against bullying and abuse. I'm so passionately against living miserably. I'm so passionately against brutality and cruelty.

It would be easy for me to become cruel and bullying, as a result of having suffered so much shit myself, however my future hasn't been written off by a few horrible and small-minded people. There's a glimmer of an opportunity, and every chance I might rise above the herd of idiots once again.

I've got 6 months ahead of me before any kind of sense of security will return to my life. 6 months living under threat. 6 months where one thing going wrong could screw everything up. That's a lot of pressure to live with every day. Everything has to go right, during the next 6 months, or else it takes me beyond the limit of what I can handle. There is no contingency. There is no safety margin. There is no excess fat.

As you can imagine, that makes me very tense, very highly strung, very anxious. That pressure comes out in a negative way sometimes, directed at those who dumped me in the shit, but I know that's no use. That pressure comes out as hopelessness sometimes: a sense that I can never overcome the obstacles, and luck will never be in my favour for long enough to break free again. The hopelessness leads to suicidal thoughts.

So, tomorrow I start something that has real tangible value, to rebuild my life. However, don't be surprised if the pressure is unbearable, and I fly off the handle at seemingly minor setbacks. Don't be surprised if I'm still not quite able to bury the hatchet and stop being so aggressive, so violent in my communication towards my persecutors.

I'm a long way from breaking free again.

The geeks will inherit the earth

Tags: #bullying #parents #childhood #divorce #writing #career

This is a story about the hardest part of the journey...

People often give up when they're closer than they think they are to making a breakthrough. The first 80% of a task is always the bit that seems quite easy, like you're making really good progress. The final 20% is tough. Progress seems to slow to a snail's pace, and self-doubt creeps in. It's easy to quit in the final leg, believing you're never going to achieve your goal.

I'm racked with nervousness about whether I'm following the right path. There are lots of things that I feel somewhat full of regret about. There's lots of stuff that I feel a bit stupid and embarrassed about. There are plenty of things that, on reflection, look pretty dumb, arrogant, crazy.

In particular, I'm following a cyclical pattern. I keep repeating the same formula, because I know it sort of works. It's easy for me to stay living where I live, getting more work in the field I know best and pretty much acting the way I've always acted. The pressure to stay in this loop is undeniable.

I need to get my head above water. I'm not in any position to just sack off the western lifestyle and leave a smoking crater in my reputation, creditworthiness and ability to continue to function in the mainstream.

Believe me, I'm so tempted right now to just disappear. I would love to grab my tent, sleeping bag and a few other essentials, and just go off-grid. Suicidal thoughts have reached a crescendo in my head... they stalk me every waking hour of the day. It's clear what's driving this sinking feeling in my heart: the fact that life for the next 6 months is going to be very much a paint-by-numbers exercise.

I've done the commuting thing for 20 years. I've done the IT thing for 20 years. I've done the city living thing for 20 years. I've done the urban solitude thing for 20 years. There is no novelty, no joy, no challenge, no surprises... it's just a case of turning the pedals, and plodding along. The monotony, the drudgery, the formula, the routine... it's worse than a prison sentence.

Do I have a reason for living? Not really. What would it be? Is it a reason for living, to pay rent and service debts? Is work a reason for living, if you're just selling your brain and body to the highest bidder to work on bullshit projects? How can you take pride in your work when you've done the same thing, over and over and over again, for 20 miserable boring years.

I used to work to live. I had a nice lifestyle and I always took my full holiday allowance, travelling to exotic destinations and pursuing exciting activities, adventures. That was less than 10% of the time. The rest of the time was spent watching the clock. Two clocks actually: one that counted down until the end of the working week, and one that counted down until the day that I no longer had to do a job that I had nothing but contempt for.

In truth, I hadn't really reckoned on living this long. Certainly in recent years I decided that things would be wrapped up neatly if I just shuffled off my mortal coil, and my life insurance would at least leave a small legacy for my sister and my niece. I don't really fancy growing old and infirm, and facing yet more of the same bullshit that's been such a chore.

I remember being in hospital, and I really wasn't at all scared that I was going to die, even though my prognosis was that I had about a 30% chance of surviving, such was the damage to my internal organs.

Things haven't really moved on much. I have no dependents. My family ditched me, so I've ditched them. I've not been able to rebuild my social life. I take no pleasure or satisfaction from doing the same job I've been doing for 20 years. I'm too trapped by the mechanisms of capitalism to be able to pursue travel and adventure. I'm too paralysed by fear of dropping out of the rat race and becoming unemployable, to do something gutsy, which would be a one-way ticket.

You see, I'm acutely aware that my perception of the world is coloured by my mood disorder. When I'm depressed, I see everything as pointless, relentlessly horrible and never going to improve. However, I'm able to be rational, and I know that it's foolish to make a permanent change for a temporary problem.

If I throw away the ability to be able to earn huge amounts of money very quickly, then I'm very much limiting my future options. As it stands, at the moment, I can potentially dig myself out of a financial hole and feather the nest very quickly. It seems churlish to not even be prepared to toe the line for 6 short months. However, if you've followed my story at all, you'll know that 6 months is a long time for me... a lot can happen in my life in that period.

My timescales are heavily compressed. Gains need to be shored up quickly or else the hard work will be undone. Things need to happen faster, not slower than normal. Asking somebody whose life is extremely fragile to work harder, longer and suffer more than their peers is likely to lead to the "fuck it" button being pushed. Whatever happened to supporting those who are weaker?

I can see now, where the cracks are. I can see why people slip through the nets and sink to the bottom. I understand where we are hindering, not helping. Life is pretty vicious and unforgiving.

It's true that I'm pretty resilient. It's true that it's remarkable that I've made it this far, and that I still apparently have the opportunity to fight my way back, to recover... and then to perhaps thrive and prosper.

Hopefully, this feeling will pass, but from experience, I think it's going to get harder before it gets easier.

It's like this blog. There are less people reading than ever before, and I'm getting less feedback and encouragement than ever before. I'm not sure why I'm even writing anymore. I've failed to shame my parents into acting with any common decency (although perhaps that was always doomed to fail) and I've as yet failed to feel better, using writing as some kind of shrink, a silent counsellor... to deal with my fucked up head.

But, my experience tells me that doubt always creeps in. I've written 240,000 words and I plan to write 300,000. I plan to write every day for at least a year. Who knows what it will achieve? Sometimes, you don't know until you do it.

When I wrote on a forum every day, it brought me friends, a sense of identity, self-respect and even a sense of achievement when I wrote something that a lot of people found useful. This is kind of like a repetition of that, except that this time I'm publicly dissecting my own psyche.

Is it useful to externalise my internal monologue? Is it useful to psychologically expose myself like this? I've found introspection and self-examination useful in the past, and there's no reason why 'open sourcing' the contents of my brain shouldn't be interesting to somebody somewhere sometime.

They say the most interesting writing is when people are raw & authentic. I'm not really trying to emulate any writers or follow any formula to gain an audience. I just need to get stuff out of my brain and onto paper. I need to pick things to bits and figure out what makes me tick, so I can hopefully begin to open a new, happier chapter in my life.

Watch this space.

Travel doesn't have to mean jetting around the globe to me. I'd be happy in my tent in a muddy field, I think. I'm so sick of the global rat race.

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

This is a story about arrested development...

It's fairly clear that I have too much time on my hands to think about stuff. Too much time alone thinking about stuff leads to dredging up old memories, getting worked up about stuff in the past, and strange thoughts and ideas, without any checks & balances.

However, I'm reasonably self-aware, so I thought I'd share my own impressions of myself. In particular, my attempts to be rational and objective about everything that grinds my gears.

I'm aware that the more and more I wail in distress, bitch and whine, the more I seem like a spoiled teenager, full of angst and feelings of being 'hard done by'. Perhaps there's the impression that I'm owed something. Perhaps a sense of entitlement is coming across.

Actually, there's no entitlement... driving all of these feelings are suicidal thoughts, which mean that if life is too awful, too unbearable, I'll just remove myself from the game altogether.

It's easy to dismiss a suicidal or depressed person, saying "other people have it so much harder than you" but it's that attitude that is the truly immature one. With maturity, you'll realise that life doesn't work like that. As a friend once said, there isn't one single person on the planet who's entitled to feel depressed and suicidal because they have it worst of all, and everybody else shouldn't feel depressed because they have it better than this one individual.

We judge things relatively, this is natural, it's permitted and it's an acceptable fact of life. Why shouldn't I judge my lot relative to my peers, relative to the opportunities and luck that we've all enjoyed in life, as well as the unlucky things that have happened?

Luck? Luck? What the hell am I talking about luck for? Isn't destiny decided by choices? Well, no, not really.

I didn't decide to get born to a couple of drug addict dropout losers, who were too intoxicated on drugs and alcohol to adjust their lifestyle and grow the fuck up when kids started to arrive. Did I decide that these losers would be such a waste of space that they'd need bailouts from the bank of Mum & Dad just to put a roof over the family's head? Did I decide that these losers would spend my entire upbringing teaching me not to be entitled, and to expect a lower standard of living than they enjoyed? Did I decide to pick parents who both enjoyed University educations, but dropped out, and decided not to afford me and my sister the same privilege? I think, if you're looking for the entitled people who believed that the world owes them a living, you'll find them in my parents.

I've always looked to the future, and tried to act in a positive way. I forged my own path, and decided to have a career and follow the path of responsibility, hard work and reject the lifestyle of my parents: being lazy drug addicts as they were.

However, when I found myself back in the situation of my teens - no money and control taken out of my hands - naturally, I feel pretty bitter about everything, pretty resentful to have nothing to show for years of hard graft. Yes it's immature, to bitch and whine about it. Yes it seems like I'm not taking responsibility for the shit that went wrong, undoing all that hard work. Do you want to know why I watched everything burn down, and why I don't feel that responsible?

Does that look like a happy child to you, or a clotheshorse? Does it even look like a child, or perhaps a status symbol? Perhaps it's an object, to be wheeled around, a badge, a token?

The bulk of my upbringing was spent receiving abuse for not having been born with perfect maturity, naturally instilled Victorian values. I never had a childhood.

This is what makes me tick: I feel like I'm entitled to a childhood, now, today, as payback for a horrible upbringing.

I feel like I can act the fool, the jester, the clown. I feel like I can have a massive tantrum, call everyone names, throw a hissy fit. I feel I can have chocolate and jelly for dinner. I feel like I can play with toys. I feel like I can neglect my responsibilities and not do my homework.

This is payback time. I'm taking the time that I didn't have as a kid to make people laugh, or cringe. I actually don't care that I look childish and immature, it's too much fun and I don't give a fuck what people think.

Is it spoiled, and is it bratty? Well, that depends... who spoiled me? I paid for this. I paid for me to have a massive meltdown, a massive tantrum. It's all my wages, my life savings, that has funded what had become a long-overdue childhood.

What did you think it was all about? Riding my bike recklessly around London, getting mixed up with the "wrong" crowd and being the popular kid who doesn't play by the rules, doesn't respect authority and their elders, doesn't say and do the "right" things.

Oh boy, let me tell you that it feels good. It's such a relief to throw off the shackles of savings accounts, mortgages and pension funds. It's such a relief to be free from the oppression of a work schedule, allotted holiday allowances and kissing arses. It's such a relief to speak my mind, rather than falling in line with the rabble.

What's the lesson we learn from all this? Well, if you're overly disciplinary with your kids, and take them away from all their friends and give them a sparse, boring, shit little life, filled with angry abuse for them being nothing more than a fucking child... expect them to grow up feeling like they missed out, like they never really knew childhood innocence, the joy of just laughing and giggling.

Now, when I start to go a bit hypomanic, I chuckle to myself, I grin manically. There is a lightness in my chest, pure glee. People see it, and it's infectious. They can't believe an adult would have such childlike qualities.

When will this end, this somewhat embarrassing and disgraceful immaturity? When will I stop being bitter and resentful about a horrible childhood? When will I move on, and stop verbally attacking my lazy drug addict dropout loser parents?

The answer: when I feel like I've had enough.

I look pretty happy on top of this bus stop, don't I. I'm 'owed' 18 years of childhood innocence, aren't I?

Tags: #childhood #parents #career #depression #suicide #mentalhealth #bipolar

This is a story about being an open book...

I'm having a crisis of confidence. I've written the best part of a quarter of a million words, but now I'm starting to feel like it's all garbage. I'm losing my audience, and I'm losing my way... where am I going with this?

I've got experience of writing every day. I used to do it on a forum, and it brought very positive things to my life. Having that connection with a group of people formed the basis for friendships that later developed in to proper face-to-face relationships. It was also really confidence inspiring, finding out that people had read my stuff and found it interesting.

So, this could be seen as something immature. I've gone back to the things that I was doing in my early twenties, in an attempt to recapture some long-lost happiness and security. I've moved back to London, I'm working back in banking IT, I aspire to get back into kitesurfing and I'm writing every day... albeit in isolation.

When I started writing on the British KiteSurfing Association (BKSA) forum, the internet was a very different place. There was no Facebook. There was no Twitter. The internet had not yet been colonised by an army of bloggers, churning out a banal wall of white noise, as they attempted to fill the void in their boring isolated lives.

It was interesting that a friend said he had to take down his forum website because it was simply killed by spammers, trying to generate links to their crappy sites, in an attempt to push up their Google ranking. In an article he shared yesterday, a woman wrote about most of the comments in her blog being other bloggers trying to do the same: to generate traffic on their sites.

Fundamentally, the message is clear: nobody reads your boring shit. Stop writing. Don't bother.

However, I'm not writing because I want the advertising revenue or product sponsorship deals. I'm writing because some crazy shit happened to me in recent years, and I want people to empathise. I can no longer carry the burden of having all these secrets. I can no longer handle having a load of experiences that I've never told to my friends and family.

A year ago, I was paranoid about being 'found out' as somebody who came off the rails and had a tough time. I felt that my professional reputation would be ruined. I felt that people would recoil in horror, and that I would lose friendships, respect. The jury is still out, and I've pushed pretty hard into territory that makes me look really really bad, but I'm still here... pushing through it.

There is a kind of catharsis in sharing some stuff that's eating you up inside. I guess it doesn't have to be done so publicly, but my attempts to discuss this stuff over email fell on deaf ears. My attempts to discuss this stuff with my parents ended with them just wanting to avoid the topics. I don't really see any friends on a regular basis, so I've been trapped all alone with my thoughts.

What I know about stuff online is that there are a lot more 'lurkers' than you're aware of. Far more people are reading than writing. People struggle to find the words of their own, and instead they try and find voices that echo their own sentiments. We find it much less scary to share something that was written by somebody else, that matches our own opinion, than to write down our own opinion. We almost feel as if our own opinion isn't worthy, isn't valid.

I guess I don't really have that problem. I'm outspoken in any area that takes my interest. If I don't have an opinion on something, I'll think about it and then develop an opinion of my own. I like to think that my opinions have not been easily swayed, but are instead the rational conclusions drawn from the available evidence.

When I write some pieces which are pure opinion - like my rants about the pensions crisis, or how shitty young people's prospects are - then I do kind of feel like I'm writing garbage. I don't treat it as an academic exercise, and put in loads of references and quotes. I simply set out my opinion in strongly emotive language, because I obviously care deeply enough to write about it.

However, when I think about why I wrote something, it's often because I'm bitter and angry about something else. It's been quite clear from my writing that I'm pretty pissed off with my parents, and so these strong emotions start to express themselves in thinly veiled attacks on their politics and lifestyle choices. The fact that they sit in wealthy comfort while my sister and I struggle turns into an attack on rich Cotswold-dwelling upper middle class Conservative twits, like David Cameron... completely ignorant of the struggles of inner city and suburban ordinary people.

Why I have chosen to shame myself, and write about deeply embarrassing personal stuff and mistakes that I have made, is somewhat more complicated.

There's a huge risk that I'm going to slip backwards into the traps that threatened to destroy my life, during the last few years. I'm scared about how chaotic my life was, how close I came to death, life-changing injury and permanent madness. I want to have some kind of record of my ups and downs, to put things into my own words and demystify what's been going on.

My perception is that I'm currently fairly healthy. I'm struggling with depression and anxiety, but all my feelings of paranoia, my jumbled up disordered thoughts and the really strange ideas and terrible plans or schemes... they've all subsided. Now, I feel quite practical, quite realistic, quite sane. I feel mostly normal.

It's not healthy to regard yourself with suspicion, to think of yourself as unwell. I'm pretty sure I'm not unwell, but it's taking time to get back on my feet. Repairing the damage caused by traumatic events in your life is not quick and it's not easy. If you've read any of my story, you'll know that I've had a remarkable turnaround from where I was, at my lowest ebb.

I've got no idea who's still reading this, and what their perception is of me, but my objective now is to try and demonstrate that I'm stabilising, that I'm getting back to normal. I want to try and reassure people that I'm not a lost cause, and that I'm on top of the scary things that threatened to consume me. I want people to see me as somebody worthwhile, somebody worth being friends with, somebody interesting, not just as a gruesome jester, not just as a fizzing, bubbling, seething mass of self-destructive insanity.

It would be nice if I can write a new, happier, more normal chapter in my story. It would be nice if that chapter included some supporters, but I appreciate that my story has been very hard to follow. I've been hard work, but I hope I'm worth it in the end.

Fundamentally, I'm humbled, even if it doesn't come across very well.

I'm starting to get a bit paranoid about my employers finding this blog, but if I keep writing, all the madness is going to get buried under far too much text for them to bother reading

Tags: #writing #mentalhealth #career

This is a story about descending into insanity...

What do we know about technology that is capable of tracking us, capturing images and sound? When does it do this? What data is stored, transmitted, received, without us even knowing?

I'm on extremely dodgy ground, talking about snooping, spying, surveillance and hijacking of the 'smart' devices we have in our possession most of the time. There's a risk that I could swing into out and out paranoia. However, I also need to tell you what happened to me, as I experienced it.

So, we pick up the story where we left part one, yesterday. I'm in my hotel room, it's going dark, there aren't any drugs in my bloodstream anymore, and I can hear an angry family outside my door. The hotel reception has been alerted to my distress, as have the police. This is what happened next.

I heard a sound outside my window, of two people climbing up onto the top of the bay windows, in order to stand on the little balcony and look right into my room through the window. I had the impression that it was a father and son. I turned my back on them, horrified by this intrusion.

Voices now came from behind me, where the father and son stood, peering at me through the glass, with me like a goldfish in a bowl. Voices came from below, where they shouted to somebody relaying messages, to somebody outside my door... an upset female voice, just the other side.

At first, the father and son were critically appraising me: "look at him, look at the way he's cowering from us, what a pathetic little twerp". Being talked about like this made me squirm with self-consciousness, to feel that my privacy, my personal space was being horribly invaded.

This narrative of abuse, where I was talked about as if I wasn't able to perfectly hear what was being said, carried on for some time. I started to get angry that I was being peered at like this, with no escape, trapped on both sides. I slid the flimsy wardrobe in front of the window, so that the father & son couldn't see in.

By now, it was getting pretty dark. The voices carried on as if I could be seen, and I was confused to know how that was possible, when I had covered the window with the wardrobe. The messages that the father and son relayed to the rest of the family seemed to suggest that they were still able to see me. I moved around the room and tried to hide myself from their intrusive gaze, seemingly to no avail.

"Look at him, what a mess. He's a right state. So messed up. Disgusting!" they said. Meanwhile the female voices sounded like they were whipping themselves into a bloodlust, a frenzy. "C'mon Dad let's get him. Let's teach him a lesson he won't forget" the daughter pleaded. You could hear excitement, exhilaration in her voice... she was starting to enjoy this.

Everything up to this point, except for my face-to-face contact with the person who came into my room, could be pretty much put down to temporary insanity. I hadn't really seen anything and it's quite possible that I was hearing things. I've never really had a problem with hearing voices, but I was so tired, malnourished, stressed and strung out that it's quite possible that my brain had simply lost its grip on reality.

Even the father and son, stood on the balcony, were only things that I perceived in the murky gloom of the darkness, and I didn't want them staring at me, so I had turned my back on them and then slid the wardrobe in the way.

The sense that I was being watched, certainly didn't make any rational sense. I had started to get really alarmed, after it seemed like I was still being watched from every angle. I had started to look around the room, to see if I could see holes drilled in the walls or ceiling, to see if I could see any means of spying on me... I saw nothing. This really didn't make any sense to me, and I was kind of still secretly hoping that it could all be put down to the effects of drugs wearing off, even though I knew that they were no longer in my bloodstream.

I was not at all prepared for what happened next.

I heard the mechanical sound of an electric motor, and the next thing I knew, a thin silvery metal tube-like thing was poked under the bedroom door. This tube, ridged like a shower hose, then turned 90 degrees and started to extend upwards at a 45 degree angle away from the floor. When it had extended a few feet upwards, the end then turned to point into the room, and I could see dark glass on the end, which looked like the lens of a tiny camera.

This. Changed. Everything.

Now I had actual confirmation, clear as day, with my eyes that I was being spied on. Up to this point, I had been half considering that everything was just in my mind. It's not unreasonable to hear and perceive things incorrectly when so tired and messed up, but I'd never had a hallucination. When people talk about hallucinations, they aren't actually seeing things. Instead, the brain is misinterpreting things. You can see snakes and spiders in shadows, but when you look directly, you don't see those things... they're just corruptions of things that aren't seen clearly.

This telescopic spy camera was here, it was real. I went from being half-asleep, exhausted by the prolonged stress and the sleepless nights, to being wide awake. Everything was in sharp focus, and it was clear that this was no hallucination.

I yelled: "Hello, police?". My assumption was that this could be the police's way of checking to see if I was OK, if they were worried that I was suicidal, or perhaps had a weapon. "That camera had better belong to the police, or else there's going to be hell to pay" I yelled, aware that this was an invasion of privacy that could never be justified in court, by private citizens.

Then I overhead two people talking "yeah, the guy's name is Nicholas Grant, from Bournemouth". Bournemouth? How the hell would they know that? That's what it says on my driving license, because I never got it changed. It sent shivers down my spine at the time. It certainly stopped me in my tracks, because I was about to grab the camera and try and pull it out from under the door.

I decided that it was probably the police, so I went to my bag and found a letter from my doctor, explaining that I was in a vulnerable situation: struggling with mental health issues, drug addiction, homelessness and dislocation from family and friends. The letter was intended to be given to hospital staff if I ever needed treatment, as it summarised my care needs and primary health risks, but I felt like it would make a starting point with the police, seeing as there were at least 4 angry family members stood outside who wanted to put their own point of view across, painting me in a negative light.

"Oh, ho, what's this trick he's trying to pull. What excuses are these? A letter full of lies, is it?" I overheard. The irate family thought that I was trying to pull a fast one, to get myself out of trouble by hiding behind medical diagnosis, perhaps. They certainly weren't happy that I was preparing myself for a knock at the door from the police. They seemed to feel like justice wasn't going to be served.

I didn't feel like the police would permit any such situation to occur. I was now convinced that this camera had perhaps been purchased or rented by one of the family, and was part of their continued persecution of me. I phoned the police myself. I explained where I was, what was happening. They said they'd see what they could do, but they were strangely unconvincing.

I then heard a flurry of activity outside the door. "Get that call cancelled off" I heard somebody say. Then "have they called it off". A little later, I heard "we've got it called off" and a little cheer went up. This was really confusing. Were these people the police, were they working with the police, or were they just really good at blagging the police in order to keep their quarry trapped in his hotel room, in order to serve up their own form of vigilante justice?

I was struck with an idea. What if I could communicate with these bullies, this mob? I decided to write messages on my mobile phone and point it at the camera so they could read it. I got out my mobile phone and launched Google Apps, which has a word processor. I then made the font really big, so the text could be read.

The fact I'd got my phone out again and what I was doing caused considerable interest, particularly with the excitable female, who seemed to be the main injured party in the whole fiasco, but now seemed to be revelling in her position as centre of attention. "What's he doing? Oh, he's going to write us a message is he? Oh this is going to be good" she said.

I wrote "I'm sorry". With reference to the original offence I seemed to have somehow caused.

My oppressors seemed to react before I'd even shown it to the camera. They laughed derisively and mockingly, and then reacted angrily. There was an explosion of anger, seemingly incredulous that I could be remorseful that I had caused such offence that I would be attacked by an entire family.

It was strange that my messages could be read, without me even having to show them to the camera. I then decided that my phone had probably been hacked... hence how I could be overheard so easily. However, I still felt bad about what I'd said, and I was still clearly trapped by an angry mob, so I started to make pleas.

"I'm scared" I said next. This had a somewhat de-escalating effect, but now I seemed to enter into a direct dialogue with the female who had sustained the most offence, and was the vocal ringleader for the rest of the family. We were getting somewhere, it seemed.

"I didn't mean what I said" I pleaded. This didn't go down very well.

"I was born in Wales, my parents are from the North" I wrote, trying to undo the whole us vs. them thing that I'd started, when I had made my flippant remarks about uncultured out of town people, under my breath, muttering in a bad German accent, assuming that nobody could hear me.

I can't remember the details of the conversation, but there was little dissuading the offended party that I hadn't meant anything malicious in my comments. I had then moved on to reasoning with them, that violence wasn't the answer. I wrote that beating me up would be a vicious and cowardly attack, completely out of proportion with whatever I had done.

Things dragged on and on, until we eventually reached the point where the main woman made it clear that I had to do something to demonstrate my remorse. It was fairly clear that if we just continued, eventually they'd have to go away, and then they'd feel like justice hadn't been done. The last thing I wrote was "if I wasn't sorry, I'd just keep this conversation going, wouldn't I?".

The penny seemed to drop with me, that I was supposed to do something brave, to demonstrate that I was sorry, instead of just hiding behind my door, hiding behind the police, hiding behind the letter from my doctor. I was struck by the certainty that I had to do something very clear to demonstrate how sorry I was.

I put my phone into my pocket, moved the wardrobe back against the wall, opened the window - the father and son had gone - and climbed out. I was stood, on the 3rd floor, on top of a bay window, without railings or other safety guard around me, on the outside of this building, perilously high above the ground.

I raised my arms to the air, and yelled to the street below "I fucked up!!". As I did this, a police helicopter that was hovering about quarter of a mile away shone its light onto me. I clambered back in the window, with adrenalin coursing through my bloodstream. "What do I do now?" I asked aloud to the room. "Come and find me" the girl said. "Climb out of the window and climb down. We've been doing it all day" she said.

Obviously, I was aware that the police helicopter was there. The light was now shining in the window very brightly. I decided that climbing down from the top floor of a building in full view of a police helicopter was not the smartest idea, so instead I opened the bedroom door and legged it down the back staircase of the hotel, full of the excitement and glee of a child. The most exciting game of hide & seek ever, had just begun.

Things were just hotting up.

The next part of the story does actually contain the fun run bit. I did interact with lots more people face-to-face in the final chapter, which makes the whole silly episode that much harder to explain. I also have some digital evidence of what went down during those crazy couple of days. However, I do kind of wonder if I didn't dream the whole thing sometimes.

The finalé really is almost impossible to explain away as mental illness or drug side-effects, but I still need to tell the story and 'ask the audience' what they think could possibly have happened. As I continue to tell the tale, you'll see that it's harder and harder to explain away as a bout of temporary insanity.

I want it to be temporary insanity, because it means that I wasn't the victim of a rather harrowing incident. It's rather unsettling to think that I could have been so insane that I thought I was making phonecalls to hotel receptionists, the police, speaking face to face with people and seeing things as clear as day, like the spy camera. It makes no sense, which is why I'm finally telling the tale, after a year of trying to wrap my head around it.

I suspect that Islington holds more secrets than it's letting on, but we shall see.

Tune in tomorrow for the final instalment.

Tags: #mentalhealth #bipolar #drugs #addiction #london